House Republicans Back Down

December 22, 2011 — Ron Chusid

Yesterday we say Republicans ranging from the editorial writers of The Wall Street Journal to Karl Rove condemn the refusal by John Boehner to hold a vote on the temporary payroll tax extension which was passed by the Senate with strong bipartisan support. The Tea Party faction of the House had pulled the House Republican Caucus to such an extreme position that few other Republicans would go along. The final straw came today when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called on the House to pass the temporary extension. Boehner backed down and passage now looks imminent.

Now we can look forward to February when the battle is fought all over again, but at least there will not be a tax increase in January and Medicare will be able to fully pay claims.

Posted in Congress, Economy, Health Care, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell. Tags: , , . 1 Comment »

Republicans Admit Their Top Priority: The Pursuit of Power

October 25, 2010 — Ron Chusid

When Barack Obama first took office many conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh spoke about their hope that Barack Obama did not succeed. They have done everything possible to stifle progress and economic recovery in the hopes of achieving this goal. If they retake  control of the Senate will they now make fixing the economy their top priority? No. Mitch McConnell admits that their top priority remains the pursuit of power–in this case improving their party’s prospects of winning the White House in 2012:

MCCONNELL: We need to be honest with the public. This election is about them, not us. And we need to treat this election as the first step in retaking the government. We need to say to everyone on Election Day, “Those of you who helped make this a good day, you need to go out and help us finish the job.”

NATIONAL JOURNAL: What’s the job?

MCCONNELL: The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.

At least nobody can accuse the Republicans of flip-flopping on this.

Posted in Barack Obama, Congress, Mitch McConnell, Republicans. Tags: , , , . 1 Comment »

The Right Wing Noise Machine’s Awesome Ability To Create Its Own Reality

April 21, 2010 — Ron Chusid

On issues such as health care and the stimulus the Democrats were right on the issues but the Republicans are winning the spin war. Paul Krugman compared the Democrats to Lucy and the Football, fearing they are not anticipating the Republican response to financial reform:

I have a theory about the problem here. My understanding is that Obama officials have looked at the polls, which show that the public overwhelmingly favors cracking down on Wall Street; so they assumed that the GOP wouldn’t dare stand in the way. But they seem not to have learned, even now, that the right has an awesome ability to create its own reality: that Mitch McConnell et al would stand in the way of reform while claiming to be taking a stand against Wall Street.

Nor can you count on the truth to sink in with the public. The conventions of he-said-she-said reporting, among other things, make it surprisingly easy to get away with even the most obvious hypocrisy.

And let’s be clear: there’s a sort of tribal thing going on (and I don’t necessarily mean race, although that’s part of it). The hard right has managed to convince a large number of Americans that it consists of people like them, whereas progressives are alien and untrustworthy; in the face of that, rational arguments don’t make much of a dent.

To break through that, you need hard-hitting campaigns and simple slogans. And I have a sinking feeling that once again, the Obama team is going straight for the capillaries. Let’s hope they prove me wrong.

I think the problem is not that the Obama administration fails to recognize that Republicans have an “awesome ability to create its own reality,” but that they have not been able to overcome this. I provided an example in the previous post which demonstrates that the Obama administration is aware of the problem. White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee showed such awareness in his characterization of the Republican response to financial reform:

Everybody knows a consultant just handed them that line and they’re just reading it. It doesn’t matter what’s in the bill. It could be a bill about breakfast cereal and they’re going to say this is a bailout bill.

Posted in Barack Obama, Economy, Mitch McConnell, Op-eds. Tags: , , , , , , . 3 Comments »

Right Wing Rage

March 28, 2010 — Ron Chusid

Frank Rich has the quote of the day for his comment on the irony of those in the tea party movement who compare Obama to Hitler:

How curious that a mob fond of likening President Obama to Hitler knows so little about history that it doesn’t recognize its own small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht. The weapon of choice for vigilante violence at Congressional offices has been a brick hurled through a window. So far.

