So much for the Tea Party

By Michael J.W. Stickings

From a new Pew survey:

Since the 2010 midterm elections, the Tea Party has not only lost support nationwide, but also in the congressional districts represented by members of the House Tea Party Caucus. And this year, the image of the Republican Party has declined even more sharply in these GOP-controlled districts than across the country at large.

Oh, it's still a major factor in the GOP, of course. Republicans and Teabaggers, at least to the extent that they weren't one and the same (which they usually were, with big-money Republicans funding the Tea Party and Fox News, the GOP's main media outlet, pumping up the Tea Party at every opportunity), co-opted each other and now the GOP must live with its embrace of this extremist movement, just as it has embraced theocrats and other social conservative extremists as well.

The Tea Party may be in decline, but its legacy lives on. Voters would do well to think of that when they're casting their ballots next November.

The inevitability of a brutal 2012 campaign season

By Richard K. Barry

In an otherwise insightful piece, Charles Babbington had an article recently at The Huffington Post with the following headline: "2012 Presidential Race Expected to Be Close, Campaign Likely to be Brutal."

I suppose there may be some disagreement at this point that the race will be close, though I doubt it. This country is pretty much split down the middle, and the past three years of the Obama Administration have done nothing to change that.

But on the point that the campaign is also likely to be brutal: ya think?

From day one conservatives have launched attack after attack on Obama that he is literally not really an American. And that even if he is legally an American, his values are not American, whatever that means.

Rather than having a good faith policy debate about, for example, the optimal size and role of government, conservatives came flying out of the gate, with the help of Fox, and Rush Limbaugh and so many other right-wing crackpots, with arguments that America had very nearly been taken over by an enemy force and that it had to be taken back (and perhaps, it was not infrequently implied, by force).

Yes, as Babbington rightly points out, there are policy differences between left and right, the kind that typically occupy debate amongst Democrats and Republicans, and these will surely play a central role in the campaign.

The differences typically take the form of blind reliance on free market mechanisms from the right and arguments for a robust role for the state from the left. Yes, we all know that.

To that extent, as Babbington writes:

The Republicans have their script: they just need to pick the person to deliver it. It will portray Obama as a failed leader who backs away when challenged and who doesn't understand what it takes to create jobs and spur growth.

Well, yes and no.

If Romney is the Republican candidate, the GOP will probably try to frame the debate in terms of "savvy businessman" vs. "community organizer."

And if the economy remains weak, as it no doubt will, and if the job numbers continue to be poor, this approach is going to be the GOP's best shot to take the White House and other races.

Problem is that the other dynamic at work, the one that won't go away, is that Obama is not just the wrong person for the job, that he doesn't have the skill set, but that he hates America, that he is foreign to our way of life, literally and figuratively.

The Tea Party anger may be expressed as frustration about the functioning of the economy, but its passion has always been fueled by this type of culture war.

This may be why Romney consistently fails to catch fire with enough of the GOP base to put the competition away. This may be why pretenders like Trump, Palin, Perry, Bachmann and Cain are tried on for size at fairly regular intervals.

Romney is not a cultural warrior and the radical right, the truly energized segment of the party, knows it.

Yes, things will get ugly in 2012, but not because of traditional left-right policy disagreements. They will get ugly because 2012 will be a battle for the soul of the nation, as the radical right sees it. And that can't be waged from the perspective of dry policy prescriptions. It can only be fought on the basis of what it means, they would say, to be a real American.

Though I believe Romney will be the nominee, and that he will try to marginalize the culture war narrative in his campaign, the radical right won't let him do it. This has become too important to them.

Romney, as the nominee, will be fighting a two front war: Obama on the left largely on economic policy, and the Tea Party and fellow travellers on his right who think they are fighting an epic struggle to reclaim the America they have lost.

It's going to be ugly, but not in conventional terms. Romney hopes he has a winning script, I'm just not sure he can limit the discussion in ways he might like. In fact, I'm sure he can't.

In politics as in life, any time your opening gambit is that your opponent is a fraud, things can only go downhill.

The practical question is the extent to which swing voters / independents are going to see this kind of ugliness as counterproductive, especially in a climate in which they are legitimately fearful for their economic survival.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Does the Tea Party want its Wall Street back?

By Richard K. Barry

I hadn't thought much about this small piece of the political dynamic around Occupy Wall Street (OWS), but I think it is true that the Tea Party movement is frustrated that their earlier criticism of high finance in America is being taken over by OWS (as different as those critiques are).

As Ryan Grim at The Huffington Post writes:

The Tea Party was founded on a sense that something ephemeral had been stolen by someone and that a movement was needed to "take the country back." Occupy Wall Street is now getting the media attention the Tea Party believes is rightfully theirs, and the perceived slight can only inflame the movement's sense of victimhood. They didn't just lose a country as they knew it. Now they've lost coverage on CNN too.

