Category: Republicans

Simple Question

Bob Herbert asks a simple question:

The question that I would like answered is why anyone listens to this crowd anymore. G.O.P. policies have been an absolute backbreaker for the middle class. (Forget the poor. Nobody talks about them anymore, not even the Democrats.) The G.O.P. has successfully engineered a wholesale redistribution of wealth to those already at the top of the income ladder and then, in a remarkable display of chutzpah, dared anyone to talk about class warfare.

I would hazard that the reason Republicans are still listened to by the press (presumably the audience Herbert is asking about, as it’s pretty clear the public doesn’t buy their bunk any more) is that the GOP is committed to their busted ideas. They always push tax cuts – they have conviction. Put that up against Democrats who, for example, in the space of 48 hours were arguing vociferously on TV in defense of the inclusion of stimulus spending on birth control to the President “begging” congressional leaders to remove the money from the bill. Between people that re fairly convinced that their ideas are right and a crowd that moves with the political winds, the GOP’s ideas will always sound credible.

If Democrats can’t find courage to stand by their convictions (presuming they have convictions in the first place), they will continue to lose the ideological battle on the economy, taxation, and how government can make peoples’ lives better. The victims in this batttle will not necessarily be Democratic elected official who may be forced into early retirement through elections. Rather the real victims are  poor, working, and middle class Americans.

Bipartisanship

One of the things I’ve long written about was the extent over the last eight (but especially five) years the word “electability” was used in such a way in the press and with DC insiders as to make Republican base voters normative for all America. That is, a Republican candidate is electable if he or she can get Republican base voters to support them, whereas electable Democrats are ones who could be viewed as having a good chance of getting conservative Republicans to vote for them. It’s obviously bunk, but it’s a concept that has been used to push the window in which political debate takes place significantly to the right.

As with Paul Krugman, I think a similar thing has happened regarding the word bipartisanship. In Washington, bipartisanship has to do with the propensity for Democrats to embrace Republican policies and help them get passed. It doesn’t mean compromise, unless you’re a Democrat. It takes Republican policy views (privatizing Social Security, bailing out Wall Street but not Main Street, staying in Iraq indefinitely) and makes them normative. Hence the only Democrats who are seem as being bipartisan are people like Mark Pryor, Ben Nelson, and Blanche Lincoln, all of whom happily embrace Republican views from time to time. Naturally Joe Lieberman is the poster child for bipartisanship.

Krugman brings out this dynamic well in a blog post on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s salvo against Democratic partisanship in the context of resisting the privatization of Social Security at the start of Bush’s second term. Krugman gets to the nut of the problem:

So Mr. McConnell regards it as damnably partisan of Democrats not to go along with an attempt to destroy the legacy of the New Deal. Presumably, then, his idea of bipartisanship would be for Democrats and Republicans to work together, harmoniously, to destroy the legacy of the New Deal.

This is exactly right and it’s also exactly what we should expect in coming weeks and months as the GOP and their compliant press  ramp up the pearl clutching over the lack of “bipartisanship” from the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress.

There’s a very simple reason why please for bipartisanship from the press and from the right should be ignored and President Obama has said it himself: he won. Overwhelmingly. The public wants the Obama agenda and have given him a large majority in both legislative chambers to achieve it. As such, bipartisanship is a word that hides its true meaning in Washington. Pleas for bipartisanship are nothing more than pleas for the Republican policy agenda to be implemented while they do not control the White House nor Congress.

I hope that Democrats generally and the Obama team in particular learn to ignore any requests for bipartisanship, as that word does not mean what they want you to think it means.

LA Times: Disclosure Failure

In today’s Los Angeles Times a man named Bret Jacobson writes a virulently anti-union screed attacking Labor Secretary nominee, Congresswoman Hilda Solis.  Here’s how the LA Times describes Jacobson at the bottom of his op-ed:

Bret Jacobson is founder and president of Maverick Strategies LLC, a research and communications firm serving business and free-market think tanks.

We’ve seen a lot of anti-union, anti-Obama, anti-worker, and anti-Free Choice op-eds penned by business consultants and “free-market think tank” types of late, so this isn’t a terribly shocking biography for drivel like this. Of course, this isn’t all Jacobson is. Here’s what the highly-informative BretJacobson.com has to say:

Prior to founding Maverick Strategies, Bret co-founded the Center for Union Facts, overseeing that organization’s research activities, guiding its communications, launching its new-media capabilities, and helping plan its strategic national advertising and earned-media campaigns.

