Tag Archives: GOP

How Far It Has Gone….

As Maddowblog has noted,” this has simply never happened before. There is no precedent in American history for Congress approving a massive new public benefit, a president signing it into law, the Supreme Court endorsing the benefit’s legality, and then having an entire political party actively and shamelessly working to sabotage the law.”

The law, of course, is the Affordable Care Act, aka “Obamacare.”

It isn’t only the 39 votes to repeal the ACA–votes for repeal that GOP Congressmen know are entirely symbolic and will die in the Senate.  As several media sources have reported, Republican Congressmen are now refusing to help constituents who call their offices with questions. “We know how to forward a phone call,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah). He added, “[A]ll we can do is pass them back to the Obama administration. The ball’s in their court. They’re responsible for it.”

Then there are the Governors, like Indiana’s own Mike Pence, who are refusing to participate in Medicaid expansion, even though such refusal costs their state millions of federal dollars it would otherwise receive. (I won’t even dignify the Pence Administration’s recent bald-face lies about projected costs of individual health insurance policies.)

My question is: why?

The GOP has no alternative plan to offer, possibly because the ACA was the GOP’s approach, back when the party was composed of adults focused upon solving real problems. They don’t even pretend to have a different solution to a healthcare crisis that threatened to destroy  the American economy while leaving fifty million Americans uninsured.

They don’t want to solve the  problem. They just want to undo the solution that was cobbled together by that black guy in the White House and ushered through the process by the woman who was briefly Speaker–the solution that was acceptable to the insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies that had to be placated if anything was to be done.

I have real problems with Obamacare as policy, but I recognize that it is infinitely better than nothing. I also recognize that it is the best we could do politically. I am absolutely incapable of understanding what motivates these people who simply want to repeal it, without putting anything in its place. They clearly don’t give a rat’s you-know-what about the people who had no access to healthcare before the ACA. They don’t care about the small businesses that couldn’t compete for good employees because they couldn’t afford to offer healthcare. They don’t care about the fact that 50% of the personal bankruptcies that cost businesses dearly and are a drag on the economy are a result of medical costs incurred by uninsured and underinsured Americans. They don’t care that before the ACA, America was spending 2 1/2 times more than the next most expensive country for a system ranked 37th in the world.

All they seem to care about is beating that guy in the White House. If people have to suffer or die as a consequence, that’s tough. If the economy has to take a hit, so be it. Nothing, evidently, is as important as thwarting Barack Obama.

That’s how far it has gone.

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Political Kudzu

Recently, as we drove through North and South Carolina on our way to the beach, we were struck by the relative absence of the Kudzu we usually see climbing over telephone poles and fences, and generally taking over large swathes of the landscape. My husband wondered if agricultural researchers have finally found something to control it.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the saga of kudzu, it was originally brought to the US south from Asia–thought to be a low-maintenance plant that could be used along highways–an attractive plant requiring less mowing and less expense. To say that things didn’t quite work out that way would be a considerable understatement; as Wikipedia notes, kudzu

 is a serious invasive plant in the United States. It has been spreading in the southern U.S. at the rate of 150,000 acres (61,000 ha) annually, “easily outpacing the use of herbicide spraying and mowing, as well increasing the costs of these controls by $6 million annually.”[1] Its introduction has produced devastating environmental consequences.[2] This has earned it the nickname, “The vine that ate the South.“

Kudzu is the poster child for unintended consequences.

Kudzu makes me think of gerrymandering. No kidding.

The Republican Party, as everyone sentient knows, owes its majority in the House of Representatives to aggressive gerrymandering.(And yes, before commenters weigh in, I know that Democrats would engage in gerrymandering too, if they were in control of those statehouses.) But here’s the dilemma–by creating deep red districts safe from even the remotest Democratic threat, the GOP has created a party image that places recapture of the Presidency pretty much out of reach.

The problem is that these “safe” districts tend to elect the most extreme partisans–the crazies that embarrass the national party and turn off reasonable voters. If polls are to be believed, their antics have come to characterize the party in the popular imagination. For Democrats, they are the gift that keeps on giving–supplying fodder for campaign ads,  endless discussions by the television punditry and blog posts. Their presence–and lack of vulnerability–undercuts the efforts of the few adults left in the party to move the GOP at least slightly back toward the middle. As we have seen repeatedly (Farm Bill, immigration), Boehner cannot control them. Why should they listen to party leadership? They’re invulnerable.