But the idea that the Tea Party, aligning itself with Republicans and fiercely critical of Democrats and the Obama Administration, could also think that its critique of Wall Street makes sense is bizarre.

How could they fail to understand that creating conditions for Gordon Gekko levels of greed and wealth accumulation is what the Republican Party has always been about? Do they really think that Democrats are the party of privilege?

Conservatism in America is at the best of times confusing, as it combines populist elements with theoretical rationalizations for great concentrations of wealth and power, but Tea Party anger at OWS really forces us to unpack some of this.

As I understand it, there is a perception on the part of the right that the American capitalist system, suffering as little regulation as possible, is a thing of beauty, providing fair and equal access to prosperity, and that its occasional failure is only the result of the nefarious activities of the few as well as the unhelpful interventions of liberal politicians.

I sometimes think, in this context, of the support 18th-century British parliamentarian Edmund Burke gave to the grievances of the American revolutionaries. It was not, he argued, a revolution at all but rather an attempt to bring things back to a previous condition of fairness. The system, he might have said, was fine. Bad actors had interfered with the goodness of the natural flow of things.

But, for the Occupy Wall Street protesters, and those who support their goals, the system is most certainly not fine. Gross inequalities are a built-in feature of the way we currently allocate resources and, for those of us who think it is important that we live in a society where everyone has enough, some pretty big things would have to change.

To put a fine point on it, the Tea Party movement would seem to be saying, "We want our Wall Street back," implying that we need only go back to a time when there were no bad men and women profiting from subprime mortgage crises and government regulation didn't gum up the works. But of course there will always be bad men and women who wish only to line their pockets in spectacular ways, and without government regulation things would only be worse.

Let's face it, whatever the Tea Party movement's critique of Wall Street, it was always incoherent and few paid attention to it. Even if only at an intuitive level, the OWS position seems to make sense to a lot of people. On its face the mere fact that so much of the wealth in our country is controlled by so few is not acceptable. If the reply from the super wealthy is that those are the rules of the game, then the rules should be changed. Why is that so hard to understand?

Note to the Tea Party: Wall Street has always been corrupt and, just as with all those other vaguely articulated notions of an America that once was, the good Wall Street is not real.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Obama both right and wrong about Tea Party / Occupy Wall Street comparison (but mostly wrong)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

ABC News:

President Obama, who has become a target of the Occupy Wall Street protests sweeping the country, today embraced the economic frustration voiced on the streets and said in an exclusive interview with ABC News that his vision for the U.S. economic system is best suited to resolve protesters' concerns.

"I understand the frustrations being expressed in those protests," Obama told ABC News senior White House correspondent Jake Tapper in the interview to air this evening on ABC News "Nightline" from Jamestown, N.C.

"In some ways, they're not that different from some of the protests that we saw coming from the Tea Party. Both on the left and the right, I think people feel separated from their government. They feel that their institutions aren't looking out for them," he said.

Not that different? Huh. Well, sure, superficially they're somewhat the same -- or, that is, if you look at them superficially. Both are, supposedly, grassroots movements expressing populist frustrations directed at the establishment, whether political or economic.

But the Tea Party has been bankrolled by the establishment, and specifically by conservative organizations with a partisan agenda, hence the ease with with with the Tea Party and the Republican Party have basically co-opted each other. While efforts have been made to make it appear as if the Tea Party, or the various groups that loosely make it up, are independent, the truth is quite different. Meanwhile, the Occupy Wall Street movement is truly populist and anti-establishmentarian. Democrats are more or less aligning themselves with its interests and objectives, more less than more, but it's clearly not a partisan tool, or a movement with decidedly partisan aims, partly because the Democratic Party is in bed with Big Finance as well, if not necessarily to the degree the GOP is.

The Occupy Wall Street movement can't just be dismissed, as much as various elites (political, media, etc.) tried to initially. The reason is that it reflects genuine discontent with the system, with the elites that control the U.S. economy and allow the 1% to control the 99%. The Tea Party reflects discontent as well, but it's a libertarian, anti-government discontent that implicitly and effectively enables these elites to keep doing what they're doing. Not all Tea Partiers may understand this, but their "hands off my money" agenda would allow those in the private sector with power to accumulate even more power by removing the one institution that actually tries to, or at least has the power to, keep those elites in check, namely, the federal government. Sure, you can pay less in taxes to a skeleton government, but then what? Then the elites have you even more firmly by the balls.

