Radical Republicans Update

UPDATED BELOW:

Just before the Christmas weekend I threw up a post decrying our political press’s unwillingness to acknowledge that the Crazy Wing of the Republican Party still is committed to destroying the great political and economic consensus under which both parties operated from the end of WWII until about the age of Reagan – the consensus that allowed us to build an affluent middle class society in the first place.  This wing traces its lineage directly back to the John Birch Society and the Barry Goldwater campaign of 1964.

So I was extremely gratified to read E.J. Dionne’s column raising the same essential point:  “For the first time since Barry Goldwater made the effort in 1964, the Republican Party is taking a run at overturning the consensus that has governed U.S. political life since the Progressive era.”  Dionne argues that the Republican presidential candidates’ uniform embrace of the view that government is an oppressive force, with no legitimate role to play in Americans’ lives, makes them the truly radical candidates and Barack Obama the real “conservative” in 2012 in the truest sense of that word.

While it’s heartening to see someone with a national platform trying to draw attention to a situation that should be self-evident, it also must be pointed out that “Conservativism” – as that word has come to be used in modern American politics – always have been deeply radicalized.  Indeed, this is one of the themes underlying Corey Robin’s recent book The Reactionary Mind:  Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin, in which Robin argues: 

Far from being “traditionalists,” or advocates for continuity and only small, incremental changes to existing social structures, Conservatives are – in fact – fairly radical thinkers who can define themselves only in relation to some past or imminent attempt (real or imagined) by others to wrest power, wealth or privilege away from them. . . .

[snip]

Thus, Robin argues, Conservatism – properly understood – is never about maintaining things the way they now are; it is always about reintroducing the “proper” balance to society, which previously had been upset by some illegitimate reformation.

This is why I find the rise of the radical right within the Republican Party so potentially terrifying.  These people aren’t concerned with “preserving” American society but about fundamentally re-writing the way the federal government’s role in that society.  Specifically, they want to eliminate the government’s ability to rein in abuse by rich and powerful private actors, and they want to eliminate even the minimal safety net the government provides for the least fortunate among us. 

These aren’t small goals, and I truly believe that the people voting for this agenda don’t fully realize what it is they are empowering:  a dystopia in which anyone already rich and powerful can essentially do whatever they please, and everybody else will just have to get use to being abused.

UPDATE:  Turns out the Frank Rich is also thinking along these lines, as he explains in his latest article in NY Magazine, "The Molotov Party."

Shameless GOP Primary Speculation – Part II

I just saw this story regarding Virginia’s primary on Super Tuesday, March 6^th.  It turns out that neither Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, nor Jon Huntsman submitted the necessary paper work in time to qualify for Virginia’s primary – they will not appear on the Virginia ballot.

I find this interesting because it seems to me that failing to file the requisite paperwork to appear on any of the Super Tuesday states is tantamount to admitting that your campaign for the presidency is not something you take particularly seriously.  Whether it’s the sheer inability to collect the necessary signatures or the simple unwillingness to expend the resources necessary to do so, failing to appear on a Super Tuesday state’s ballot pretty much announces to the world you do not think you have a serious shot at snagging your party’s nomination.

Assuming that’s the case, I am beginning to wonder what thought these three non-candidates have given to whom they will endorse for the Republican nomination once they officially bow out of the running.  So . . . I’m gonna indulge myself by making some more entirely unsubstantiated, wildly speculative, political horserace predictions.

The Media Should Recognize America’s Polarization

As a guy who pays a lot of attention to political news, one of the things that bugs the hell out of me is our political media’s insistence on bipartisan solutions for the sheer sake of bipartisanship.  Yesterday’s post about Jay Carney’s effort to deal with a media Villager who somehow believed it was President Obama’s responsibility to rescue John Boehner from Boehner’s own inability to control his party’s Crazies provides a good example of just how skewed this reflexive way of thinking on the part of the Villagers can get.

The political media’s (literally) unthinking demand that the two political parties “cooperate to reach bipartisan solutions” in every instance is at the root of all the more egregious examples of journalistic malpractice.  As the recent kerfuffle over extending the payroll tax cut should have made clear to even the most casual observer, that problem did not result from “both parties” acting intransigently. 

To the contrary, the bill the House was being asked to accept was in fact exactly the kind of “bipartisan solution” that the political press is always demanding our political leaders come up with.  The only reason it was not automatically passed by the House is because one party, the Republican Party, has essentially been captured by its own Crazies.

But the Village media simply cannot bring themselves to admit that only one political party – or even just the Crazy wing of one political party – could possibly be at fault.  And so before the GOP finally backed down in the face of an overwhelming opposition, the media narrative was already shifting to assign blame to both parties equally.  As Charlie Pierce wrote:

The narrative is already shifting from “Republican Vandals Blow Up Democracy!” to “Feckless Congress Can’t Tie Its Shoes!”  The inevitable desire of the corporate press not to get yelled at by the crazy people . . . will result in this whole mishigas being interpreted as a bipartisan failure.  Which it obviously is not.  The tell is the number of stories we’re reading now about the “impasse” in Washington.  This is not an “impasse,” this is a deliberate act of political sabotage on the part of one of our two political parties.  It is a hostage-taking.  Call it an “impasse” and you’ve abandoned truth for neutrality.