Rich notes that this rage came in response to a fairly moderate health care bill, although the tea baggers are inflamed more by the Republican rhetoric than anything actually in the bill. Rich notes that, while there was spirited opposition to earlier programs such as Medicare, it was never seen to the degree we are seeing it now:

That a tsunami of anger is gathering today is illogical, given that what the right calls “Obamacare” is less provocative than either the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Medicare, an epic entitlement that actually did precipitate a government takeover of a sizable chunk of American health care. But the explanation is plain: the health care bill is not the main source of this anger and never has been. It’s merely a handy excuse. The real source of the over-the-top rage of 2010 is the same kind of national existential reordering that roiled America in 1964…

If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back from.

Rich also compared the response to the health care legislation to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Although that legislation had a far greater effect on society than the health care legislation, conservatives acted more responsibly after it was passed:

After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, some responsible leaders in both parties spoke out to try to put a lid on the resistance and violence. The arch-segregationist Russell of Georgia, concerned about what might happen in his own backyard, declared flatly that the law is “now on the books.” Yet no Republican or conservative leader of stature has taken on Palin, Perry, Boehner or any of the others who have been stoking these fires for a good 17 months now. Last week McCain even endorsed Palin’s “reload” rhetoric.

Are these politicians so frightened of offending anyone in the Tea Party-Glenn Beck base that they would rather fall silent than call out its extremist elements and their enablers? Seemingly so, and if G.O.P. leaders of all stripes, from Romney to Mitch McConnell to Olympia Snowe to Lindsey Graham, are afraid of these forces, that’s the strongest possible indicator that the rest of us have reason to fear them too.

Rich is right that the rage extends far beyond health care. Some in the tea party movement are essentially Klansmen without the sheets, but the rage also extends beyond race. There is a long history of extremism based upon ignorance dominating the right wing in this country. One factor which makes this worse today, explaining the differences described by Rich, is the influence of the right wing noise machine.

The constant noise coming from Fox, talk radio, The Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, and conservative blogs creates an alternative reality which these people actually believe is real. Their influence has even pulled the mainstream media sharply to the right, despite claims of a “liberal media” from the far right. As a result we have angry, uninformed people taking to the streets to support those who are undermining our freedom and the free market system while being deluded into thinking this is what they are defending.

Posted in Barack Obama, Health Care, Mitch McConnell, Op-eds, Republicans. Tags: , , , , , , , , . 3 Comments »

Why Legitimate Journalists Pretend Fox Is A News Outlet

March 12, 2010 — Ron Chusid

Harold Raines, a former editor of The New York Times asks a good question over at The Washington Post: Why don’t honest journalists take on Roger Ailes and Fox News?

One question has tugged at my professional conscience throughout the year-long congressional debate over health-care reform, and it has nothing to do with the public option, portability or medical malpractice. It is this: Why haven’t America’s old-school news organizations blown the whistle on Roger Ailes, chief of Fox News, for using the network to conduct a propaganda campaign against the Obama administration — a campaign without precedent in our modern political history?

Through clever use of the Fox News Channel and its cadre of raucous commentators, Ailes has overturned standards of fairness and objectivity that have guided American print and broadcast journalists since World War II. Yet, many members of my profession seem to stand by in silence as Ailes tears up the rulebook that served this country well as we covered the major stories of the past three generations, from the civil rights revolution to Watergate to the Wall Street scandals. This is not a liberal-versus-conservative issue. It is a matter of Fox turning reality on its head with, among other tactics, its endless repetition of its uber-lie: “The American people do not want health-care reform.”

Fox repeats this as gospel. But as a matter of historical context, usually in short supply on Fox News, this assertion ranks somewhere between debatable and untrue.

The American people and many of our great modern presidents have been demanding major reforms to the health-care system since the administration of Teddy Roosevelt. The elections of 1948, 1960, 1964, 2000 and 2008 confirm the point, with majorities voting for candidates supporting such change. Yet congressional Republicans have managed effective campaigns against health-care changes favored variously by Presidents Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Clinton. Now Fox News has given the party of Lincoln a free ride with its repetition of the unexamined claim that today’s Republican leadership really does want to overhaul health care — if only the effort could conform to Mitch McConnell’s ideas on portability and tort reform.