It doesn't help that Obama has been a president for Wall Street, bailing out the big banks and surrounding himself with a Goldman Sachs economic braintrust. And his policies thus far have been directed not at the 99% but at protecting the 1%, whatever his occasionally populist rhetoric. This is one of the great disappointments of his presidency. He may be more centrist technocrat than change-we-can-believe-in progressive, and may have been so all along (even if so many of his supporters misunderstood him), but nonetheless the fact that he has focused his priorities on the elites of credit and capital over the people who have been severely abused by those elites is beyond even what most cynics, justifiably or not, expected.

It's all well and good that the president understands the frustrations that people are expressing, but... so what? What is needed is action, and he has shown himself unwilling to do what needs to be done to fix a system that is sick at its core, that enhances the plutocracy of the few while leaving the many to suffer at their hands.

Obama said the most important thing he can do as president is express solidarity with the protesters and redouble his commitment to achieving what he described as a more egalitarian society.

Then fucking do it, Mr. President. And show you mean it. You have history on your side, and votes to win, and the men and women occupying Wall Street, unlike the Teabaggers, seek to rescue America from those who would destroy it.

The GOP mob is fickle, but division is the 2012 curse

By Nicholas Wilbur

Republicans go through presidential contenders like Newt Gingrich goes through wives.

Faster, in fact.

The GOP had two years to find, mold, and polish a top-notch Republican challenger who could mount a strong and maybe even successful offensive against President Obama in 2012. They found ten candidates, but, alas, not one of them fits the bill.

Conservative columnist Cal Thomas, not usually the caliber of pundit worthy of being quoted, said Republicans are in danger of catching the same "virus" Democrats caught in 2008: they're looking for a savior rather than a realistic leader.

Like most subjects Thomas takes on, Republicans' dissatisfaction with the current pool of candidates is more complex than their unrealistic expectations, or their "messiah complex," as he puts it.

Thomas has a point, but he misses the underlying problem and the recent historical context that's necessary for making such a comparison between Democrats in 2008 with the current field of Republican presidential hopefuls. While Democrats were united in 2008 against the eight-year reign of George W. Bush, the partisanship in Washington, and the do-nothing attitude of Republicans in Congress, today's GOP candidates, in contrast, are competing for support from a "Republican base" that is split between the ideological conservatives of the Tea Party, who play a large part in determining the outcomes of primary elections, and the moderate or right-leaning independents, who determine the outcome of general elections.

The problem is electability, and electability cannot be defined when part of the base is so staunchly anti-government that the only candidate worth supporting is the one who believes, as they do, that negotiating with Democrats is treasonous – even when "negotiation" means keeping the government from shutting down or preventing the U.S. from defaulting on its loans.

That is the reality of the political divide within the Republican Party today, and that is why no one candidate has what it takes to beat Obama.

It's a Catch-22 between sane Republicans and Tea Party astroturfers. If the candidate isn't conservative enough, he won't win the Tea Party endorsement needed to perform well in enough primary contests to secure the nomination. If he's too conservative, he will lose support among the more moderate Republicans and perform poorly in the general election. But if he performs well among moderate Republicans in the primary but loses the support of the Tea Party in the process, he will lose the most vocal, most active, and most media-hyped demographic within the GOP.

Given President Obama's edge as an incumbent and a powerful campaigner, Republicans may need a messiah to have any chance of defeating him. But that isn't the cause of Republicans' dissatisfaction. They aren't so ardently searching for someone – anyone! – to step in and be the savior of the party. They don't even know what that savior should stand for, because, thus far, it seems impossible to earn the endorsement of the Tea Party and have a chance at defeating Obama.

We've seen it happen already with every "frontrunner" who's entered the race and every "potential" candidate who hasn't.

Michele Bachmann was the first "chosen one" to announce her candidacy. For the most boisterous band of conservatives, she was "it" – the founder of the Congressional Tea Party Caucus, a patriotic Constitutionalist, an icon of the Christian pro-life/anti-gay value system, a sexy, Sarah Palin-esque rogue of "Don't Tread on Me" right-wing populism, and a true-blood anti-government conservative who capitalized "Founding Fathers" not only in writing but even while orating.

And then suddenly she wasn't.

When the media's "profile season" launched – when Newsweek put her life-sized, wrinkled, very unsexy face on its cover; when the rumor mill started churning out (purely speculative?) hit pieces on her (gay?) husband; when mainstream pundits began analyzing this alleged Constitutionalist's alleged "knowledge" of American history (about how our Founders "worked tirelessly" to end slavery, about John Quincy Adams being one of those "Founding Fathers," about "the shot heard 'round the world" in... Manchester?) – her presidential prospects crashed. The question that came to haunt Bachmann, and her White House ambitions, was best summed up by the question asked in the syndicated TV show, Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?

The resounding answer, among both Tea Partiers and establishment Republicans, was an emphatic No.