And just for those not paying attention at home, here’s Sourcewatch:

The Center for Union Facts is a secretive front group for individuals and industries opposed to union activities. It is part of lobbyist Rick Berman‘s family of front groups including the Employment Policies Institute. The domain name http://www.unionfacts.com was registered to Berman & Co. in May 2005.

American Rights At Work is a bit more hard hitting in their assessment of the Center for Union Facts:

The Center is the latest public relations campaign and front group devised by “notorious D.C. lobbyist”1 and veteran spin doctor Richard “Rick” Berman with his firm, Berman and Company.

The Center for Union Facts is a front group focused on damaging the public image of unions, depressing workers’ rights, pushing legislation that would make it more difficult for workers to join unions, and furthering an anti-union business climate.

Berman earned his status as one of The Hill’s top lobbyists, along with Jack Abramoff,2 by working on behalf of unpopular clients like the tobacco, alcohol, and fast food industries.  Berman’s campaigns have attempted to relax drunk driving laws, argue obesity is not a public health issue, prevent increases in the federal or state minimum wage, and attack advocacy groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).

…

  • The Center for Union Facts’ legislative agenda is strikingly similar to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s.   The big business lobbying group both adamantly opposes the Employee Free Choice Act, and is in strong support of the Secret Ballot Protection Act.  Berman formerly devised union avoidance strategies for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,18 and he still has strong ties to the Chamber through Randel Johnson, Vice President for Labor at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.19  Berman told The New York Times that he asked Chamber of Commerce officials at a state conference to recommend that businesses in their states donate to his anti-union campaign.20  Randel Johnson has repeatedly denied any Chamber funding of the Center, yet admitted “he had served as an adviser to the Center.”21
  • On its website, the Center claims it is “supported by foundations, businesses, union members, and the general public.”22  Berman will only divulge that several companies and a foundation fund the Center, but will not release the names of his donors.23
  • No individuals, foundations, or corporations have come forward to admit any sponsorship of the Center.  Why wouldn’t they want to distance themselves from Berman’s hyperbolic and unsupported rhetoric?  Berman gets paid to say what responsible business leaders don’t want attributed to them.  The Washington Post reported that food industry officials, who would only be interviewed about Berman, “on the condition that they not be identified by name or by where they work, said that by keeping the sponsors anonymous, Berman’s group can be more vociferous, provocative and irreverent in its criticisms.24

In short, the Center for Union Facts is the key organization in Big Business efforts to stop the progress of labor in America, most notably through fighting against the Employee Free Choice Act. One of their co-founders, Bret Jacobson, was given license to push the Center’s anti-union, anti-worker agenda in an op-ed against the nominee for Labor Secretary, while the Times failed to disclose the only informative part of his biography. He’s the founder of a research firm? What is that supposed to tell the Times’ readers? Pretty much every person I know who works in politics does some level of consulting. The most important piece of Jacobson’s biography – his professional connection to one of the biggest anti-union groups in America – is left out of a column that specifically pushes the Center’s agenda. In an AP article three days ago, a spokesman for the Center attacked President-elect Obama’s pick of Solis for Labor Secretary (though, amazingly, the AP cited the Center as “a group critical of organized labor”).

There has been a heavy, persistent trend in the mainstream press of anti-union articles and op-eds. The business lobby has been very good about getting their surrogates’ op-eds placed in big papers like the LA Times, NY Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. There is a major fight going on between big business and America’s workers about the future of organizing to increase worker rights in America. The fight is centered around the Employee Free Choice Act, but clearly the Secretary of Labor is now another front in this fight.

As frustrating as it is to repeatedly read columns, like Jacobson’s, which include outright lies about what the Employee Free Choice Act is and does, I am 100% willing to take part in a national debate about how our country relates to working families. There are obviously different sides in this debate and there is nothing wrong with the debate being played out in the press. But in this atmosphere of daily volleys back and forth between big business front groups like the Center for Union Facts and the Obama administration and the American labor movement, it behooves the press to be honest about who is taking part in the debate. The LA Times was brutally negligent to not disclose Bret Jacobson’s employment at the Center for Union Facts, the only piece of his biography that had any bearing on his column. By not disclosing Jacobson’s ties to this anti-worker group, the LA Times succeeded in giving their pages over to a press release from a big business front group, with no means for their reader to discern it from a non-partisan piece on President-elect Obama’s pick to chair the Department of Labor.

