Tag Archives: Republican Party

Entertainment, Television & our Politics

I listened tonight to the Friday night political feature “This Week in Politics” on All Things Considered on NPR and the inevitable discussion of Donald Trump and his amazing success at generating media fascination as well as his Teflon-like imperviousness to criticism from the other candidates manifest in last night's debate. His outrageous behavior and shocking declarations continue to fortify his appeal to his followers while doing him no harm in the polls.

Reince Priebus, Party Head

One of the pundits proffered the explanation that the Republican Party leadership had essentially unleashed the nativist wing of its base by refusing in recent years to disapprove of or discredit the birthers, the bigots, and the many lies and distortions offered by its extremist and even not so extremist candidates. The Party has lost control of this dynamic and in doing so has permitted candidates like Donald Trump to gain ascendancy in this primary campaign.

I cannot disagree with this analisis and with the conclusion that the chickens are coming home to roost. Despite the best efforts of the Party leadership to counter his appeal, Donald Trump has only gotten stronger as the establishment candidates like Marco Rubio, John Kasich, and Jeb Bush fail gain traction against him as his popularity grows and his leadership in the polls continues unabated.

Donald Trump

There is another factor that has played a critical role in the political and polling dynamics during this campaign. This came to me listening to a sort of off-hand comment by the other pundit on NPR, that the wildly exaggerated and shocking statements of Donald Trump sound more interesting and carry more appeal to the television news audiences than explanations and truth-telling by the other candidates.

I have commented in previous posts about the demise of professional journalism, particularly television, in favor of entertainment. The networks are owned by media conglomerates who have eviserated their news departments and stripped them of their professionalism and their commitment to seeking the truth. To these networks, Donald Trump is a godsend and for that reason they have given him millions of dollars of free publicity and promotion by fomenting and delighting in Trump's outrageous declarations and behavior.

Ted Cruz

I understand of course that there are other factors at play in this dynamic, not the least of which is the wild, wild West of the Internet, which has no filters, no editorial control, and no control over content. Nevertheless, as one who grew up watching Walter Cronkite, John Chancellor, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, I miss being able to rely on the networks for reliable and impartial news coverage. These reporters and many others from CBS, NBC, and ABC reported our news with so much greater commitment to professional journalistic standards and to the quest for the truth. Of course they failed at times, but the standard was there and they aspired to it.

I remember so clearly when CNN came into its own during the war in Iraq and developed into an exciting and very professional news organization under its founder Ted Turner. Now CNN is an entertainment division of Time Warner. The Fox Network is a propaganda outlet for the ultra-conservative right which places absolutely no value on reporting truthfully and impartially, much less professionally. This situation contributes greatly to the current political environment of polarization, extremism, intolerance and indifference to the truth.

So it's not surprising that megalomaniacs like Donald Trump can manipulate the press to his advantage and there is no counterweight to the sensationalism he offers. My only hope is that Republican voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, and the succeeding primary states are not unduly swayed by this hype and all the lies being told in this primary campaign. It is a true test of our democratic system and I am optimistic about the outcome but not insensitive to the dangerous possibilities that exist.

 

Rep. Schweikert – Let’s get serious

Rep. Schweikert

Rep. David Schweikert, Republican from Arizona and member of the House Freedom Caucus, appeared on NPR's Morning Edition this morning and told a wonderful story about how this rebellion against House Republican leadership by the Freedom Caucus (HFC) is all about participation in the legislative process, not about imposing their political will on the House and on the election of the new Speaker of the House. They just want to be able to offer amendments, to introduce legislation, to be able to participate in the legislative process.

PLEEZE, Mr. Schweikert, don't insult our intelligence. Don't be ingenuous or ask us to be. This situation in the House after Kevin McCarthy's withdrawal from the election for Speaker is about power and the imposition of HFC's will on the legislative process. Being a minority of 40 or 50 members of the 247 member Republican Caucus, the HFC is not looking for participation in the process but for veto power over what legislation is introduced and which bills get sent to the floor for a vote.