Then there was Rick Perry, the three-term governor of Texas, the anti-Ivy-League, state-university-educated athlete (cheerleader); the "Texecutioner" who's overseen 235 executions as governor (impressive, but less per year than his predecessor, George W. Bush); the self-admitted "kind of guy" who packs a "Ruger .380 with laser sights loaded with hollow point bullets" and creates "mulch" out of "wily creatures" by blowing coyote brain fragments all over the Austin outskirts when he's out jogging (also athletic).  

As soon as Perry announced his candidacy, the "Bush-on-steroids" three-term Texas governor rose to the top of the polls, making Bachmann look like a bleeding heart lib-rull in contrast.

from MarioPiperni.com

But then suddenly his macho man persona met reality – in the form of live television. The media critics judged his first three debate performances as "dismal," "toxic," "inarticulate," and "amateurish," and the hype surrounding Perry faded quickly. After going from zero to 32 percent, leading the pack by as much as 12 points soon after his campaign announcement, Perry's approval rating was halved, his temporary frontrunner status lost, in less than three weeks.

Of course, Mitt Romney's been there all along. For whatever (probably purely personal) reason, he's still in the race. And he's still a Mormon. The "objective" mass media won't make an issue of his religious faith because that wouldn't be fair, but they can't help talking about how the other Republican candidates, the incumbent, and the press itself won't touch "the Mormon issue" with a 10-foot pole for fear of being castigated (by the media – ironic?) for pulling the religion card. Romney's faith is a sensitive subject, and Mormon-bashing isn't much different than attacking a candidate's family, but everyone knows it's a valid subject if only because Republicans don't have a history of religious diversity in their presidential nominee selections.

The elections of the first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy, and the first black president, Barack Obama, were historic. But both these men were Democrats, nominated by the Democratic Party and elected by Democratic voters. Republicans have no precedent to speak of when it comes to party diversity.

Instead of going straight at Romney, the media have highlighted "the Mormon issue" by talking about how it's not an issue. This sort of "reporting" is considered safe, a politically-correct Green Zone for reporters covering the campaigns, because they aren't advocating that anyone actually make an issue of "the Mormon issue." But by talking about "the Mormon issue" they're nonetheless making an issue of "the Mormon issue."

Though it's possible for Romney to win the nomination in spite of his religion, it won't be for lack of want or lack of hesitancy over his still very controversial personal faith. And until conservative Christians make a public spectacle of Romney's Mormonism – which they will, soon, as already 20 percent of conservatives say a Mormon candidate won't get their vote – it's not as if the mainstream media's assault weapons cache is empty.

[Texas Gov. Rick] Perry's campaign is targeting Romney's already well-known and highly publicized record of flip-flopping – on abortion, gay marriage, health care reform, the assault weapons ban, auto industry bailouts, stem cell research, campaign finance reform and spending limits, immigration reform, "Don't Ask Don't Tell," the provisions of the American Jobs Act... – from "Is Romney's Campaign Seeking a Texas-style Death Penalty?"

Romney has never been the favorite, and he won't be even if he wins the nomination.

What's interesting, though, is that every candidate who was seriously considered as a potential victor in the 2012 showdown has decided not to enter the race. (For clarification purposes, I'm definitely not referring to Sarah Palin, who's repetitious delays in announcing a potential presidential bid, I believe, were meant purely for publicity purposes. See "The Tragicomedy of Sarah Palin.") 

There was Mitch Daniels, who proclaimed he could beat Obama both before and after he announced he wouldn't enter the race. There was Mike Pence, who was considered one who could flatter Tea Partiers and secure the support of establishment Republicans. 

For a spell, Donald Trump basked in the limelight of a potential presidential bid, but his insistence on Obama's falsified birth certificate blew whatever support he may have had from sane Republicans right out the window. 

William Perlman / The Star-Ledger

Most recently, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was the source of inspiration for those left so desperately wanting in this GOP presidential race.

He is a "national hero to the Tea Party" and would have been an "automatic frontrunner" had he entered the race.

Mark McKinnon said "Christie creates an instant media tsunami and could surf his way through the first primaries on the late-breaking strength of the wave," and Politico's Alexander Burns added that "if Christie stays out of the race and Barack Obama wins another term, he risks looking like a guy who let down his party in its moment of need."

Both Nancy Reagan and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger encouraged Christie to run, with Kissinger, who has worked with seven presidents, arguing that what matters is character and judgment, and that "Christie has both."

Unfortunately, what Christie doesn't have is the motivation to lose. Similar to Daniels and Pence, Christie saw the writing on the wall – which was also scribbled in a third-grader's handwriting on a protest sign at a Tea Party rally.

It read: "We hate you unless we love you, and if we love you, our endorsement will make you look like a radical in the general election and you'll lose."

