Category Archives: Conservatism

Friday, May 31, 2013

Bright Future

Sen. Ted Cruz looks for the best and the brightest.

“If you sit back and you list who are the brightest stars in the Republican Party, who are the most effective advocates for free-market principles, you come up with names like Marco Rubio, like Mike Lee, like Rand Paul, like Pat Toomey, like Scott Walker,” Cruz said as a man in the audience at the New York State Republican Party dinner yelled his name.

“You have to go back to World War II to see such a transformation of the people leading the fight, leading the argument for conservative principles, being an entirely new generation of leaders stepping forward.” Cruz continued, describing the men who grew up while Reagan served in office. “In this new generation of leaders, you see the echoes of that same communication, that same love story of freedom, echoing we are right and all of us together are working to communicate that message.”

The irony is that each of the people that Mr. Cruz mentioned have all demonstrated that they would have kicked Ronald Reagan out of the GOP because he was far too liberal for their dogma.  He signed an abortion bill while he was governor of California, and while he was president, he raised taxes.  They’re talking about “Ronald Reagan,” the man who single-handedly tore down the Berlin Wall and unleashed capitalism and the Baby Jesus across the land.

As far as being the “bright future” of the Republican Party, you don’t have to be a partisan to notice that among the names Mr. Cruz has listed, not one of these hopefuls has raised a new idea or put forward anything other than boilerplate 19th century jingoism and warmed-over rhetoric that couldn’t get past the Eisenhower administration.

If that’s what we have to look forward to, bring back Timothy Leary.

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Sunday Reading

Obstruction — Jonathan Bernstein at Salon on why blocking every move by the president will blow up in the hands of the GOP.

It’s obvious that the unprecedented Senate Republican obstruction of executive branch nominations is bad for the president; it’s bad for the smooth functioning of the government; and it’s bad for voters who elected a Democratic president and a solid, 55-seat Democratic majority in the Senate. I’ve argued, too, that it’s bad for the Senate.

Less obvious? It’s bad for Republicans.

Now, in electoral terms, it can’t be bad for both parties, since electoral politics is a zero-sum game. Indeed, that’s sort of the problem for Republicans; obstruction of these nominations almost certainly has zero electoral effect. After all, most voters couldn’t tell you who the nominees for secretary of labor or to head the Environmental Protection Agency are, let alone the obscure rules Republicans are using to delay their confirmation.

So the effects of massive, across-the-board obstruction are going to be on policy, not elections. And that’s not a zero-sum game – and it will hurt Republicans and Republican-aligned groups, too.

Obstruction backfires against Republicans because it makes it difficult, and perhaps impossible, for them to collectively use the nomination process to make policy demands. Consider, for example, what they’ve done with EPA nominee Gina McCarthy. Senators traditionally ask nominees questions in order, in part, to get them to commit to policies those Senators find acceptable. McCarthy received not the normal dozens of questions, but more than 1,000. That appears to be an extreme case, but it’s not just her, either. As the New York Times reported, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew had to answer 395. By contrast, George W. Bush’s last Treasury Secretary received 49 questions from Democrats and 32 from Republicans. When you answer hundreds of questions, you might as well answer none; by failing to focus on specific areas of policy they care about, Republicans are likely wasting the opportunity to actually win some policy commitments.

Which Was the Worst? — James Fallows at The Atlantic weighs in on which of the so-called scandals is the one that could be the worst for President Obama.

Obama’s endorsement of the seizure of phone records and investigation suggests surprising blindness to two great and not-very-hidden realities of presidential history.

One is, secrets always get out. Presidents always hate it, and they always do their best to prevent it. Usually they manage to guard the truly life-and-death, real-time operational details — for instance, in Obama’s case, the suspected whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. But always there are leaks. Always. Always. And they are nearly always less consequential than is alleged at the time.

The other great historical constant is that after-the-fact hunts for leakers always go wrong. That is because they criminalize the delicate but essential relationship between reporters and government officials. The prosecutors always come across as over-reaching and too intrusive. The reporters and their news organizations always end up in a no-win situation: sometimes spending time in jail, often put in financial distress by legal costs, always torn between their professional/personal obligation to maintain confidence with their sources and the demands of prosecutors. And no good purpose is ever served.

Obama should know this. He must know it. He must know that no president looks better in history’s eyes for anti-leak prosecutions, and that many look worse. He must know the temptations that work on any president: the temptation to steadily arrogate executive power, to become so resentful of the limits on his power in domestic-legislation fights that he is drawn toward his untrammeled international authority, to slide imperceptibly from his (unavoidable) role as the person who must make countless hard decisions to a sense that his judgment automatically equals what is best for the country. He must know what the open-ended “war on terror” has done to the balance of powers, the fabric of life, and the rule of law in our country. Obama’s (and America’s) ideal, Abraham Lincoln, infringed heavily on civil liberties in the name of wartime emergency. That war, like Franklin Roosevelt’s, had a definable end.

I think Barack Obama has made a bad mistake in endorsing this investigation. It is one of the rare times I question not his effectiveness or tactics but his judgment. I hope he reconsiders.

Pity Party — Frank Bruni says that winning in America, be it on The Voice or in politics, relies on having a hard-luck story to tug at the heartstrings.

There’s a vivid streak of this in history, from Abe Lincoln’s log home to Bill Clinton’s turbulent one. But it seems more florid now. The economy’s stubborn funk has ratcheted up our suspicion of perks and privileges and our support for underdogs, to a point where we’re less taken with what people have achieved than with what they’ve endured.