If they were given full democratic PARTICIPACION they would generally be outvoted by more moderate members of the Caucus. No, they are looking for more than participation and we all know it. The HFC is fanning out with the media this weekend to do their public relations work and to put the best possible face on this attempt to force the Republican leadership to make promises that the leadership does not want to make.

Freedom Caucus

Freedom Caucus

They asked McCarthy to make such promises and he refused to do so and immediately the HFC announced that it would vote in bloc for Rep. Daniel Webster of Florida for Speaker, thereby denying McCarthy an easy path to the 218 votes needed to win the Speakership. Fearing humiliation if the vote proceeded, McCarthy bowed out, leaving the leadership in the lurch.

Until the Republican Party national leadership understands that the Tea Party is bringing the party failure and legislative deadlock with its ideological and legislative intransigence, this dance is likely to continue. The Party's fear of an upstart third-party formed by the Tea Partiers is clouding its political judgement and its strategic calculus.

Reince Priebus

Reince Priebus - chairman RNC

No one wants to be Speaker with the Tea Party holding sway over the Republican Conference in the House and threatening constantly to unseat the Speaker if he/she does not give in to their demands. This will continue until the national Party leadership and the House Republican Conference are willing to risk a third-party revolt by the Tea Partiers and seek to create a more bipartisan working environment in the House to get their legislative work done. This would enable the Republican Congressional leadership to demonstrate that the Party can govern, can be an viable alternative to the Democratic Party. This has been an publicly avowed objective of the leadership since they gained the majority in the Senate in the 2014 elections.

I am convinced that the third-party threat is an empty one. If the Tea Partiers were to abandon the Republican Caucus to form their own third-party caucus they would lose ALL of the power that they now have as they hold sway over the Republican Caucus. Additionally, the Republicans would lose the majority in the House, ceding it to the Democratic Caucus, which would be far worse. Why the Republican strategists in the House and in the national Party do not see this is beyond fathoming.

So get you heads straight you Republicans and recognize the dire straights into which you have placed your party and abandon the Tea Partiers to their own fate. If they do not not like the decisions of the Republican leadership and the Speaker's office, they are FREE to form their own party and their own caucus within the House. See how long the threat lasts.

Though I have nothing personally against the Tea Partiers (though I do disagree with them), the strategy and tactics of the Tea Party leadership in and out of Congress are leading the Republican national party to permanent status as an opposition party which will never demonstrate it is capable of governing.

 

An Unprecedented Political Opportunity for Democrats.

We are at a political crossroads that presents Democrats with an unprecedented political opportunity. The real question is whether the party has sufficient prescience and wisdom to take advantage of it.

Let me explain. The Republican Party is shrinking in size and in inclusiveness. Moderates have been run out of the party at the leadership level and independent voters find less and less room for their beliefs in their own party. Litmus tests are the order of the day as the extreme right of the Republican Party (read Tea Party) demands that their representatives in state houses, state legislatures, and in Congress toe the line as defined by their litmus tests.

I believe that this has left many Republicans and independents who do not identify with the extreme right of the Republican Party in the lurch. They will not abandon their party or their independence for the Democratic Party as it currently defines itself. But they cannot embrace the extreme positions of the so-called “base” of the Republican Party which is driving the party further and further to the extreme right. So what do they do? They keep mostly to themselves and overtly support their party while increasingly feeling alientated from it by the exteme positions taken by the Tea Party and their allies.

Politics is the art of conciliating different political points of view, beliefs, and convictions. But politics has been subverted by the Republican Party which no longer believes in compromise, conciliation, and negociacion. It’s all or nothing at all for the Tea Party. Bipartisanship means for the Republicans in Congress caving on their beliefs and giving in to the Democrats. The Republican leadership operates in fear of backlash from their “base” if they try to govern via concilation and negotiation. Just ask Eric Cantor.

A majority of Americans is disgusted with the performance of our government and Congress owns the lowest ratings of all. Every year Congress passes less and less legislation, solves fewer and fewer problems, and works less and less for the public good, preferring to hue the line dictated by the Republican leadership in Congress. With the current political alignments and the negative do-nothing political dynamic in our government, someone has to do something to turn this around.

