GOP

Cantor Defends The Indefensible

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

michele bachmann

 

In this case “the indefensible” refers to Michele Bachmann, also known as “Minnesota Palin”.

Eric Cantor – “Young Gun”, darling of the right and sadly House Majority Leader – has come out in defence of the Bachmann Witchhunts, and her attempts to smear US government workers by drawing tortuous and far-fetched links tying them to the Muslim Brotherhood or other radical Islamist organisations. Cantor, always one to try to out-conservative his boss, House Speaker John Boehner (even Boehner denounced the actions of Bachmann and her paranoid accomplices), came out swinging in an interview for CBS and refused to criticise or moderate Bachmann’s stance.

Politico reports:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) Friday defended Rep. Michele Bachmann’s questioning of a top Hillary Clinton aide’s loyalty to the United States, saying the Minnesota lawmaker’s “concern was about the security of the country.”

Ah, well now I think I understand. We can say what we like and cast any aspersions we wish about a person’s character or patriotism, so long as we do so out of a concern for the security of America.

So here’s my attempt:

Michele Bachmann is a dangerously ignorant politician. Worryingly, and despite the fact that she sits on the House Foreign Intelligence Committee, she remains as woefully unknowledgeable about foreign affairs as she is on the history of her own country. She is deliberately divisive, will stoop at nothing to stoke the fears and resentments of those equally ignorant as her for political gain, and in doing so is undermining the fabric of American society and government. Her husband and family hold Swiss citizenship. As we all know, Switzerland is a neutral country and historically has not sided with the United States in some of the most important issues and conflicts in our nation’s history. I am sure I am not the only one concerned that Bachmann’s torn loyalties between the country of her birth and that of her husband might lead her to use her prominent position to influence US government policy in favour of the Swiss and at the expense of the United States. – Samuel Hooper, 30th July 2012.

And I say this not through any personal animus, but out of a genuine concern and fear for the future safety of the United States of America. So it’s okay.

I look forward to Eric Cantor’s endorsement.

Giant Tax Increase Or Cynical Nonsense?

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Twenty-four hours after the US Supreme Court handed down their ruling on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare, and the Republican Party’s initial line of attack against the new reality is starting to emerge. (1) Push, at every opportunity, the line that ObamaCare represents a massive tax increase for all Americans, and (2) sow fear that the IRS is poised to start hammering at the doors of the uninsured (a group for which the GOP seems to have suddenly developed strong and protective feelings of filial loyalty) with threats of wage garnishment or prison.

As this piece from Politico, discussing Romney’s likely response to the SCOTUS decision, says:

To the Romney campaign, the ruling left the ACA looking like a richer target than ever: The justices upheld the law — leaving its unpopular provisions intact as a campaign issue — but did so on the grounds that the mandate requiring all Americans to purchase insurance is a “tax,” a traditionally easy target for Republicans.

One strategist aligned with Romney called that “the best-case scenario of it being upheld: It’s upheld as nothing but a massive tax hike.”

“President Obama just turned GOP intensity amps up to 11,” the strategist said.

And in this article, the new line of argument is laid bare:

Everyone from tea party stars to establishmentarians to possible 2016 presidential contenders seized on the tax language in the Supreme Court’s 5-4 majority opinion, which included Chief Justice John Roberts.

“‘Obamacare’ raises taxes on the American people by approximately $500 billion,” said Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. “‘Obamacare’ cuts Medicare by approximately $500 billion. And even with those cuts, and tax increases, ‘Obamacare’ adds trillions to our deficits and to our national debt and pushes those obligations on to coming generations.”