In politics and in prime time, the contestants with the most traction are frequently the contestants with the gravest trials: afflictions, addictions, lost loves, lost dogs. I’m kidding about the canines, but only slightly. If there aren’t any epic setbacks in your biography, your political consultants or your “Voice” producers will find and amplify whatever garden-variety sorrows do exist. They’re like divining rods for tears, Yo-Yo Ma’s of the heartstrings.

That’s surely why a sort of weariness and skepticism was the response among a few New Yorkers I know to last week’s revelations by Christine Quinn, the mayoral candidate, that she’d struggled with bulimia and alcoholism. They’ve grown so inured to the process of public figures rummaging through the past for hard knocks that they greet it in a jaded fashion, wondering how to tell the real aches from the exaggerated ones.

Fetishized misfortune — hardship porn — has numbed them. That’s the biggest problem with it. It equates and mashes everything into one sentimental mush, cheapening uncommon suffering by showcasing it alongside the rest. It bends all life stories into identical arcs, no matter how different those stories are.

Doonesbury — Facial recognition.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Sunday Reading

A Different Language — Former Congressman Tom Allen on the modern GOP.

Nothing I had learned about politics before my election prepared me for the intense polarization of contemporary congressional politics. When I first went to Washington to work for Sen. Ed Muskie in 1970, Republicans and Democrats debated public issues vigorously, but there was more genuine give-and-take and mutual respect, and the players did not treat politics as a blood sport. Six years on the Portland City Council taught me that most local issues could be resolved without petty or partisan combat.

Dwight Eisenhower accepted the major legislation of the New Deal. John Kennedy started the legislative push for a substantial tax cut. Lyndon Johnson came from a Senate known for working across the aisle. Richard Nixon signed clean water and clean air legislation. Ronald Reagan raised taxes many times to deal with mounting deficits created by his 1981 tax cut; George H. W. Bush did the same, to resounding criticism from the Right. Bill Clinton antagonized elements of his Democratic base by supporting a balanced federal budget, free trade and welfare reform.

George W. Bush was different. His election in 2000 was, in hindsight, stage two of the Newt Gingrich revolution. Senator Lincoln Chafee (R.-R.I.) recalled, shortly after Bush’s election, that Dick Cheney quickly laid out to a small group of moderate Senate Republicans, “a shockingly divisive political agenda for the new Bush administration, glossing over nearly every pledge the Republican ticket had made to the American voter.” In his first term, President Bush abandoned international treaties, invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, and drove through two massive tax cuts that primarily benefitted wealthy Americans.

Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign employed “microtargeting” as a part of their successful strategy of mobilizing the Republican base instead of reaching out to the middle. That political strategy was consistent with the Bush administration’s style of governing and the way Gingrich and Tom DeLay controlled Congress: Drive through the most right-wing policy that the Republican caucus could support; only move legislation that has the support of a substantial majority of the majority party; take no prisoners.

As I listened over the years to baffling arguments in committee, on the House floor or in private conversations, I lost hope in our capacity for bipartisan agreement on our major public policy challenges. On budgets, taxes, health care and climate change, the evidence that mattered to us made no difference to our Republican colleagues. What Democrats took as well-established fact, Republicans understood as easily dismissed opinions. When we wondered, “Do these guys believe what they say?” our answer was usually no. But if the Republicans didn’t believe the things they were saying, they were extraordinarily gifted performers on the House floor.

Major Dilemma — Matthew O’Brien on liberal arts majors and the economy.

Is our college students learning?

Rarely is the question not asked nowadays. Graduates now face a tough labor market and even tougher debt burdens, which has left many struggling to find work that pays enough to pay back what they owe. Today, as my colleague Jordan Weissmann points out, young alums aren’t stuck in dead-end jobs much more than usual (despite the scare stories you may have heard). But that’s a cold comfort for grads who borrowed a lot to cover the high cost of their degrees.

There are two, well, schools of thought about why freshly-minted grads have had such a tough time recently. You can blame the smarty-pants majors or blame the economy. In other words, students can’t get good jobs either because they aren’t learning (at least not the right things) in college, or because there aren’t enough good jobs, period.

This is far from an academic debate. If recent grads can’t find good work because they didn’t learn any marketable skills, there’s little the government can do to help, besides “nudging” current students to be more practical. And that’s exactly what conservative governors in Florida and North Carolina are considering with proposals to charge humanities majors higher tuition than, say, science majors at state schools.

But there’s an obvious question. If liberal arts majors “didn’t learn much in school,” as Jane Shaw put it in the Wall Street Journal, why haven’t they always had trouble finding work? Are there just more of them now, or is this lack of learning just a recent phenomenon?

Breaking News — Jim Romenseko with a story about The Onion that should be from The Onion.

When WSFA-TV (Montgomery, Ala.) reporter Jennifer Oravet read in The Onion that PR firm Hill & Knowlton was advising the U.S. to cut ties with Alabama, she went to work, made a phone call and posted her findings on Facebook:

“I contacted the PR firm listed in this article, they claim the article is ‘ficticious’ and have no involvement in the alleged study.”

Actually, Jennifer, all Onion articles are fictitious. (Just one c.)

Did she know that when she put in the call to Hill & Knowlton? I called WSFA to find out and was told that Oravet is taking the day off. A newsroom colleague – she wouldn’t give me her name – insisted that the reporter/anchor knew the Hill & Knowlton/Alabama story was fake from the start.

“It doesn’t sound like it based on her Facebook post,” I said.

“Did you see her report?” the colleague asked.