What to do? I would like to see the Democratic Party make their tent bigger and more inclusive, opening up new spaces for dialog with moderate Republicans and independents to offer them reasonable alternatives to the extreme and dogmatic positions of the extreme right of the Republican Party. This would certainly pose difficulties for the more progressive and liberal wing of the party, but the alternative is political paralysis and a drift toward mediocrity. This is not the United States I want to be part of.

We face many critical problems as a country and our government as presently constituted does not have the political will (or even the capacity) to address these problems. If the Republicans continue to work to frustrate the President at every turn, if the Republican Party continues to refuse to address the critical need for immigration reform, if it continues to ignore critical social and economic crises, our country will continue on its path downhill to a reduced stature among our own population and reduced relevance in world affairs.

Third parties do not work in our political system so one of our political parties needs to step up and accept the challenge to work towards a better future for our children and grandchildren. So let’s take a very serious look at the idea of opening up the Democratic Party to more of our fellow citizens with moderate (for Republicans) views and independent affiliation.

If we cannot have bipartisanship between the two parties, let’s make the Democratic Party more inclusive. We may have to give up some of our more liberal goals and priorities in the short term, but in the long term we can consolidate our political power and position in our society, enabling us to work towards making this a more inclusive and compassionate nation. That is after all what I think we as Democrats stand for. That is the United States I can fight for and defend against those who would destroy our way of life.

Government by Ideology – The Tea Party Way

The Tea Party movement, fresh from savoring their victory over Eric Cantor in Virginia and undeterred by the close loss of Tea Party candidate Chris McDaniel to Thad Cochrane in Mississippi, is flexing its muscles again through various congressional leaders to put an end to the Export Import Bank. Despite much economic evidence to the contrary, the new House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy from California wants to let the charter of the bank expire when it ends in the fall.

House Financial Services Committee Jeb Hensarling has also committed to opposing the renewal of the Ex-Im Bank’s charter, notwithstanding that it would negatively affect companies in his congressional district.

It’s not clear that this will happen, but certainly there is growing support among Tea Party supporters for seeking its demise.
Surely the Ex-Im Bank’s operations can be improved and surely there are problems that should be corrected, but at this moment in time with our economy again showing signs of economic weakness and slowing of growth, this is not the moment to suppress a financial agency that helps many American companies to increase their exports and their employment.

Though considerable amounts go to large corporations like Boeing and General Electric, as you can see in the article in yesterday’s Washington Post smaller companies are increasingly benefitting from financing from the Ex-Im Bank (see the details in The Ex-Im Bank battle is personal for these small business owners – The Washington Post)

Now we have a report from the Washington Post about the fiscal situation in the state of Kansas, where Governor Brownback and the state legislature cut taxes drastically in 2012 and now the state finds itself with a serious fiscal deficit, battling to meet it’s financial obligaciones and provide the public services it is committed to provide to its citizens.

As Josh Barrow reports yesterday in his column The Upshot in the Washington Post, Kansas expected in April and May to collect $651 million dollars in personal income taxes and instead they collected $369 million.

It turns out that the tax cut the legislature granted in 2012 as promoted by Governor Brownback created a hole much larger than anticipated in the state budget. Over the next few months the state will find out just how large the fiscal deficit created by the tax cut will be.

Even more damaging perhaps than the fiscal problems created by the tax cut in 2012, Kansas’s job creation has lagged significantly behind job growth in general as can be seen in this graph published yesterday in the Post Wonkblog article by Christopher Ingraham:

tax_cuts

Ingraham cites a reference from a nonpartisan think tank:

“Earlier this year, my colleague Niraj Chokshi reported on a Center and Budget Policy Priorities study of Kansas’ cuts. In an unusually frank assessment from the nonpartisan think tank, the study’s authors concluded that “Kansas is a cautionary tale, not a model. As other states recover from the recent recession and turn toward the future, Kansas’ huge tax cuts have left that state’s schools and other public services stuck in the recession, and declining further — a serious threat to the state’s long-term economic vitality. Meanwhile, promises of immediate economic improvement have utterly failed to materialize.”