Unfortunately for the GOP, there is precious little evidence to support either of their new assertions. My stance on the Republican Party’s new line of argument against ObamaCare is this:

  • If you are a hard-pressed middle class American doing the ‘right’ thing and keeping health insurance either individually or through your employer, exactly how does ObamaCare represent a tax increase for you? You don’t have to pay the ‘fine’, and your insurance premiums should actually start to fall as more healthy people are brought into the insurance pool.
  • If you are doing the ‘wrong’ thing and not buying health insurance when you could afford to, then surely you are a parasite within the system, clogging up emergency rooms when your untreated conditions come to a head, and leaving yourself unable to pay any unplanned medical expenses that you incur, forcing insurance companies to charge higher premiums to everyone. That’s not exactly responsible citizenry, so are Republicans really going to act aghast in horror that this group of people will have to pay a fine, or a ‘tax’ as interpreted by the Supreme Court, to compensate for the negative externality that they are creating?
  • If you are doing the ‘wrong’ thing and not buying health insurance because you cannot afford to, the government will help you to buy it in the private marketplace, as I understand it using funds raised from fining people with the ability to pay who choose not to.

To me, the embryonic Republican response to defeat at the Supreme Court appears to be dumbed-down politics at its worst. Having had their well-worn argument that ObamaCare is a gross constitutional overreach taken away, they have reverted to the tax increase argument, not because there is any compelling evidence to support it but because of a semantic technicality in the language of the Supreme Court’s ruling. Republicans love to be on the side of defending people against higher taxes – a very worthy stance, and one which I share – but are they really going in to bat now exclusively for people who freely choose not to purchase health insurance, and burden everyone else with the costs of that attendant risk? I think I would almost rather be known for advocating tax cuts just for billionnaires.

It is too early yet to see how this new GOP line of attack will play in the media and the opinion polls, but given the fact that I managed to deconstruct it on my blog in less than ten minutes, I do hope (and sadly it is hope rather than expect) that proponents of the Affordable Care Act will be able to do so with even more effectiveness, and show this sudden Republican concern about ‘raising taxes’ on the willingly uninsured to be the cynical nonsense that it is.

My Turn To Be President

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Politico reports on Jeb Bush’s surprisingly frank confession that he believes 2012 was his “time” to run for the presidency, and that he may now have missed his chance:

“This was probably my time,” Bush told “CBS This Morning,” referring to the ongoing presidential campaign. “There’s a window of opportunity, in life, and for all sorts of reasons.”

 

I think we can all quite happily do without a third member of the Bush dynasty ascending to the presidency and making a mockery of American meritocracy. Thanks for sitting this round out, Jeb.

That said, the Florida Republican doesn’t know whether he ever wants to be president.

“Have you made a decision that you don’t want to be president?” asked CBS host Charlie Rose.

“I have not made that decision,” Bush responded.

Uh-oh.

Dancing With Yourself

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Tea Party Protest - Barack Obama

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It is hard to disagree with this assessment of recent GOP obstructionism from Jamelle Bouie at The American Prospect:

The crux of the matter:

If I sound frustrated—and I am—it’s because we’re in the middle of an absolutely ludicrous scenario. Under a Republican president, the United States endured eight years of disastrous economic stewardship—arguably the worst of the post-war era—that nearly led to a second Great Depression. In response, voters elected a Democratic president and gave him huge majorities in both chambers of Congress. Rather than work with the new president, Republicans ran to the right and promised to defeat this president by any means necessary. They abused institutional rules to block nominees, and imposed a de-facto super-majority requirement on all legislation. Republicans rejected stimulus, the automobile rescue, a climate bill built from their ideas, a health care bill built from their ideas, and a reform bill designed to keep the Great Recession from happening again.

This was an amazingly successful strategy. It destroyed Democratic standing with the public, energized the right-wing fringe, and led to a historic victory in the House of Representatives. Once in command of the House, Republicans pushed hugely draconian budgets, risked a government shutdown, and nearly caused a second economic collapse by threatening to default on the nation’s debt. This reckless behavior depressed the economy, prolonged the recovery, and destroyed trust in the nation’s political institutions. The Speaker of the House has even promised to do this again, if Democrats don’t bow to his demands for greater spending cuts.