I said I had, and figured she had been set straight about The Onion before going on air. Wrong, I was told — Oravet always knew it was a satirical paper.

WSFA Facebook commenters have their doubts, too. One writes:

“I don’t know what’s better, her original post, or her backpedaling to ‘cover up; her mistake. I’ve done dummy things like that (most recent when I applauded Beyonce at the inauguration… lip sync anyone?) but come on, admit you’re stupid sometimes just like the rest of us.”

Another person writes:

“LOL, so I read through the comments and I see that someone “demands” we give [her] a break. Seriously?? Someone takes the Onion as serious and we should give a break??? Eff that, this was a fail of epic proportions and should be exploited to the nth degree. There’s honestly no coming back from this! Only in Bama!”

I’ve emailed Oravet for comment, hoping she occasionally checks in on days off. I also called and emailed WSFA news director Scott Duff earlier this afternoon.

Doonesbury — Baby, baby.

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

The New Edsel

Some automotive history:

In February of 1959, Ford Motor Company executives sent a letter to the remaining Edsel dealerships expressing their confidence in the Edsel line, and that the all new 1960 model would be introduced in October. Even though research had indicated that Edsel could not make it through another year with the negative publicity that surrounded the name, Ford decided to give the car one last chance.

In spite of millions of dollars in research, market testing, and confidence that the consumer would buy just about whatever the manufacturer would put out there, the Edsel became synonymous with disaster, and in spite of redesigns in the following two model years that rendered it basically indistinguishable from other Fords, the plug was pulled in November 1959.

1960 Edsel

1960 Edsel

I was reminded of that last-minute grasp at straws when I read about House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s pep talk to his fellow Republicans.

Over the next two years, the House Majority will pursue an agenda based on a shared vision of creating the conditions for health, happiness and prosperity for more Americans and their families. And to restrain Washington from interfering in those pursuits.

[...]

We will advance proposals aimed at producing results in areas like education, health care, innovation and job growth. Our solutions will be based on the conservative principles of self reliance, faith in the individual, trust in the family and accountability in government. Our goal – to ensure every American has a fair shot at earning their success and achieving their dreams.

And roses and rainbows, lollipops and ponies!

It’s very clear that the Republicans know they have a problem.  But they don’t seem to know exactly what that problem is.  (Hint: good people don’t like you.)

At least the folks at Ford knew they had made a mistake.

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Polishing a Turd – Ctd.

The GOP is still at it.

Eric Cantor is set to give a speech tomorrow in which he is supposed to take new rhetorical steps designed to “soften” the GOP’s image. However, Ron Fournier reports that there will be no softening of GOP ideology, only a softening of tone:

The speech will attempt to cast the House GOP’s traditionally conservative policy agenda in terms that appeal to parents, explaining why school vouchers, tax breaks, repealing the health care law, and other Republican standards would “make life work better.” [...]

Cantor plans to ask Congress to require universities to warn students when their academic majors lack employment opportunities; to repeal the tax on medical devices, a provision of Obama’s health care overhaul; and to shift spending from political sciences to “hard” sciences such as cancer research.

One thing he won’t do is moderate Republican policies. Cantor is talking about a change in tone, not ideology, which begs the question: With a demographic tide threatening to crush the modern GOP, is it enough to just tweak talking points?

Short answer: No.

As Greg Sargent points out, there are three prongs to the GOP plan for revival:  Change the tone, not the message; rig the system so that they win elections with fewer votes; and hope for a Messiah to save them from the wasteland they’re in now.

None of those plans change the constant: the majority of Americans don’t like what the party is selling, and they’re getting tired of being played for suckers.

Monday, December 31, 2012

Looking Back/Looking Forward

As I do every year on New Year’s Eve, I make predictions about the upcoming year.  Let’s see how I did for 2012:

Barack Obama will narrowly win re-election against Mitt Romney. It will be a campaign of fear, loathing, excess, and outrage… and that’s just on the GOP side until the inevitable coronation of Mr. Romney. The amount of money to be spent on both sides will be enough to run several mid-sized countries. Re-election campaigns are, of course, a vote on the performance of the incumbent, and Mr. Obama will have to defend his record, but the Republicans have, by their own actions, inactions, and lurch to the right in response to their hatred of all things Obama, made the choice in the election pretty clear. The stated GOP agenda has been to deny Barack Obama a second term, but other than that, they have offered nothing of substance if they win the election. That’s not surprising; they never do. They live on bumper sticker slogans and ten-word answers — Repeal Obamacare; Ban Abortion; Deport the Brown People; No More Taxes; Kill the Queers — but they offer no solutions, unless you want to go back to revive the bold and new ideas from the administration of William McKinley. The campaign will resemble that of the one in 1948 where Harry Truman, coming back from dismal approval ratings, beat the patrician and automatonic Thomas E. Dewey. Mr. Truman ran against an intransigent and right-wing-whacky Republican Congress, and Mr. Obama has pretty much the same situation. It won’t be a landslide, but unless there’s a complete meltdown of the Obama campaign juggernaut, he’ll win and might even win back Congress for the Democrats. It will not be the end of the right-wingers by any means; if anything, the re-election of Barack Obama will drive them even further over the cliff, and we will find out that the level of lunacy is infinite.

As I noted shortly after the election in November, I nailed it.  The only thing I missed on was the possibility of winning back the House, but the Democrats did gain seats.

The Supreme Court, by a vote of 5 to 4, will uphold the new healthcare law, and the California Prop 8 case will get on their docket for 2013.

Right on both counts.

