It’s the Obama, Stupid

Over at Political Animal, Steve Benen joined the discussion over Tim Pawlenty’s recent remark that “Any doofus can go to Washington.” (There has been a good deal of mirth in the wake of that remark, actually–since one interpretation is that Pawlenty himself is something of a “doofus.” ) But viewed in context, Pawlenty seemed to be complaining about the lack of bold action from both Congress and the Administration.

Benen noted the disconnect between Pawlenty’s complaint and the Tea Party’s dark view of President Obama.

“But what I found especially interesting about this line was Pawlenty trying to label President Obama as someone who wants to “maintain the status quo.” For a while now, it was a given in Republican circles that Obama was a wild-eyed radical trying to undo the entire American experiment, turning everything we hold dear upside down. The president, we were told, was responsible for pursuing too much change, too quickly. It led conservatives to stand athwart history, yelling, “Stop.”

And yet, Pawlenty apparently doesn’t see it that way. Obama, we’re told, isn’t radical enough when it comes to change.”

I usually agree with Benen’s analyses, but on this one, he misses the obvious. A substantial percentage of Americans–mostly Republicans–have a blind, irrational hatred of Barack Obama–and unlike the well-documented detestation of George W. Bush, that hatred is not a product of anything the President has or hasn’t done. Those who see an equivalency are quite simply wrong–Bush had sky-high favorability ratings the first couple of years of his first term and didn’t really hit bottom until after he was re-elected. In other words, as we got to know him, many of us came to loathe him. But it wasn’t immediate, and it wasn’t rooted in who he was. It was a reaction to what he did.

The animosity to Obama was immediate–even before he assumed office. And it is hard to believe that most of the animus–the accusations of “otherness,” the reluctance to believe he wrote his own books and excelled at Harvard and the like–aren’t a product of his skin color.

If Barack Obama suddenly walked on water, cured lepers with a touch, and had a halo, these people would accuse him of being an extraterrestrial invader.

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Holiday Quickie

And no, not THAT kind of quickie. A very short post.

Daily Kos today: “Michelle Bachmann is announcing her run for president. God help us.” To which I would only add, a country in which anyone takes crazy Michelle Bachmann seriously as a candidate for any office, let alone the Presidency, may be beyond redemption.

Happy Memorial Day.

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Appropriate Snark

I see where the Superintendent of Schools of a small district in Michigan reacted to draconian cuts to education in that state with a nice piece of snark: He wrote a letter to the editor proposing to turn his schools into prisons, since spending on prisons was protected from the deep cuts imposed on other state functions.

He had a point.

The Governor of Michigan–one of the current crop of crazed right-wing “true believers”–insists that the state needs to cut spending, which it undoubtedly does. But where does he propose to make those cuts?  He proposes to reduce K-12 spending by nearly a billion dollars (yes, that’s not a typo–a billion dollars), to significantly reduce spending for universities and community colleges, and to make further cuts in Michigan’s already meager welfare payments. Along with his obedient legislature, he also raised taxes on pensions for seniors.

At the same time, he got the legislature to lower business taxes by $1.8 billion. This isn’t even “class war”–it’s insanity.

I understand there is a recall movement underway. For the sake of the people living in Michigan, I hope it succeeds.

Why Evidence Matters

Steve Benen has an important post up today at Political Animal, discussing the GOP’s recently-unveiled and badly misnamed “Jobs bill.”

As Benen points out, “the jobs agenda, such as it is, is practically a conservative cliche: the GOP wants massive tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation, more coastal oil drilling, and huge cuts to public investment. Republicans are confident this will work wonders, just as they were equally confident about the identical agenda in the last decade, and the decade before that, and the decade before that.

Indeed, the most glaring problem with the GOP jobs agenda is that it won’t work, but nearly as painful is the realization that it’s already been tried, over and over again, to no avail. They either haven’t heard the famous axiom about trying failure repeatedly and expecting a different result, or they don’t care.

The agenda is the agenda: tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation, cut public investments. Good times and bad, deficit or surplus, war or peace, it just doesn’t matter.”

The entire post is well worth reading.

Way back when I became politically active, I bought into the theory that tax cuts for the wealthy would spur investment, and that investment would create jobs. It made a lot of sense; unfortunately, the evidence is pretty overwhelming that it doesn’t work that way.

The ability to change ones opinion when faced with new evidence is how humans learn and thrive. When people “double down” on beliefs even when faced with facts debunking those beliefs, we call that a delusion.

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