The Republican party of today has drifted so far – not just to the right, but into the realm of crazy, where the eight years of disastrous Bush economic stewardship apparently never happened, and the economic malaise is entirely Obama’s fault – that it’s hard for me to see how I could ever bring myself to vote for them. I have joined firmly with those who are hoping for a complete electoral landslide in the upcoming presidential elections, to perhaps convince the GOP to tack back toward a reasonable, pragmatic conservatism.

Of course, this would have been easier if one of the crazies had managed to wrest the nomination away from Mitt Romney. As it is, we will probably have to wait until Romney’s likely defeat in 2012, and then a further tack to the right and an even bigger defeat in 2016 before we might finally have a viable choice between two parties again.

As Long As It Keeps Us Safe

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

CISPA - Congress

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Too often, the Republican Party’s already-tenuous commitment to civil liberties and privacy goes out the window at the first mention of national security

The late Ronald Reagan, now viewed as something close to a saint by many Republican minds, for deeds both real and imagined, once said this:

“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help'”.

Engage a committed Republican or conservative voter in conversation for any length of time and you will hear all about their passionate belief in limited government, and the inherent dangers of an overactive, overbearing state. I believe in that ideal myself. And certainly the GOP believes in individual liberty and privacy, and the freedom to pursue happiness, right? Always has.

Well, now congressional Republicans seem to have settled on a new mantra, that goes something like this:

“The twelve most benign words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to protect you from terrorism'”.

Because, of course, the ideological compromises required to perch on the wobbly three-legged conservative stool (social conservatism, hawkish defense stance and very limited regulation of markets) mean that all those Republican platitudes about keeping government out of our lives are tossed out of the window as soon as it comes to “keeping our country safe”, “securing the homeland” or “stopping the terrorists”.

This is made clear once again as the Republican-controlled congress debates the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), which is, of course, supported by the GOP. Apparently we were supposed to just smile and nod and ignore the cognitive dissonance caused by hearing Republicans rail against Obama’s supposed expansion of the federal government while simultaneously acting to expand the scope and power of the federal government.

As Juan Williams points out in his article on TheHill.com:

The Republican majority in the House is on the side of giving Internet service providers, private companies and the government a whole new box of tools to fight terrorism. That includes the right for the government and private business to share information on how to build protections against cyberthreats. Under the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, Internet service providers will be free of any legal restraint against disclosing any information to prevent a terror attack.

The big surprise here is that the support for the GOP position includes most of the Tea Party Caucus, including conservative rock stars Michele Bachmann and Allen West. They normally condemn any increase in government power.

Also in that camp is Maryland Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. He is co-sponsor of CISPA. In fact, about a quarter of House Democrats voted for the bill. Several big high-tech companies, from Microsoft to Facebook, have voiced their support for the GOP approach.

The bill enjoys a measure of bipartisan support, which makes it all the more dangerous, because if enough Democrats-who-don’t-know-any-better join enough Republicans-who-should-know-better, the thing could actually become law.

Williams concludes:

Last week, the Department of Homeland Security released a video of al Qaeda calling for electronic jihad.

But an essential part of the America being protected is our civil liberties, our constitutional freedoms.

“People Power” stopped the online piracy bill because it was too heavy-handed. Once again, it will be up to “People Power,” to make sure that when the House and Senate go into conference on this bill they do not emerge talking about good intentions while putting the nation on the path to George Orwell’s hell – Big Brother watching your every move.

Agreed. Enough is enough. Warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detentions, targeted killings of US citizens by unmanned drones, everything about the Patriot Act, long lines at the airport to go through intrusive, demeaning and pointless security checks designed to guard against the last clever terrorist ruse rather than anticipate the next one – and don’t even get me started on Britain, where there is no pesky written constitution to stop overzealous politicians from overreacting to every security incident with new draconian legislation – the list grows longer by the day.

Let’s hope that there are enough level heads remaining in congress to prevent CISPA from becoming law.

 

CISPA

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