You can read the article here: Tax cuts in Kansas have cost the state money — and job creation’s been terrible – The Washington Post.

These are two examples among many that I could cite of the increasing tendency of the Republican Party, pressured by their Tea Party base, to govern by ideological convictions without regard for legitimate and rigorous economic analysis. Decisions are being taken based on how the Republican Congressional leadership wants the world to be instead of on how it really is. As a result, as in Kansas, serious problems are being created by ill-conceived policies born of ideological convictions instead of real-world analysis.

This is what our near future augurs for us and if the Republicans gain control of the US Senate in November, we can expect more of this, in addition to the problems being created in red states like Kansas where state houses and legislatures are trying to promote the ill-conceived, short-sighted and erroneous policies promoted by the Republican Tea Party base.

We must work hard in this election year to assure that there is a proper political balance in Congress and that the Republicans do not gain control of the US Senate.

Tea Party & CPAC – Why do they vote against their own interests?

Understanding why sincere and committed conservatives repeatedly vote against their own self-interests continues to elude me. It's hardly a new question and writers far more knowledgable and talented that I have dealt with it. Thomas Frank wrote at length about it in “What's the Matter with Kansas? (How Conservatives Won the Heart of America)” I recommend it to anyone interested in this theme.

During this week of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) we read many declarations by politicians of different stripes within the conservative political movement. From libertarians like Rand Paul to political opportunists like Ted Cruz we heard the anti-government, anti-tax messages from all angles. This represents what has become the so-called “base” of the Republican Party.

We have all followed the actions of these men and women in the Congress. We saw them close down the government last fall. We saw them agitating to let our government default on its debt not too long ago. We see them now gearing up for the Republican primary season that started last week in Texas, where there was a failed attempt to unseat John Cornyn, the very conservative number two Republican in the Senate in Washington. We saw the fight among too many candidates for Governor and Lieutenant Governor, each one driving as far to the right of the political spectrum as he could. Over the next few months many more will follow.

I don't want to focus on the candidates striving so desperately and earnestly for political office, convinced that they can best represent the interests of the conversative movement. I want to look at the people who come to the polls and vote for their favorite ultra-conservative candidate.

Why do they support the politicians who are ruining our economy, who are wrecking the middle class and destroying the dreams of those born poor and disadvantaged in one way or another? Why have they fallen into the clutches of the conservative movement that is working so very hard to increase the plenty enjoyed by the super-rich while they and their families are being undermined by the blatant inequality so rife in our economy? Why do these consciencious and hard-working people support economic and fiscal policies that will bring low their children or their grandchildren who fail to be born into the privileged classes?

As I listened to some of the reports on NPR this week about CPAC, I was struck by one theme in particular. Virtually all of these conservatives rail at high federal and state taxes and demand that their representatives continue to lower taxes to the point of bankrupting our government while putting these putative taxes go into the pockets of the super-rich? How can we be right with the fact that the 40 richest hedge fund managers make more money than 300,000 teachers in our country?

This economic crisis starting in 2007 from which the lower and middle classes have yet to emerge and which has produced millions of long-term unemployed who look for jobs that still are not there (there are three candidates among this group for every job available) was produced by the tax reduction strategies of the conservative administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. How the conservative movement convinced this conservative voter base that the problem is too many taxes instead of too little economic growth and prosperity continues to evade my understanding.

If you are as interested as I am in this, take a look at this video by Robert Reich, economist and former Secretary of Labor during the Clinton administration. The link is here: http://www.upworthy.com/an-economist-with-2-minutes-and-a-marker-explains-the-greedy-selfish-things-some-rich-people-do?c=ufb1. If that brief explanation of two minutes piques your interest, watch his movie on Netflix, entitled “Inequality for All“. In the coming weeks I will return to this conundrum.