Despite the best efforts of the Republicans, the economy will continue to improve, but at about the same pace as it currently is, meaning that by Election Day the unemployment rate will be around 8%. Consumer confidence will continue to grow, and while the housing market will still be soft, bigger ticket items like cars and appliances will start to sell; those old cars can’t run forever.

Right again, although I underestimated the strength of the auto market.  They are having their best year in a long, long time.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker will be recalled, which will send a shiver through right-wing governors from Ohio and Michigan to Florida. As the thousands of people in the streets from Madison to Wall Street proved, you mess with the middle class at your peril, and that sleeping giant has been awakened.

Okay, I blew that one, and Rick Snyder in Michigan is making Scott Walker look like a liberal.  But I think the backlash will continue, and he has to run for re-election in 2014.

Here in Florida, Sen. Bill Nelson (D) will win another term in a tight race against Rep. Connie Mack (R), and Rep. Allen West (R) will be tossed out on his ass by the good people of Broward County. Alan Grayson (D), who lost in 2010, will win back a seat in Congress, and this will send a strong message to the Florida Democrats that if they can find some good people to run for office, they can beat Rick Scott in 2014.

Nailed that one, too, but the strongest contender in the race against Mr. Scott is the newly-minted Democrat Charlie Crist.  Hold your nose, Democrats; to quote E.J. Hornbeck in the film of Inherit the Wind, he may be rancid butter, but he’s on your side of the bread.

The Tigers will go all the way this year. They got very close this year, and there’s always next year.

They did make it all the way to the World Series, only to blow it in a four-game shut out.  Argh.

We will lose the requisite number of celebrities and friends as life goes on. As I always say, it’s important to cherish them while they are with us.

This year seemed especially harsh, both with friends at work and at home, and names that have been part of our lives.  Peace.

Personally, some things never change. I’ll go to the William Inge Festival in April — my 21st time — where we’ll honor David Henry Hwang. I’ll go to Stratford in July with my parents, and I’ll go back to work on Tuesday. I’ve done some tinkering with the Pontiac as it verges on becoming a certified antique, which happens when the 2013 models go on sale. I have no plans to move or change jobs, and the only momentous thing that will happen is that I turn 60 in September. Big whoop.

All true, and to celebrate the Big Six-Oh I threw a little party.

Okay, let’s move on to the predictions for 2013:

- President Obama moves into his second term with pretty much the same situation in Washington and Congress as he has had for the last two years, so nothing will really get done.  The budget matters, including the fake drama of the Fiscal Cliff, will still be around in some form because it’s a lot easier to kick it down the road than actually do something, especially when you have a Republican Party that absolutely refuses to work with the president on anything at all.  It has nothing to do with policy, deficits or debt, taxes or revenue.  The reason is pretty simple: they don’t like him, and so like a kid in grade school who refuses to do his math homework because he hates the teacher, they refuse to budge.  You can pick your excuses, ranging from his Spock-like demeanor to his refusal to suck up to the Villagers, but most of it comes down to the unspoken reason that dare not speak its name: he’s black.  No one dares say that out loud, but get three beers in any Republican, and I’ll bet they’ll admit it by saying “He’s not one of us.”  How many dog whistles do you need?  A big tell was that in the last-minute budget negotiations, Mitch McConnell went to Vice President Joe Biden as the go-between the Congress and the president.  Why?  Because Mr. Biden was in the Senate and knows how to talk to them, and also because he’s the white guy.  So we will have another year of gridlock, and the new Congress will make the one just concluded look good.

- The Supreme Court will rule the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Prop 8 are unconstitutional.  It will be a very close vote, probably 5-4 on both cases, and they will narrowly rule on both cases, doing their best not to fling open the doors to marriage equality with a blanket ruling and leave the rest of it up to the states.  But they will both go down.  On the other hand, they will rule against Affirmative Action.  I also think there will be some changes to the make-up of the Court with at least one retirement, either voluntary or by the hand of fate.

- Even if we went over the fiscal cliff or curb or speed-bump, the economy will continue to improve, with the unemployment rate going below 7% by Labor Day.  I know this only because I know that our economy, like the water level in the Great Lakes, goes in cycles no matter what the hand of Wall Street or Washington does… unless they completely screw it up like the last time and make it even worse.

- After the extreme weather we saw in 2012, at long last we will move to do something about climate change or global warming or whatever it is fashionably called.  It won’t be done by Congress, however; it will be because the people who make a living off the climate, such as agriculture and coastal enterprises such as fishing and tourism, will make it happen through their own efforts.  (Yeah, I’m being extremely optimistic on this one.  A year from now I will happily concede I blew it.)

- The extremism from the right that entertained us in 2012 will continue, albeit muted because 2013 isn’t an election year except in New Jersey, where Chris Christie will be re-elected and start his Howard Dean-like campaign for the presidency in 2016.  The GOP will refuse to acknowledge they have a problem, but as 2014 looms and the wingers that were elected in 2010 face re-election, they will find themselves scrambling hard for candidates that can survive primary battles where the nutsery reigns and then win the general election.  The only reason Governors Rick Scott of Florida, Rick Snyder of Michigan, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, and John Kasich of Ohio will be re-elected in 2014 is if the Democrats don’t move in for the kill.

- I’ve given up predicting the Tigers’ future this year.  Surprise me, boys.

- We will lose the requisite number of celebrities and friends as life goes on. As I always say, it’s important to cherish them while they are with us.