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.)

Tea and Cantaloupe

By Capt. Fogg

It's a perfect example of how government always interferes with the sacred market forces that keep us free, happy and doctrinally pure. That OBAHma has gone after the free and holy food producers, using that Communist agency the FDA to keep infected cantaloupes off the market -- a market that would, sayeth the Rand, regulate itself after enough people die, by scaring the survivors into staying away from fruit and eating the sanctioned BurgerfriesCoke meal like real Americans. Can you imagine? (Would you like to supersize your fries?)

I mean what greater freedom can we have than freedom from the knowledge of good and bad food and if OBAHma can tell us what to eat, he can tell us anything, that tyrant. And where does the money wasted on things like the FDA and FEMA and the FAA come from? TAXES, that's right, those fruits of our own unassisted labor of which we owe no portion to anyone much less those Commie bastards in Washington who want to give MY MONEY away to those undeserving leeches who won't work for less than minimum wage and have the effrontery to vote for Democrats.

No sir, I don't want those government schools brainwashing my kids with math and science and economics and twisted history. People are poor because they are lazy and because God put them here as an example to us, the elect and we don't need those America-hating, Godless, OBAHma loving liberals telling us otherwise. No sir, my house isn't going to blow down or get washed away or burned by a brushfire and if yours does, it's not my fault or responsibility. If the roads and bridges wash out, you can fix them yourself, you lazy, tax loving bums. I mean I worked hard for everything I got and I don't owe you shit.

God Bless America.

Cross posted from Human Voices)

The power of enemies: How Obama will surge ahead in 2012

By Nicholas Wilbur

Americans hate Congress but love their congressmen. They loathe big government and support budget cuts but can't part with any of the specific programs that contribute most to the national debt.

via Business Insider

Polls show a neck-and-neck race when respondents have the option of choosing a generic Republican to go up against President Obama in the 2012 general election, but when respondents are forced to pick between the incumbent and one of the eight candidates in the Republican primary race, polls give Obama a much wider margin of victory.

The president's American Jobs Act received a "lukewarm" reception when it was announced, with 45 percent of Americans supporting it, but the specifics of the bill polled much better: 

  

• 56 percent support payroll tax cuts;

• 52 percent support state aid to prevent public-sector layoffs;

• 80 percent support infrastructure investments; and

• 81 percent support small business tax cuts.

What all of these trends and statistics have in common is that they all show the power of faceless enemies.

My prediction is that when the primary ends and the Republican Party officially announces its presidential nominee, Obama's national popularity, his re-election odds, and his unimpressive 44 percent job approval rating will all rise.

Barack Obama's biggest problem isn't the economy or the Tea Party. It's not even that he's too nice, too accommodating, too pragmatic, or too open to compromise.

It's that he doesn't have an enemy. 

 

The economy is the biggest concern for Americans right now. But the economy has no face. It has no name, no agenda, no talking points to be critiqued by the media, no gaffes that go viral on the web, no shady campaign donors or fanatical religious beliefs to cast doubt on its leadership abilities. It can't hurt Obama's re-election odds that a majority of Americans still blame George W. Bush for the current state of the economy, but Obama doesn't have the option of campaigning against the economy or Bush. People want answers, not finger-pointing. 

The Tea Party may be the most obvious thorn in the administration's side, particularly because its strictly anti-government radicalism has been embraced by today's mainstream Republican Party and the 2012 GOP presidential candidates. But the Tea Party isn't a person either.

One can't make an enemy out of a leaderless group of astroturfers, especially when the main appeal of the "movement" is that it gives anti-government fanatics permission to bark racial slurs, construct misspelled anti-Obama protest signs, and show up to rallies dressed in goofy outfits – Uncle Sam suits, Native American headdresses, 18th-century Paul Revere garb (sans the "bells and whistles"), and, sometimes, for whatever reason, Captain America costumes.

When grandma makes a racially inappropriate comment, you don't chastise her and call her a bigot. You shrug it off, ignore her, and change the subject. Out of respect for grandma, that is exactly how Obama has dealt with the Tea Party. But to a fault. Neither Obama nor Democrats nor progressives have mounted a counterattack.

Tea Party members targeted Obama as Public Enemy No. 1 even before Rick Santelli coined the term "Tea Party." Filibuster-happy and Tea Party-fearing Republicans in Congress have since adopted the anti-constitutionalist language of the far right as a justification for thwarting the president's agenda. Not only have they tried to repeal every major initiative he's signed, but they've threatened to shut down the government and force America into default when their exact demands aren't met.

Disgruntled progressives who confused "Change We Can Believe In" for a neoliberal mandate have accused the president of being a sellout, a "progressive in name only," a traitor, and a closeted conservative.