These Representatives from the reddest of red districts can thwart responsible legislative efforts. They can bring Congress to a halt. Like Kudzu, they are incredibly destructive. But–also like kudzu–that destruction is indiscriminate. To the consternation of the grown-ups, they have become the Republican brand.

I don’t know whether agronomists have finally found a herbicide that controls kudzu. But unless the GOP figures out how to extricate itself from the unintended consequences of its own gerrymandering, even expanded voter suppression efforts won’t win it back the Presidency.

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Thought for a Workday Morning

According to various reports, Harry Reid is finally so fed up over the constant use/abuse of the filibuster, he is reconsidering “the nuclear option.” According to other reports, the massive overhaul of immigration that the Senate miraculously managed to pass is DOA in the House, where the Tea Party zealots who control the GOP adamantly oppose anything favored by the Administration, no matter how reasonable or humane or good for the country.

Wonder why our government doesn’t work?

Barack Obama ran for office using the slogan “Yes We Can” and the Republicans in Congress responded with a slogan of their own: “No You Can’t–we won’t let you.”

I had a couple of two-year-olds like that.

The problem is, when the equivalent of two-year-olds are preventing the grown-ups from running the country, we are all in BIG trouble.

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Depressing Thoughts for the 4th

Today, as we celebrate the birthday of our country, we might take a few moments to consider our polarized and paralyzed legislative process.

To take just one example, the odds are high that the GOP-controlled House will block immigration reform. Wonder why?

Blame gerrymandering.

Jared Bernstein laid it out recently in the Washington Post:

First, “only 38 of the House’s 234 Republicans, or 16%, represent districts in which Latinos account for 20% or more of the population.” Second, “only 28 Republican-held districts are considered even remotely at risk of being contested by a Democratic challenger, according to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.”

So for about 200 of the House’s Republicans, a primary challenge by conservatives angry over “amnesty” is probably a more realistic threat than defeat at the hands of angry Hispanic voters, or even angry Democrats.

This state of affairs is pernicious, but it is also difficult to change. Thanks to partisan redistricting and the precision of modern computer programs, voters no longer choose their representatives.  Representatives choose their voters. And as I have previously noted–and Bernstein’s article amply documents-gerrymandering exacerbates political polarization and gridlock.

In competitive districts, nominees know they have to run to the middle to win in the fall. When the primary is, in effect, the general election, the battle takes place among the party faithful, who tend to be much more ideological.  Republican incumbents will be challenged from the Right and Democratic incumbents from the Left. Even where those challenges fail, they are a powerful incentive for the incumbent to protect his flank. So we elect nominees beholden to the political extremes, who are unwilling or unable to compromise.

Since both parties gerrymander when they are in power, it has been virtually impossible to replace the current corrupt system with nonpartisan redistricting. We are stuck with the crazies for the foreseeable future.

Of course, so is the GOP.

Happy 4th.

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The Revenge of the “Elitists”?

Politico surveys the political landscape, and finds that the GOP has made itself toxic to high-information voters.

With their disdain for intellectuals, their flat refusal to acknowledge global warming, their denial of evolution and their inability to comprehend that rape can result in pregnancy, the modern, heavily tea-stained version of the Republican Party is simply unpalatable to the vast majority of scientists, professors and other educated professionals. As GOP candidates continue to pander to aging white religious fundamentalists and conspiracy theorists, they undermine their own hopes for reclaiming the White House in 2016.

….

As the Republican Party continues to dismiss man-made climate change, continues to ignore the biological realities of the female body and continues to appeal to xenophobia and anti-intellectualism, they will continue to dig their political grave. The GOP has become entirely dependent upon the White Evangelical Christian vote for its political survival. In the 2012 election while White Evangelicals gave Romney a whopping 78-21 margin, the rest of the nation collectively chose Barack Obama by a 60-37 landslide. Since White Evangelicals are now just over a quarter of the electorate and shrinking as a percentage each election cycle, the GOP’s pandering to their anti-science, anti-woman agenda will only hasten their demise as a competitive political party. If the party wishes to continue to disregard the theory of evolution, they may do so at their own peril. For if the GOP fails to evolve into a party that high information voters can again support, they will eventually face political extinction. The Republicans may do everything they can to suppress the votes of students, senior citizens, and minority voters with photo ID laws, but if they continue to remain politically toxic to the highly educated, they will continue to lose elections consistently, and no amount of voter suppression will be enough to save them.

If Politico is right, consciously choosing to remain “the party of stupid” is not a formula for continued success. I tend to agree–but boy, they’re doing a lot of damage in the meantime.

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