It is true that, after 14 months of Fox’s relentless pounding of President Obama’s idea of sweeping reform, the latest Gallup poll shows opinion running 48 to 45 percent against the current legislation. Fox invariably stresses such recent dips in support for the legislation, disregarding the majorities in favor of various individual aspects of the reform effort. Along the way, the network has sold a falsified image of the professional standards that developed in American newsrooms and university journalism departments in the last half of the 20th century.

Raines proceeded to further discuss how Fox abuses journalistic standards:

For the first time since the yellow journalism of a century ago, the United States has a major news organization devoted to the promotion of one political party. And let no one be misled by occasional spurts of criticism of the GOP on Fox. In a bygone era of fact-based commentary typified, left to right, by my late colleagues Scotty Reston and Bill Safire, these deceptions would have been given their proper label: disinformation.

Under the pretense of correcting a Democratic bias in news reporting, Fox has accomplished something that seemed impossible before Ailes imported to the news studio the tricks he learned in Richard Nixon’s campaign think tank: He and his video ferrets have intimidated center-right and center-left journalists into suppressing conclusions — whether on health-care reform or other issues — they once would have stated as demonstrably proven by their reporting.

There are at least three answers I can think of (none of which are all that good) as to why Fox and the arguments they spread to the rest of the media are not challenged enough:

  1. Far too many journalists are lazy. They don’t see any point in taking on Fox or those who repeat the GOP/Fox line. It is easier to put on a conservative who repeats their usual lies, a liberal who might be telling the truth, and not to bother trying to determine the actual facts.
  2. Accusations of liberal bias. Conservatives whine about a mythical “liberal media” and the lazy journalists decide it isn’t worth fighting. Often this leads to putting on the lying conservative without even bothering to put on the reality-based counter arguments.
  3. Journalists often stick together. Sometimes this might even be due to a misguided belief this is necessary to defend freedom of the press. In reality it is the abuse of journalistic standards by Fox which is harmful to the free press. Fox is essentially a propaganda arm of the Republican Party and it should be treated just as an official GOP press office would be treated, and not as a legitimate news organization.
Posted in Health Care, Mitch McConnell, News Media, Op-eds, Richard Nixon. Tags: , , , , , , , , . 9 Comments »

GOP Fundraising Documents Cost Them A Donor

March 6, 2010 — Ron Chusid

The recent accidental release of a presentation for donors prepared by the Republican National Committee continues to create embarrassment. The presentation shows how the GOP, lacking any real policies, tries to fool donors with appeals based upon fear. Ben Smith reports on one former donor who has decided not to contribute to the party:

A prominent Evangelical figure and Republican donor says he will end his contributions to the organized Republican Party in reaction to the leaked fundraising presentation that advised using “fear” to solicit contributions and displayed an image of President Obama as the Joker from Batman.

Mark DeMoss, who heads a major Christian public relations firm in Atlanta and served as a liaison to the Evangelical community for Mitt Romney in 2008, wrote Chairman Michael Steele yesterday that he was “ashamed” of the presentation, calling depictions of Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Majority Leader Harry Reid “shameful, immature and uncivil, at best.”

“I’m afraid the presentation is representative of a culture and mindset within the Republican National Committee,” DeMoss, a past member of the RNC’s “Eagle” program for top donors who gave the party $15,000 in 2008, wrote in the letter to Steele, which he shared with POLITICO. “Consequently, I will no longer contribute to any fundraising entity of our Party—but will contribute only to individual candidates I choose to support.”

Personally I think people should have become wise to the minset of the Republican National Committee when they sent out fund raising letters in 2004 trying to scare people by saying John Kerry would take away their bibles. Better late than never. The full text of the letter is under the fold:

(more…)

Posted in Barack Obama, Harry Reid, John Kerry, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, Republicans, Scandals. Tags: , , , , , , . 3 Comments »

Stabenow Blasts GOP Leadership For Allowing Bunning To Block Vote on Benefits

February 27, 2010 — Ron Chusid

Michigan Senator Debbie Debbie Stabenow has criticized Republican leaders following Jim Bunning’s acts late last week to block necessary spending measures. These included extensions of federal spending for unemployment benefits, COBRA subsidies, and stopping a reduction in Medicare payments which  would lead to many seniors being unable to obtain medical coverage. The Hill reports:

The senator said that by remaining silent on Sen. Jim Bunning’s (R-Ky.) objection to a unanimous consent motion on the bill, GOP leaders implicitly offered their support for the move.