- Personally, this year looks good on a couple of fronts.  The Pontiac is due back from the body shop this week, and I have formally entered it in its first national Antique Automobile of America car show to take place in Lakeland, Florida, in February.  Things are looking better at work with the Miami-Dade County Public Schools getting a number of important grants, including a $32 million program from Race To The Top for math preparation, and the District won the coveted Broad Prize for Urban Education this past fall.  One of my short plays has been selected for production in May 2013 at the Lake Worth Playhouse’s Short Cuts series, and hope springs eternal for a full-scale production again of Can’t Live Without You here in Florida.  This time I have a good director who would love to do it if we can get a theatre.  I’ll be off to the William Inge Festival in May to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Inge’s birth, and plans are in the works for our annual trip to Stratford, Ontario, next summer.  My family continues to enjoy good health and good spirits.  The blessings continue.  (PS: No, I still don’t have a Twitter account.)

- And of course, the usual prediction: One year from now I’ll write a post just like this one, look back at this one, and think, “Gee, that was dumb.” Or not.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

A Field Guide to Conservatives

David Brooks goes looking for the next batch of big thinkers in the conservative wilderness.

First he spots the Paleoconservatives lurking in the underbrush, keeping a wary eye on the Lower-Middle Reformists.  And look, over there is nest of Soft Libertarians — aren’t they adorable with their tiny little open minds — who are gently trying the coax the Burkean Revivalists down from the limb they’ve been sawing off for a century or so.  Yes, it’s a miracle of nature that these hardy creatures have survived so well after that big storm a couple of weeks ago that threatened to blow them into the next county.

And, as Mr. Brooks noticed, a lot of them do not bear such names as the American Robin (Turdus migratorius), but go by such exotic cognomens as Reihan, Ramesh, Yuval and Derek Khanna.  Are these invasive species something to worry about, or is it new blood that can reinvigorate the biosphere?

This kind of diversity isn’t limited to the conservatives.  A cursory glance at the liberal side of the meadow reveals the DFH’s grooving along with the Limousine Liberals while the Socialists and the Grumpy Iconoclasts do their own thing.  There are no monoliths in politics (except for Mitt Romney’s hair), and every party cycles its species through stages ranging from feral to bordering on extinct.  Right now it’s the conservatives who are looking for their winter nesting ground; the next time it could be the liberals, just as they did after 1972 and 1988.

To bring this metaphor to a merciful close (and extend heartfelt apologies to the legacy of Roger Tory Peterson), nature seeks a balance, and no matter what you do, it always gets its way.

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

The Stupid Party

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal thinks he knows what’s wrong with the Republicans:

“We’ve got to make sure that we are not the party of big business, big banks, big Wall Street bailouts, big corporate loopholes, big anything,” Jindal told POLITICO in a 45-minute telephone interview. “We cannot be, we must not be, the party that simply protects the rich so they get to keep their toys.”

Um, we already have a party that isn’t like that.  Perhaps you’ve heard of them; they’re called the Democrats.

“It is no secret we had a number of Republicans damage our brand this year with offensive, bizarre comments — enough of that,” Jindal said. “It’s not going to be the last time anyone says something stupid within our party, but it can’t be tolerated within our party. We’ve also had enough of this dumbed-down conservatism. We need to stop being simplistic, we need to trust the intelligence of the American people and we need to stop insulting the intelligence of the voters.”

If Mr. Jindal really wants the GOP to stop being “the stupid party,” he can start with himself; Steve M has a wide assortment of offensive and bizarre comments uttered by the governor.

I’m willing to bet that there are a number of folks in the Republican Party who are proud of the reputation their party has created and would take great pride in being the dumb-down party.  After all, no one ever lost an election by underestimating the greed, fear, and loathing of the American electorate.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Off Balance

Mr. Brooks muses on the two differing theories of modern conservatism and finally admits that the loons have taken over the asylum.

It’s not so much that today’s Republican politicians reject traditional, one-nation conservatism. They don’t even know it exists. There are few people on the conservative side who’d be willing to raise taxes on the affluent to fund mobility programs for the working class. There are very few willing to use government to actively intervene in chaotic neighborhoods, even when 40 percent of American kids are born out of wedlock. There are very few Republicans who protest against a House Republican budget proposal that cuts domestic discretionary spending to absurdly low levels.

The results have been unfortunate.

Actually, they’ve been predictable.  There’s a tendency in any political movement to look for a scapegoat for the problems of the world and blame them, but the Republicans have made it their party platform for the last fifty years.  The switch to simplistic economic conservatism, along with a healthy dose of moralistic scolding, has turned a lot of them into grifters, torturers, and intellectual sock-puppets.  That’s what happens to people with power without discipline or a sense of duty to others beyond your own tribe.

It’s about damn time you noticed, David.

Saturday, July 7, 2012

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

It’s Tough When They Grow Up

Jonathan Krohn, who at the age of 13 wowed the conservatives with a stem-winding speech at the CPAC convention in 2009 (and was the subject of Bill Maher’s New Rules a couple of weeks ago), is now 17. And he’s leaving the reservation.

“I think it was naive,” Krohn now says of the speech. “It’s a 13-year-old kid saying stuff that he had heard for a long time.… I live in Georgia. We’re inundated with conservative talk in Georgia.… The speech was something that a 13-year-old does. You haven’t formed all your opinions. You’re really defeating yourself if you think you have all of your ideas in your head when you were 12 or 13. It’s impossible. You haven’t done enough.”

Krohn won’t go so far as to say he’s liberal, in part because his move away from conservatism was a move away from ideological boxes in general.

“I want to be Jonathan Krohn,” he said, “and I’m tired of being an ideology, and it’s not fun and it gets boring and it’s not who we are as individuals.”