The weight of America's political, economic, and social problems has understandably fallen on Obama's shoulders alone. He is the president of the United States, the leader of the free world, and therefore the common, everyday face of the enemy not only for the 58 million Americans who preferred a McCain-Palin White House but also for the moderate Americans who can't escape the daily beatings Obama takes at the hands of Tea Party-favored presidential candidates, Tea Party-indebted Congress members, and Tea Party-obsessed media.

He has been called a socialist, a communist, a fascist, a "dick," a racist, a foreign-born Manchurian candidate, and an anti-Christ. Artists have depicted him as the Joker, Hitler, Stalin, an ape, and a voodoo doll.

More recently, the Republican presidential candidates have met on stage for a series of nationally televised debates with one goal in mind: ousting Obama from the White House. While much media attention has been directed at the domestic policy differences between Perry and Romney and the foreign policy battles between Ron Paul and Rick Santorum, the common thread throughout each debate has been the consistency with which the individual candidates refocus their attacks away from each other and toward the incumbent. Presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann's repeated call to make Obama a "One! Term! President!" pretty well sums up the sentiments of the entire GOP field.

It is eight against one, and while the one has been stuck in unpopular battles with Congress over budget cuts and deficit negotiations, the eight have been traversing the country telling community after community, TV audience after TV audience, newspaper after newspaper, and radio host after radio host just how dismal this country has become because of President Obama.

That's all going to change.

Less than a year from now, Republicans voters across the country will have cast their ballots and decided the party's next presidential nominee, and he (or, possibly but very unlikely, she) will quickly bear the burden of representing all that the Teapublican Party stands for. He (or... Bachmann) will be tasked with the seemingly impossible goal of turning a fringe movement into a majority movement.

By then, Obama will be in permanent campaign mode, a terrifying prospect for any Republican challenger given the expectations that the incumbent – who was called a "campaign genius," a "behemoth," and a "grassroots machine" in 2008 – will raise at least $1 billion in the 2012 election cycle. He will not share the stage with eight candidates but with a single challenger who will have to explain his past legislative records and offer solutions to the current economic mess.

Obama will finally have an "Other," a challenger with a face, a record, and a vision for America that will have to resonate far beyond the Tea Party demographic.

The staunch idealists of the far left who believe Obama is a "progressive in name only" may be loathe to "abandon their principles" and choose the lesser of two evils, but soon they will be awakened to just how vast the gap is between their bipartisan, pragmatic incumbent and the partisan ideologue chosen as the GOP's presidential nominee.

One made universal health care law; the other (no matter which Republican wins) has vowed to repeal it. One fought for equal pay legislation for women, the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the DREAM Act, the Zadroga 9/11 first responders health-care bill, and a generation's worth of other progressive initiatives; the other wants to cut taxes on millionaires and corporations, and supports privatizing Social Security and voucherizing Medicare. One wants to invest in the nation's future – infrastructure, education, green technology, and innovation – and make America competitive on the international level; the other believes a broke and helpless government is the best government, and that federal assistance creates dependency rather than opportunity.

Woodrow Wilson once said, "If you want to make enemies, try to change something." Obama is trying. The problem to date has been the vast number of enemies he's created by trying to do exactly what he was elected to do in 2008: change Washington. By September 2012, the American people will have a face, an agenda, and a vision for America to compare and contrast with Obama's, and the progressives who thought change wasn't coming fast enough will be given a clear choice: progress that is slow, or a return to the old status quo.

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.)

Hatred in America and the future of the GOP

By Richard K. Barry

I know I'm not the first person to notice how mean the GOP has become ever since the Tea Party started calling the shots. Now, you may say that none of this will matter, at least electorally, because so many people are sufficiently frightened about their own future that meanness is okay with them. I just don't think so. I not only choose to believe that the majority of people want to see themselves as compassionate, but that they will become very uncomfortable with too much ugliness in politics and shrink from those who seem to encourage it.

So, what has led Steve Benen and others to point out the current unpleasantness in the GOP? Here are just a few examples from recent GOP presidential debates: 

Wolf Blitzer posed a hypothetical scenario to Ron Paul, asking about a young man who makes a good living, but decides to forgo health insurance. Then, tragedy strikes and he needs care. Paul stuck to the libertarian line. "But congressman," the moderator said, "are you saying that society should just let him die?"

And at that point, some in the audience shouted, "Yeah," and applauded. 

Even Rick Perry said afterwards that he was "taken aback" by cheers from the crowd on this one.

Speaking of Perry, his defence of his policy in Texas to provide educational opportunities for the children of illegal immigrants made him a target of a crowd that normally loved everything he had to say. It seemed for a moment that they might advance on him

What's more, note that in last week's debate, the mere observation that Perry has signed off on the executions of 234 people in Texas, more than any other governor in modern times, was enough to generate applause from a different GOP audience.