“Where is the Republican leadership on Monday? Where will the Republican leadership be next week,” Stabenow said on a conference call with reporters organized by the Democratic leadership. “Are they going to stand up and stop this…or are they going to continue by their silence to support Sen. Bunning?”

The report provides mixed signals as to whether other Republicans were prepared to join Bunning in a filibuster or if Bunning is solely to blame for stopping the measure. It also states that Don Stewart, communications director for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, stated that “senators entered into a unanimous consent agreement for the full tax extenders bill for next week, which will include the stalled unemployment and COBRA extensions.”

The Medicare cuts which would also be postponed are a result of a flawed formula which calls for cuts based upon overall health care costs. For the last several years Congress has voted to over rule the automatic cuts. Last year House and Senate Democrats attempted to achieve a permanent fix but Republicans blocked this measure. Instead a temporary freeze on the cuts  lasting through February was enacted.

It is anticipated that if the Medicare cuts are enacted a large percentage of physicians will stop accepting new Medicare patients and reduce the number they see. In order to prevent such action this week, CMS has ordered a ten day freeze on Medicare payments under the expectation that Congress will act on this problem next week.

Posted in Congress, Democrats, Health Care, Michigan News, Mitch McConnell, Republicans. Tags: , , , , , , . 4 Comments »

Stevens Unlikely To Reman in Senate Even if Wins Reelection

November 2, 2008 — Ron Chusid

The composition of the next Senate depends partially upon what happens in Alaska. Roll Call reports that even should Ted Stevens be reelected he will not be allowed to keep his seat as a convicted felon:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was forced into the middle of Sen. Ted Stevens’ (R-Alaska) re-election bid late Saturday night after a senior Senate Democrat endorsed Stevens and called on voters to disregard his seven-count felony conviction.

In a bluntly worded release from his office, Reid warned that Stevens would not only face an ethics investigation but also expulsion proceedings regardless of his efforts to appeal the convictions.

Reid’s decision to jump into the Alaska Senate race with both feet marks the first time a leading national Democrat has explicitly warned that Stevens’ ouster from the Senate would be sought. GOP leaders including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) have already called for him to step down or face expulsion.

Whether Stevens wins still matters. If he loses, then obviously the Democrats pick up a seat. If he wins there is still a shot for another Republican to wind up with the seat.

Current law calls for a special election to replace Stevens if he were to be reelected and later resign or be expelled. This would give another Republican a shot at the seat. There is also some question as to whether Alaska’s current law is Constitutional, leaving open the possibility that the seat will be decided by Sarah Palin (or the current Lieutenant Governor should the nightmare scenario occur and Palin leave Alaska to become vice president.)

Posted in Congress, Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, Republicans, Sarah Palin, Scandals. Tags: , , , . No Comments »

Favorite Politicians of the Right Wing

July 11, 2008 — Ron Chusid

Right Wing News has polled a selection of right of center bloggers on their favorite politicians. George Bush, despite all his failures, along with his destruction of any remnants of the right as being supportive of civil liberties and small government, managed to make the top ten. John McCain barely makes the list, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he also makes their least favorite list, which is to be posted tomorrow.

20) John Thune (6)
16) Mark Sanford (7)
16) Mitch McConnell (7)
16) John Cornyn (7)
16) John McCain (7)
12) John Shadegg (8)
12) Jon Kyl (8)
12) Haley Barbour (8)
12) Tom Tancredo (8)
11) Dick Cheney (9)
9 ) Jeff Sessions (11)
9 ) Jeff Flake (11)
8 ) Mike Pence (12)
7 ) George W. Bush (13)
6 ) James Inhofe (14)
5 ) Sarah Palin (15)
4 ) Duncan Hunter (16)
3 ) Jim DeMint (18)
2 ) Tom Coburn (24)
1 ) Bobby Jindal (25)