But a quick rundown of his current political stances suggests a serious pendulum swing away from the right.

Gay marriage? In favor. Obamacare? “It’s a good idea.” Who would he vote for (if he could) in November? “Probably Barack Obama.” His favorite TV shows? “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report.” His favorite magazine? The New Yorker. And, perhaps telling of all, Krohn is enrolling this fall at a college not exactly known for its conservatism: New York University.

Welcome, Jonathan; you’ve escaped from the dork side.

It’s Tough When They Grow Up

Jonathan Krohn, who at the age of 13 wowed the conservatives with a stem-winding speech at the CPAC convention in 2009 (and was the subject of Bill Maher’s New Rules a couple of weeks ago), is now 17. And he’s leaving the reservation.

“I think it was naive,” Krohn now says of the speech. “It’s a 13-year-old kid saying stuff that he had heard for a long time.… I live in Georgia. We’re inundated with conservative talk in Georgia.… The speech was something that a 13-year-old does. You haven’t formed all your opinions. You’re really defeating yourself if you think you have all of your ideas in your head when you were 12 or 13. It’s impossible. You haven’t done enough.”

Krohn won’t go so far as to say he’s liberal, in part because his move away from conservatism was a move away from ideological boxes in general.

“I want to be Jonathan Krohn,” he said, “and I’m tired of being an ideology, and it’s not fun and it gets boring and it’s not who we are as individuals.”

But a quick rundown of his current political stances suggests a serious pendulum swing away from the right.

Gay marriage? In favor. Obamacare? “It’s a good idea.” Who would he vote for (if he could) in November? “Probably Barack Obama.” His favorite TV shows? “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report.” His favorite magazine? The New Yorker. And, perhaps telling of all, Krohn is enrolling this fall at a college not exactly known for its conservatism: New York University.

Welcome, Jonathan; you’ve escaped from the dork side.

Friday, May 25, 2012

What Unites Us

E.J. Dionne has a new book out about the state of modern conservatism and how it’s broken. He encapsulates much of his thesis in his Washington Post column today. What it boils down to is that the nice quiet manicured and well-bred conservatives that we remember from the good old days have been taken over by the fringes.

For much of our history, Americans — even in our most quarrelsome moments — have avoided the kind of polarized politics we have now. We did so because we understood that it is when we balance our individualism with a sense of communal obligation that we are most ourselves as Americans. The 20th century was built on this balance, and we will once again prove the prophets of U.S. decline wrong if we can refresh and build upon that tradition. But doing so will require conservatives to abandon untempered individualism, which betrays what conservatism has been and should be.

Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed.

Perhaps it’s unfair to give him a hard time for finally figuring out something that a lot of us have been noticing for so long. If you’re my age (and Mr. Dionne is five months older than me), you’re a baby boomer who came of age when the Beatles arrived in America, so you’ve seen it for most of your life, starting in Selma and making its way through America via a lot of different routes, including Kent State and New Orleans.

Mr. Dionne quite correctly notes that what has led us from the country club conservatives to the seething mob with their misspelled signs is the breakdown in the sense of community; we’re all in this together and together we can handle the problems that come along. We may have different approaches, but we don’t need to separate ourselves from each other. That has been taken over by mistrust of the community and turned into an I-got-mine-screw-you mentality.

What it comes down to is that it’s a lot easier to blame someone else for all your problems than work to find a solution. We unite a lot faster when there’s a common enemy, and a lot of people have made a lot of money and gained a lot of power by exploiting that basic fact of human nature.

What Unites Us

E.J. Dionne has a new book out about the state of modern conservatism and how it’s broken. He encapsulates much of his thesis in his Washington Post column today. What it boils down to is that the nice quiet manicured and well-bred conservatives that we remember from the good old days have been taken over by the fringes.

For much of our history, Americans — even in our most quarrelsome moments — have avoided the kind of polarized politics we have now. We did so because we understood that it is when we balance our individualism with a sense of communal obligation that we are most ourselves as Americans. The 20th century was built on this balance, and we will once again prove the prophets of U.S. decline wrong if we can refresh and build upon that tradition. But doing so will require conservatives to abandon untempered individualism, which betrays what conservatism has been and should be.

Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed.

Perhaps it’s unfair to give him a hard time for finally figuring out something that a lot of us have been noticing for so long. If you’re my age (and Mr. Dionne is five months older than me), you’re a baby boomer who came of age when the Beatles arrived in America, so you’ve seen it for most of your life, starting in Selma and making its way through America via a lot of different routes, including Kent State and New Orleans.

Mr. Dionne quite correctly notes that what has led us from the country club conservatives to the seething mob with their misspelled signs is the breakdown in the sense of community; we’re all in this together and together we can handle the problems that come along. We may have different approaches, but we don’t need to separate ourselves from each other. That has been taken over by mistrust of the community and turned into an I-got-mine-screw-you mentality.

What it comes down to is that it’s a lot easier to blame someone else for all your problems than work to find a solution. We unite a lot faster when there’s a common enemy, and a lot of people have made a lot of money and gained a lot of power by exploiting that basic fact of human nature.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Grow Up, Mitt

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has some advice for Mitt Romney:

I think he really needs to not just accept these cataclysmic sort of pronouncements. I think he really needs to think carefully about these statements because they’re now on the wall for people to see. … Let’s not go creating enemies where none yet exist. Does this mean that we should trust Putin or Medvedev? No. Let’s be mature people and look at the reality of the situation and not find ways to see if we can hyperbolize the situation.