This is your political journalism at work, ladies and gentlemen.  These yahoos will take no sides, they will cast no blame, even when one side is clearly in the wrong – because calling out clear wrongdoing would somehow automatically mean they were no longer “impartial.”  They have sworn allegiance to maintaining perceived parity between political contestants, and no longer believe their job has anything whatsoever to do with that quaint notion “Truth.”

This kind of reflexive journalistic malpractice is not just deplorable, it does actual harm to our ability to govern ourselves wisely.

Oh, Fergawdsake!

Via Steve Benen, I was pointed to this exchange between White House Press Secretary Jay Carney and an unidentified reporter yesterday:

QUESTION:   Yesterday, the President said he needed the Speaker to do something [on extending the payroll tax cut].  The Speaker said, “I need the President to do something.”  My assumption would be the Speaker expected something more than a phone call.  He was looking for something from the President as far as negotiations; you say there’s nothing to negotiate.  The Speaker is in a corner, he’s boxed in a corner.  Is the President going to do nothing to help the Speaker get out of that corner?

CARNEY:      The President is doing everything he can to help the American people.  The Speaker is very capable of helping himself by calling a vote on the Senate compromise, a compromise that received the support of 80 percent of the Republican senators and even a greater percentage of Democratic senators.  There is a bipartisan compromise available to him as a lifesaver, if you will.

QUESTION:   But politically he’s in a box.  Is there anything the President can do?

CARNEY:      Well, I mean, honestly, the important thing here is not who’s up and who’s down politically because, as I talked about yesterday, we are beginning to see some positive signs in the economy.  We are a long way from full economic recovery, but the last thing we need to do is fail to pass a payroll tax cut extension which would have a negative impact on the kind of economic growth that we have been seeing and need to continue to see.  It’s just wrong at every level to prevent this from passing.

Good Lord . . . where to begin with this inanity?

First, the extension of the payroll tax cut was worked out between the White House and the leadership of both chambers of Congress.  That includes Speaker Boehner, who thought it was a good idea to pass the compromise reached last week.  The only reason the Speaker is “boxed in” politically is because he is so weak he can’t control the Republican Wingnut Crazies in the House of which he ostensibly is in charge.

Second, the payroll tax cut extension could still be passed if the GOP leadership would simply call the matter to a vote.  Just yesterday Steny Hoyer attempted to debate the tax cut extension already worked out between Boehner, McConnell, Reid and the White House, and in response the GOP leadership walked out of the chamber and ordered the C-Span cameras turned off so that America would not see them abdicating their legislative responsibilities.  Why?  Because the Crazies know that if the thing comes up for a vote, the Democrats and the GOP Orderlies have enough votes to pass it.

Third, the only reason Boehner is now “boxed in” is because he can’t control his party’s Crazies, but the GOP is absolutely getting clobbered in the world of public opinion for failing to extend a middle class tax cut after fighting tooth and nail to prevent the imposition of a surtax on any annual income over $1 million made by the wealthiest among us.

So – for those of you counting along at home – the American people want the payroll tax cut extended, the Villagers want this, the White House wants this, the Senate wants this, the Republican leadership wants this, and a majority of the House of Representatives wants this.  The only people who don’t want this are the House GOP Crazies, and Boehner is too much of a spineless wimp to stand up to them.  That’s why Boehner is now “boxed in.”

And some goober in the White House press pool thinks this means President Obama should compromise some more?  That Obama should compromise with the most extreme, fringe members of a party that has made it abundantly clear that they hate his guts, despise him personally, and will do everything in their power to defeat, deflect and thwart him from enacting his legislative agenda?  And that Obama should do so simply to help out the GOP’s gutless, worthless, spineless “leader”?

I’m sorry, but am I the only person who remembers that only three months ago, when President Obama was presenting a major jobs bill intended to put unemployed Americans back to work the reaction from a senior GOP House aide was:  “Obama is on the ropes; why do we appear ready to hand him a win?”  Get that?  If the question is trying to do something that will help the economy and the American people – but also thereby help Obama – the House GOP’s answer is not a chance in hell.

But if the question is how can weakling John Boehner possibly be rescued from the grip of the mighty House Republican Crazies who apparently keep his balls in a jar on their mantle and slap him around whenever they want, the ones who like to huddle in a conference room in the Capitol basement for more than two hours talking “about their favorite scenes from Braveheart” in order to psych themselves up for voting down the tax cut extension in the first place, then what the press wants to know is why won’t Obama make even more concessions to the Crazies in order to save the clueless, ball-less John Boehner?

I swear to God, I weep for a country where the political press could even ask a question like that of this White House.