So editors of the Los Angeles Times, let me show you how this is done:

Disclosure: I’m proud to work for the Service Employees International Union…so proud that I disclose it when I write about issues that relate to my employer. That said, this post was not approved by nor written with the knowledge of SEIU. It is representative of my views alone.

Now that wasn’t hard, was it?

Obama Raised Nearly $1 Billion

Holy schnikes.

Republicans have two choices if they want to have a shot of beating Barack Obama:

  1. Find a billionaire willing to spend at least $2 bil. of his own money;
  2. Get real public financing passed for all federal elections.

It’s safe to assume that Obama will raise over $1 billion for his campaign alone next cycle. The GOP is in serious trouble and watching them try to deal with this is going to be fun. The bar has been raised out of their reach and they’ll have to do better than proposing to steal the “change” brand. But again, I’m all for Republicans hanging their hopes on branding and whining about how awful it was that millions of small dollar donors carried Obama to victory.

The Brand Problem

Republican online guru David All tweets:

 I’m taking bets on how quickly O switches away from the “Change” theme once he’s inaugurated. That day, the message becomes ours. Game on.

First, Obama isn’t going to switch away from the “Change” theme any time soon. I won’t be surprised if change remains his theme for the 2012 reelection — and it will be true as long as he’s continuing to reform, renew, and restructure government so that it works better for the American people.

The bigger thing is this: Obama didn’t win because of a brand. He won because he ran on better ideas and the change he talked about was a change from failed Republican ideas (perfectly enacted by 8 years of Bush and an entirely compliant Congress) to new Democratic ideas. The challenge facing Republicans is not one of branding, but I have no problem if their top strategists like All think it is.

Rebuilding the Party Fail

I know Sarah Palin is many Republicans idea of the future — what sort of future I dare not hazard (though the answer lies later in this paragraph) — but I’m not so sure that hawking year-old biographies of Sarah Palin is the path to victory the Rebuild the Party crowd had in mind. But the ultimate failure in this bizarro Human Events email: the Palin book is hawked with a crappy science fiction book about the end of civilization. What remains unclear is if the book, Terror Occulta, predicates the end of the world on the rise of Sarah Palin. Only one way to find out…buy two shitty books!

Tribute to a Felon

Imagine a scenario where Ted Stevens never was indicted nor convicted of seven felony counts of corruption. Then imagine that Mark Begich beat Stevens in the election for the US Senate seat and today was Stevens’ last day in the Senate. It would look EXACTLY the same as what we’re seeing today in a world were Stevens is a convicted felon seven times over.

Not only are Republicans getting down on their knees for Ted, but Democratic Senators are crying on the floor of the Senate at the loss of Ted Stevens.

The man is a criminal. He is a felon. He broke the public trust and he abused the US Senate to profit personally. For that he faces jail time. And yet he is treated like one of the greatest heroes in American history. Simply sickening.

Brutal Analysis of the Current GOP

Frank Rich delivers a brutal analysis of the Republican Party in the NY Times today.

The G.O.P. ran out of steam and ideas well before George W. Bush took office and Tom DeLay ran amok, and it is now more representative of 20th-century South Africa during apartheid than 21st-century America. The proof is in the vanilla pudding. When David Letterman said that the 10 G.O.P. presidential candidates at an early debate looked like “guys waiting to tee off at a restricted country club,” he was the first to correctly call the election.

While the GOP has become largely a Southern regional party that’s funded by big business on the one hand and religious fundamentalists on the other, it’s advocated policies that further ensure a growing distance with mainstream America. The GOP is not going away, but it is being artificially propped up by the wealth of its core supporters and decades of successful messaging to make radical reactionary views seem normative of the American mainstream to the press. Of course voters are clearly seeing through this.

Anything resembling a competent first two years by Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress should ensure the continued regionalization of the Republican Party. How they respond will be interesting to see. John McCain’s response to this dynamic of progressive was to go negative and get nasty. Sarah Palin clearly took that ball and ran with it. But the American people didn’t buy what they were selling. Can the GOP adjust? Maybe, but nothing we’ve seen from this nasty, brutish party over the last sixteen years suggests that they’re inclined to do so.