That was in light of Mr. Romney labeling Russia as our “geopolitical foe”. (Sheesh. What’s next, telling us not to be brainwashed about winning in Vietnam?)

Gen. Powell is also in favor of marriage equality:

Gen. Colin Powell said Wednesday on CNN’s “The Situation Room” that he supports legal same-sex marriage, either at the state or federal level.

“I have no problem with it,” he said in the interview [...]. “In terms of the legal matter of creating a contract between two people that’s called marriage, and allowing them to live together with the protection of law, it seems to me is the way we should be moving in this country. And so I support the president’s decision.”

Back in 2000, Gen. Powell’s name was being bandied about as a possible GOP presidential candidate to the point that he actually seemed to consider it. For whatever reason (including concerns in his family about his safety), he did not run. But if he had, I have a feeling he could have changed the direction of the party (and avoided that whole UN debacle with the WMD crap that sucked the life out of his credibility) and we’d be looking at a very different — and far more effective — Republican Party today. But they didn’t grow up then, and they sure don’t show any signs of doing so now.

Grow Up, Mitt

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has some advice for Mitt Romney:

I think he really needs to not just accept these cataclysmic sort of pronouncements. I think he really needs to think carefully about these statements because they’re now on the wall for people to see. … Let’s not go creating enemies where none yet exist. Does this mean that we should trust Putin or Medvedev? No. Let’s be mature people and look at the reality of the situation and not find ways to see if we can hyperbolize the situation.

That was in light of Mr. Romney labeling Russia as our “geopolitical foe”. (Sheesh. What’s next, telling us not to be brainwashed about winning in Vietnam?)

Gen. Powell is also in favor of marriage equality:

Gen. Colin Powell said Wednesday on CNN’s “The Situation Room” that he supports legal same-sex marriage, either at the state or federal level.

“I have no problem with it,” he said in the interview [...]. “In terms of the legal matter of creating a contract between two people that’s called marriage, and allowing them to live together with the protection of law, it seems to me is the way we should be moving in this country. And so I support the president’s decision.”

Back in 2000, Gen. Powell’s name was being bandied about as a possible GOP presidential candidate to the point that he actually seemed to consider it. For whatever reason (including concerns in his family about his safety), he did not run. But if he had, I have a feeling he could have changed the direction of the party (and avoided that whole UN debacle with the WMD crap that sucked the life out of his credibility) and we’d be looking at a very different — and far more effective — Republican Party today. But they didn’t grow up then, and they sure don’t show any signs of doing so now.

Friday, May 11, 2012

Humoring Bullies

Speaking of bullies (see below), Alex Pareene dissects Jonah Goldberg’s latest bit of effluence, The Tyranny of Clichés.

On the back of my review copy of “The Tyranny of Clichés,” Goldberg’s latest, it still claims that the author “has twice been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.” That, of course, was revealed yesterday to be utter bullshit. He is a two-time entrant for Pulitzer consideration — to enter requires solely an application and a $50 fee — and while Goldberg claims not to have added that line to his bio, it appears everywhere he writes, and it’s hard to believe he hadn’t noticed it until this week. That said, I can’t imagine a person dumb enough to actually believe that Jonah Goldberg had been seriously considered for a Pulitzer. (Well, OK, I can imagine one person dumb enough.)

If Pulitzers were handed out, like editorships at conservative publications, based on nepotism, Goldberg might’ve had better luck.

I have never had the privilege of reading one of Mr. Goldberg’s books in its entirety. I picked up his last one, Liberal Fascism, at a bookstore, read about ten pages, and had to restrain myself from invoking Dorothy Parker: “This is not a [book] to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.” As Mr. Pareene notes so well, Mr. Goldberg is both lazy and unoriginal. He regurgitates right wing talking points and mashes them together in a way that defies both logic and good grammar. He aspires to be H.L. Mencken and comes off more like H.R. Pufnstuf; it’s all word salad with a dollop of whiny victimhood on the side.

So why am I picking on poor Jonah? It’s not because I envy him either his position or his income. (If I made money writing that badly, I’d give it all away out of sheer guilt.) It’s because it is sycophants like him that enable the Mitt Romneys of the world to get away with their bullshit. Every bully has his posse of enablers; the cohorts who go along and and hold down the victim while the big jock cuts off their hair or pisses in their shoes. They do it not just because they get some kind of charge out of it but because they know that they could so easily be the one pinned to the floor. They mock the weak because there but for the grace of daddy’s trust fund and an utter lack of courage go they. He and Tucker Carlson go together like salt and peter.

The writings of Mr. Goldberg also illustrate one of the most prevalent aspects of conservative pundits: they really fail at humor. Try as they might, they just can’t grasp the concept. That’s because most of their attempts at humor are aimed at the weak or the disenfranchised elements of our society. They pick on those who are already victims. It’s both creepy and cruel, and the only kind of laughter it invokes is the involuntary kind that comes from “Are you serious?”

The best humor comes from mocking the pompous and knocking them off their pedestal. There’s nothing new about this; Aristophanes nailed it 2,400 years ago, and it lives on in the genius of Shakespeare, the Marx Brothers, Mel Brooks, and the last scene in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. The problem for conservatives is that they are the ones who are putting themselves up on the pedestal, and there’s never a banana peel around when you need one.

Humoring Bullies

Speaking of bullies (see below), Alex Pareene dissects Jonah Goldberg’s latest bit of effluence, The Tyranny of Clichés.