Posted in Blogs & Social Media, George Bush, John McCain, Mitch McConnell, Republicans. Tags: , , , , , . 1 Comment »

Obama and “The Theory of Change”

December 21, 2007 — Ron Chusid

Mark Schmitt has an excellent article at The American Prospect on change and the idea spread by people like Paul Krugman that Obama is too naive to bring about change. Schmitt, in contrast to Krugman, realizes that “there is no large-scale populist uprising on the horizon” and has taken a closer look at the virtues of Obama’s approach:

So how might the Obama theory of change work? I’ll give two answers, one entirely mundane and one a little cosmic. The mundane answer is just congressional math. The most important fact about the next administration is nothing about the president’s character or policies, but simply how many Democratic Senators there are. To get health care passed in 2009, we’ll need 60 votes in the Senate. There won’t be 60 Democrats. So a Democratic president will need to, first, get within range by bringing in Democratic senators from Arizona, Colorado, Virginia, and several other red-trending-purple states. And then, subtract the total number of Democrats from 60, and that’s the number of Republicans you’ll need. If that number is two or three, almost anything is possible. If it’s five, it will be much harder. If it’s eight, impossible.

This is the math of bipartisanship. It’s not a matter of sitting down with thugs like John Boehner and splitting the difference, but winning over just a few Senate Republicans from outside the South. And if the number is small enough, that’s entirely possible. This is not 1993, when the Republicans could see that a majority was just around the corner, and the conservative takeover had given it a coherence and enthusiasm. It will be a party in some internal crisis after losing both houses of Congress and the presidency in short order, and the sense of a “party establishment” will be weaker. There will be an effort to hold the party together in united opposition, but the ties holding a Senator Snowe, Voinovich, Grassley, Lugar or Specter to a strict party line — as they contemplate retirement, legacy, and their own now-Democratic states — will be much weaker than in either the Clinton or Bush eras.

Obama’s approach is better positioned to take advantage of this math. First, I think (though if I tried to prove it, I’d be relying on useless horse-race polls) that Democratic Senate candidates in red/purple states will do better with Obama’s national-unity pitch at the top than with Senator Clinton. I worry about the Senate seats in Colorado (where she polls poorly) and Arizona with Clinton at the top of the ticket, and I think the opportunity to take out Mitch McConnell in Kentucky would be lost. And after the inauguration, I think that opposition to Hillary Clinton will remain a galvanizing theme for Republicans, whereas a new face and will make it harder to recreate the familiar unity-in-opposition.

Now for the cosmic explanation: What I find most interesting about Obama’s approach to bipartisanship is how seriously he takes conservatism. As Michael Tomasky describes it in his review of The Audacity of Hope, “The chapters boil down to a pattern: here’s what the right believes about subject X, and here’s what the left believes; and while I basically side with the left, I think the right has a point or two that we should consider, and the left can sometimes get a little carried away.” What I find fascinating about his language about unity and cross-partisanship is that it is not premised on finding Republicans who agree with him, but on taking in good faith the language and positions of actual conservatism — people who don’t agree with him. That’s very different from the longed-for consensus of the Washington Post editorial page.

Steve Benen offers his interpretation: “In this sense, the ‘politics of hope’ isn’t about bringing everyone to the table to compromise; it’s about an effective rhetorical strategy to achieve a progressive result.” This is true and a reason why many Democrats support Obama. However, this there is more. The reason that many of us independents (and even more libertarians than you might realize) support Obama is summarized in the final paragraph above regarding Obama’s consideration of opposing viewpoints. We see one example of this on health care. In his heart Obama probably does prefer a single payer health care system as was indicated on an old survey. What really matters is that Obama also understands that a plan such as the one he proposed, without mandates, has a far better chance of being accepted.

If you want someone who will try to push the entire progressive agenda down the throats of Americans, Obama is not your candidate. If you want proposals for sensible change that have a chance of actually being accomplished, then Obama may be the only viable choice now offered by the Democrats.

Posted in Barack Obama, Blogs & Social Media, Health Care, Mitch McConnell, Politics. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , . No Comments »
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