Come to think of it, Perry didn't seem overly worried about that response.

I'm just saying that the kind of red meat that these radical conservatives seem to want is, I believe, going to be too much for those all important swing voters, and, I think, the GOP establishment knows it and is worried about it.

This isn't about differences in attitude about policy. People do disagree about what we should do about the uninsured, and the death penalty, and the children of illegal immigrants. But the spitefulness, the, let's call it what it is, the hatred expressed in outbursts like the ones noted above are not only an indication of a warped sense of values, but they are held by people who most of the rest of us would rather not be near, given a choice.

We can disagree about what to do about difficult problems, but, as human beings, we should recognize the tragedy in so many of these situations and not cheer or seethe at the predicament of others.

It's not surprising that the Tea Party, as a movement, is increasingly unpopular with Americans. If we wake up soon enough we may even realize in time that this sort of vicious individualism is not who we are as a nation.

That's what I hope.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Even Rick Perry thinks the pro-death Tea Party is crazy

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Well, okay, maybe not. He's one of them, enthusiastically, if with a bit more of a theocratic bent.

Still, it says something about the Tea Party that even Perry -- the guy who gets a kick executing people, who denies climate science, who calls Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, who thinks that prayer is the way to deal with disastrous drought, who sees a Biblical purpose in economic catastrophe (and human suffering), who has suggested sending troops into Mexico to wage the drug war, and who may very well be a Texas secessionist (and perhaps a neo-Confederate nationalist) -- was "taken aback" by a particularly disturbing response from Tea Party members at the GOP debate the other night:

The morning after a sometimes-rocky appearance in front of a Tea Party debate audience, Gov. Rick Perry said he was "taken aback" by cheers from some crowd members on a hypothetical question of whether a young man who decides not to buy health insurance should be refused care if he develops a life-threatening illness and be left to die.

"I was a bit taken aback by that myself," Perry told NBC News and the Miami Herald after appearing at a breakfast fundraiser in Tampa.

"We're the party of life. We ought to be coming up with ways to save lives."

Well, fine, though of course Perry is pro-death in terms of the death penalty, and, more broadly, the GOP is hardly a "party of life," unless "life" is defined strictly in terms of opposition to abortion rights.

Consider, for example, its opposition to universal health care, leaving tens of millions of people to the mercy, to the extent it has any, of the insurance industry. Or consider its views on poverty -- or on those entitlement programs, including Social Security, that help people stay afloat, if only barely.

Or its views on guns, with its ideal of a society of armed citizens on the brink of bloodthirsty violence.

Or its aggressively militaristic foreign policy, its rampant warmongering, its view that American power can be maximized through military force.

The fact is, the Republican Party would like to subject everyone to the brutality of the "free" market, including by denying even a basic safety net to those who through no fault of their own need some help, with the rest of the world reduced to serving that market.

A party of life? Please. It's nothing of the sort. Perry may have been "taken aback," but, honestly, what did he expect?

Does it surprise any of us that the Tea Party, a core component of today's Republican Party, applauds death?

Ron Paul: liberal

By Capt. Fogg

Some people like to dismiss Ron Paul as a simple minded extremist loony. I don't think that's fair and not just because I'm often dismissed with the same simple mindedness by the same simple minds. Yes, I think Dr. Paul does take many things to an extreme point, but you know -- sometimes he's right and sometimes so far to the right that he comes back around the spherical universe and appears on the left.

When he was booed at last night's Tea Party "debate," he was booed as a liberal, not as the dogmatic, theory obsessed, quasi-anarchist and not-too-bright demagogue he's been portrayed as. He was booed for not bleating and re-bleating the recorded message about why "they" hate us, which, if truth ever be told, isn't for our freedom: a thing that in fact has a larger following amongst Muslims that can be allowed by the Jingoistic braying of the party for which the jackass is not the symbol -- but for the reality.

The reality is and the reality has been that not only al Qaeda but others have hated the US government for interfering in Middle East, for rightly or wrongly supporting Israel, for building military bases in places they see as sacred and for supporting oppressive governments because they were "anti-Communist" and willing to exploit their resources for our benefit.

Who else in the Republican Party is willing to step outside the passion play and challenge the formula: they hate us because we're all good and always good and so we have to hate them -- all of them, all of the time? 

This whole idea that the whole Muslim world is responsible for this and their attacking us because we’re free and prosperous, that is just not true,

he said last night. But what set the snarling beasts off their feed was: 

Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda have been explicit, and they wrote and said that we attacked because you had bases on our holy lands in Saudi Arabia, you do not give Palestinians a fair treatment.

Which quite plainly is true.