On the back of my review copy of “The Tyranny of Clichés,” Goldberg’s latest, it still claims that the author “has twice been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.” That, of course, was revealed yesterday to be utter bullshit. He is a two-time entrant for Pulitzer consideration — to enter requires solely an application and a $50 fee — and while Goldberg claims not to have added that line to his bio, it appears everywhere he writes, and it’s hard to believe he hadn’t noticed it until this week. That said, I can’t imagine a person dumb enough to actually believe that Jonah Goldberg had been seriously considered for a Pulitzer. (Well, OK, I can imagine one person dumb enough.)

If Pulitzers were handed out, like editorships at conservative publications, based on nepotism, Goldberg might’ve had better luck.

I have never had the privilege of reading one of Mr. Goldberg’s books in its entirety. I picked up his last one, Liberal Fascism, at a bookstore, read about ten pages, and had to restrain myself from invoking Dorothy Parker: “This is not a [book] to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.” As Mr. Pareene notes so well, Mr. Goldberg is both lazy and unoriginal. He regurgitates right wing talking points and mashes them together in a way that defies both logic and good grammar. He aspires to be H.L. Mencken and comes off more like H.R. Pufnstuf; it’s all word salad with a dollop of whiny victimhood on the side.

So why am I picking on poor Jonah? It’s not because I envy him either his position or his income. (If I made money writing that badly, I’d give it all away out of sheer guilt.) It’s because it is sycophants like him that enable the Mitt Romneys of the world to get away with their bullshit. Every bully has his posse of enablers; the cohorts who go along and and hold down the victim while the big jock cuts off their hair or pisses in their shoes. They do it not just because they get some kind of charge out of it but because they know that they could so easily be the one pinned to the floor. They mock the weak because there but for the grace of daddy’s trust fund and an utter lack of courage go they. He and Tucker Carlson go together like salt and peter.

The writings of Mr. Goldberg also illustrate one of the most prevalent aspects of conservative pundits: they really fail at humor. Try as they might, they just can’t grasp the concept. That’s because most of their attempts at humor are aimed at the weak or the disenfranchised elements of our society. They pick on those who are already victims. It’s both creepy and cruel, and the only kind of laughter it invokes is the involuntary kind that comes from “Are you serious?”

The best humor comes from mocking the pompous and knocking them off their pedestal. There’s nothing new about this; Aristophanes nailed it 2,400 years ago, and it lives on in the genius of Shakespeare, the Marx Brothers, Mel Brooks, and the last scene in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. The problem for conservatives is that they are the ones who are putting themselves up on the pedestal, and there’s never a banana peel around when you need one.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Reality vs. Orthodoxy

At the debate on CNN the other night, Rep. Michele Bachmann went off on Gov. Rick Perry for his executive order to vaccinate pre-teen girls in Texas with the HPV vaccine. Not only was it a form of “government injection”, she later told the Today how that the vaccine caused “mental retardation,” telling a story that a woman had told her tearfully about what had happened to her daughter after getting the vaccine. Despite the fact that there is no scientific evidence to back up her claim, she went unchallenged, and presumably a lot of people believe her because, well, she said it.

This is how things roll in politics, especially during a campaign. Someone can say something — usually the more outrageous or untrue the better — and it gets legs. We’re told that President Obama raised your taxes and that inflation is out of control when in fact he’s lowered taxes and inflation is nominal. But it gets ink and pixels and therefore it becomes the orthodoxy of the GOP, and you cannot disprove dogma with something as simple as reality.

Andrew Sullivan took the article by Michael Lofgren about the Republican Party becoming a cult and tied it into his belief that the party has become a religion, complete with rituals and icon worship (vide St. Ronald Reagan).

[The current GOP] can only think in doctrines, because the alternative is living in a complicated, global, modern world they both do not understand and also despise. Taxes are therefore always bad. Government is never good. Foreign enemies must be pre-emptively attacked. Islam is not a religion. Climate change is an elite conspiracy to impoverish America. Terror suspects are terrorists. When Americans torture, it is not torture. When Christians murder, they are not Christians. And if you change your mind on any of these issues, you are a liberal, an apostate, and will be attacked.

[...]

And the zealous never compromise. They don’t even listen. Think of Michele Bachmann’s wide-eyed, Stepford stare as she waits for a questioner to finish before providing another pre-cooked doctrinal nugget. My fear… is that once one party becomes a church with unchangeable doctrines, and once it has supplanted respect for institutions and civility with the radical pursuit of timeless doctrines and hatred of governing institutions, then our democracy is in grave danger.

The Democrats and other reasonable, logical people are faced with the challenge of proving dogma wrong. (Conservatives like to counter that liberalism is a cult, too, with their own orthodoxy of baby-killing, government imposition on everything, and Teh Gayz. If so, they’re doing a comparatively lousy job of evangelism.) When Gov. Perry mangled his Galileo reference when talking about climate change, he touched on something that actually rings true: Galileo was nearly put to death for challenging the orthodoxy of the Catholic Church for stating that the earth revolved around the sun. Science and facts have no place in religious discourse if it contradicts the dogma, and the faithful will go to great lengths — even coming up with their own brand of “science” — to counter the prevailing non-religious-based theories. And the heretics — the proponents of reality — are in danger in the hands of the believers.

The lure of dogmatic orthodoxy is powerful and comforting. It fits neatly onto a bumper sticker — “God Said It. I Believe It. That Settles It” — along with “No Socialism” and “Keep The Change.” You don’t have to think about it, and life is uncomplicated. But thinking about it leads away from the church; you get all sorts of impure thoughts, like raising taxes might actually help the economy and that when we say “equal protection under the law” we really mean it.

Heretics may be shunned and even executed, but they are invariably proven to be right.