It’s about time the Republican Party stands against Tea Party anarchy

I questioned in several posts last month the ill-advised reticence of Republicans and the reluctance of the Republican Party “establishment” to speak against and stand up to the anarchist tactics of the Tea Party in Congress, particularly in the House. It's clear from the leadership of the Tea Party movement that their objective is to seize control of the party aparatus and drive any remaining closet moderates from their ranks. Until now I had not seen any change in this situation.

I am pleased to note, as many pundits have now reported and analyzed, that in several elections this month the Chamber of Commerce and other organizations forming the Republican Party “establishment” have finally taken concrete steps backed by concrete funding to support moderate Republican candidates against extreme Tea-Party.

The most publicized election was in Alabama's 1st District where Bradley Byrne received more than $200,000 in support from the national Chamber of Commerce and defeated Dean Young who ran under the Tea Party banner and likened himself in his campaign to Texas Senator Ted Cruz.

Though I do not sympathize even with the platform of the moderate Republican establishment, much less its radical Tea Party wing, we need a more moderate Republican Party willing to work with the Democrats to address our many serious problems and work across the aisle to govern our country.

It's clear from the reaction of numerous business groups and interests that the willingness of the Tea Party anarchists to drive the government to default is unacceptable to them and dangerous to their interests. It remains to be seen if they can stem the tide of the Tea Party in the next 3 years before the 2016 Presidential election. If they fail in this effort, it's hard to foresee any possibility of a Republican President taking the oath of office in 2017.

I hope to see these developments gain force as we get closer to the 2014 elections. Whether the Republican Party knows it or not (I think they do), it is in a fight for its life as a governing party. If they allow the Tea Party radicals to continue to gain ascendance in the party, they face the very real risk in the not too distant future of discovering that the radicals have taken over their party. I would hate to see that happen. It would do great damage to our democratic system and moreso to our government.

Tea Party – No Regrets, Full Speed Ahead

On the heels of their total defeat in Congress this week, the attitude of defiance from the Tea Party and its sympathizers is a remarkable display of their rejection of all the accepted norms for political discourse. They demonstrate no interest in bringing more Republicans over to their cause. In fact their initial response was to target for elimination in the Republican primary elections in 2014 those who voted against their cause in the final vote to fund the government and eliminate the threat of default

They continue to demonstrate that they are dangerous to the cause of democracy and even more dangerous to the future of the Republican Party. They insisted on closing down our government for more than two weeks, at a cost of more than $30 billion to our economy and more pressure on employment prospects for our unemployed. Talk about job killers. These Tea Party anarchists are determined to derail the Affordable Care Act (ACA) whatever the cost to our economy and to their fellow Americans who a have been struggling to find work.

The Tea Party plan to defund the ACA was ill-conceived and guaranteed to fail. Members of their own party in both the House and the Senate told them so. They are rank amateurs at governing and more amazingly, they demonstrate no interest whatever in governing. Knowing that our economic recovery from the recession of 2007 – 2008 has been tediously slow, they plowed ahead and forced the government to shut down. Then they guaranteed the pay of government workers at no small cost to our government while putting them all on a forced vacation.   One would have thought that given their dedication to ideological purity that for congruity they would have cut the wages of the Congress during the government shutdown, but no sign of that.

I have said previously that the leadership of the Republican Party would do well to consider if they can afford to allow the Tea Party to continue to represent themselves as Republicans.  This past weekend Matt Kibbe, the CEO of FreedomWorks, one of the major lobbying organizations in Washington for the Tea Party, declared that their intention is to take control of the Republican Party and drive out all the moderate Republicans who do not (blindly) support their positions.  Their idea is to consign the current membership of the Repubican Party to a fringe party which presumably would quickly disappear from the political scene.

The Tea Party has demonstrated a radical intolerance for diversity of opinion and point of view. Their creed is my way or the highway for anyone who does not blindly support their extreme positions and their anarchistic strategies.   I fear for the future of the Republican Party if they do not act to control this destructive element within their membership. The Tea Party does not serve the cause of political conservatism. Their cause is bound up with a rejection of democracy, of majority rule, and of diversity. They demand purity and blind obedience to their cause and all who do not comply are subject to the threats of elimination in their next primaries. They are already targeted for defeat a number of Republicans up for reelection in 2014.