The Tea Party picture of human and natural events needs to be presented in such high contrast that any smudge of darkness on our pure white character must be erased; there are no grays or colors and one is either the favorite angel of God or Satan's most foul smelling demon. To admit that any of our sacred military endeavors was not waged in defense of our alleged "freedom" puts one on the odiforous side and so yes, the Battleship Maine was blown up by the evil, freedom hating Spanish between bouts of raping American women and God really did want us to have the continent and our conquest thereof was just like the rape of Jericho only slower. It's anathema to suggest that we were not protecting our freedom by killing millions of Vietnamese or destroying Iraq and those who think and those who know must then be devils for suggesting that anything we ever have done might ever have made anything worse for us or anyone else of God's elect.

We have to believe, as we've been told, that "liberals" would have preferred to "psychoanalyze" al Qaeda than to retaliate, that Democrats unanimously voted against the odious Patriot Act when in fact their support was (sadly) unanimous. Facts don't matter and for the Tea Party only feelings matter and the only feelings they have are greed, anger and hate. If you're not unquestionably in support of everything we do; if you don't hate enough and hate whom we tell you to; if you don't think everything we do in anger isn't ipso facto God's will, you're our natural enemy even if you're Ron Paul and even if most people think you're so far right, you're wrong.

This time Ron Paul is right and it's time to question the people who say government is always wrong when they simultaneously say it's always right.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Smartest Republican of the Day: Chuck Hagel

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I've always liked Chuck Hagel -- at least as much as I can like any Republican. Consider his typically sober assessments of the Iraq War, for example, and his disdain for ideological extremism, the currency of today's GOP.

Here's some of what I wrote about him back in September 2007 after he announced he wouldn't be running for president:

Of course, Hagel no doubt saw
the writing on the wall. There is simply no future for him in
Republican presidential politics -- not now, perhaps not in his
lifetime. He could have held on to his safe Senate seat -- an alluring
proposition, one imagines -- but for what, to what end? Just to be
there, just to be a senator? And as a Republican, for a party that seems
to have no room for someone like him in its increasingly narrow and
fundamentalist tent? To be sure, Hagel is a solid conservative
Republican on many issues that matter to Republicans -- on taxes, for
example, but also on social conservative "values" issues that mean so
much to the Republican base. But on Iraq, on the issue that has so
divided Republicans, and the country, he want his own way, a realist,
refusing to follow the president and the warmongers and the madmen in
his party, so much of his party, further into what he knew, like so many
others, to be a quagmire, a worsening one, one from which there would
be no easy remove, one that was proving to be ever more catastrophic,
both in and of itself and for his party and his country.



On
Iraq, he proved to be a maverick, a critic, an independent-minded
Republican -- and Republicans dislike such rebels, not to mention
independent thought, particularly so now, in a time of war, of
trumped-up war, endless war. You're either with them or against them, to
rephrase Bush, and he was against them, forcefully so, and with
integrity, credibility.

And where did that get him? He was basically excommunicated, dismissed by a party, his party, that was become ever more extreme.

Well, he's still not pulling any punches, and one of his targets continues to be the Republican Party:

Former GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel (NE) can't muster any praise for his
Republican colleagues' behavior in Congress over the past few months. In
an interview
with the Financial Times, Hagel blasted GOP leadership for their "irresponsible actions" during the debt ceiling debacle, noting that "I
think about some of the presidents we've had on my side of the aisle -- Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr., go right through them, Eisenhower -- they
would be stunned."



"Disgusted" with the debt ceiling negotiations, Hagel called it "an
astounding lack of responsible leadership by many in the Republican
party, and I say that as a Republican." "Does anyone not believe what's
happened here the last couple weeks in the market was not a complete,
direct result of the lack of confidence that came out of that folly,
that embarrassment?" he asked...



Asked about Tea Party influence, Hagel said the Republican party is too
captive to a movement that is "very ideological" and "very narrow." "I've never seen so much intolerance as I've seen today," he said. Later
surveying the GOP 2012 field, Hagel said the party may need to rebuild,
agreeing that Republicans are now "too far to the right."

So far, in fact, that even Reagan wouldn't be deemed conservative enough, extreme enough, and the White Bolsheviks who control the party would probably try to push him aside were it not for his reputation, just as they have tried to purge so many from their ranks, often successfully.

Maybe it's a good thing Hagel retired from the Senate. Otherwise he'd be viciously attacked for saying this, and for his various "incorrect," "heretical" positions generally. The attacks may still come, to the extent anyone on the right is still paying attention to him, but at least they can't take his seat from him.

Chuck Hagel may still call himself a Republican, but the Republican Party these days has no use for the likes of Chuck Hagel. He's just too sensible and thoughtful a man.