The only way to defeat them is to marginalize and ostrasize them. All reasonable Americans who believe in our democratic system, no matter whether conservative or liberal, should reject these extremist, anarchistic strategies.  Unfortunately the media, in particular television, is determined to give these anarchists and political bullies a pulpit from which to expound their extremist points of view.

Dana Bash of CNN has shown herself enthusiastically disposed to promote the cause of the Tea Party by giving Senator Ted Cruz repeatedly a pulpit from which to spout his vituperative opinions about the ACA and President Obama.  Senator Cruz for reasons he refuses to reveal holds not only a deep contempt for all who oppose the Tea Party cause but a deep hatred for President Obama.  Yet the media and the likes of Bash continue to shower him with opportunities to spout his ideology and make startlingly false assertions without questioning the veracity of any of them.  Where is the journalistic professionalism of reporters like Bash, who appear to be more interested in sharing the limelight with the likes of Senator Cruz than in demonstrating her integrity as a journalist dedicated to the pursuit of truth?

We all must stand strong against the tyranny of this small minority of our country and our political system. They make themselves heard easily not only through craven opportunists like Dana Bash but also through the funding by organizations backed by the Koch brothers and their like. We must pressure our Senators and Representatives to reject this totalitaraianism of anarchy that the Tea Party represents and stand up for democracy, diversity, and responsibility.

We need to unite against the tyranny of the Tea Party

We live in difficult times, times of spiritual crisis and times of polarization of opinion and belief. Our political system is betraying us by promoting intolerance, largely on the Republican side of the aisle but not exclusively.  People fear for their future and therefore for the future of our country and our way of life.

This new brand of politics of the Tea Party should be rejected by all conscientious Americans as a fraud which pretends to align itself with our values but in fact is the polar opposite our our values.  The extreme right wing of the Republican Party, represented though not exclusively by the Tea Party, is betraying our country’s values as they promote division, rejection of reason and of science, and a refusal to participate in our traditional political process which has always included the principles of consensus, compromise, and majority rule.

These zealous anarchists exploit the fears of so many people yet they offer no solutions or even any concrete proposals.   They are against Obama and anything he represents and works toward.  They are now engaged in a crusade to accomplish by extra-constitutional means what they could not accomplish through their votes in Congress, through the deliberations of the Supreme Court, and through the ballot box in 2012.  They have not been able to win their game of marbles, so they want to take up their marbles and go home, like elementary school children.  In the meantime they are causing untold harm and suffering through this government shutdown and through the threat of a government default on its financial obligations.

They are amateurs who did not understand the process of government and expected the President and Congress to give in to their blackmail and extortion and now that they understand that they seriously miscalculated, they don’t know what to do next.  So we have Congressmen complaining that they are being “disrespected” and that they must get something for this but they don’t know what it might be.

That fuzzy thinking and absence of reasoning is typical of true believers and anarchists who do not believe in democracy and who believe that they know better than the people what the people really want.   They have waged a campaign of lies, distortions and mis-information about the Affordable Care Act (ACA), popularly known as Obamacare, in order to defeat Obama in the public eye.   The fact that in doing so they seek to deprive millions of their fellow citizens of the right to have affordable medical care means nothing to them.

Now that the ACA law is going into effect and they know that their lies and distortions will be unmasked for what they really are, they are desperate, willing to go to any lengths to turn back the tide and nullify the ACA when Congress, the Supreme Court, and the electorate have refused to do so.

It’s time for all Americans, patriots and lovers of our country, to unite against this tyranny of the small minority of Tea Party anarchists who are trying to hijack our political process and plunge our country into a worse economic crisis than the one we suffered in 2007 – 2008.   Regardless of our political persuasion or party affiliation, we cannot let this act of apostasy and extortion of the Tea Party anarchists stand.   Democrats should stand firm against this tyranny and Republicans should appeal to their party and Congressional leadership to reject the politics of intolerance of the Tea Party Anarchists and move in the House to resolve the budget and debt ceiling crises before more serious harm is done.