Tag Archives: GOP

Wrong is Wrong

Since the election of Barack Obama, the GOP–aka “the party of no”–has shown impressive discipline, putting party orthodoxy ahead of both the common good and, frequently, sanity. The Democrats, on the other hand, have happily confirmed Will Rogers’ great line: “I’m not a member of any organized political party; I’m a Democrat.” The left wing of the party has pretty constantly criticized the President for not doing more, not doing it more quickly, and not doing what they wanted.

I’ve considered much of this criticism unfair–often it has been the result of not understanding the constraints imposed by Separation of Powers, or the magnitude of the economic threat he inherited. Other complaints have had more merit–contrary to Republican rhetoric, for example, Obama has often seemed too willing to compromise, too reluctant to play hard-ball. But by far the most serious criticism has been his acceptance of Bush-era infringements on civil liberties.

This is a man who taught Constitutional law, a man who stood up for the rule of law as a Senator and who said all the right things as a candidate. It was a relief, after 8 years of a profoundly lawless administration, to cast a vote for someone who could be expected to respect Constitutional limits. That expectation has proved illusory, and Obama’s embrace of Bush-era surveillance measures has been painfully disappointing.

The recent announcement that the President would not veto the current Defense bill , however, is worse. While much of the bill is uncontroversial,  its counterterrorism section states that the entire world, including American soil, is a battlefield in the war on terror, and that the U.S. military thus has the authority to arrest and indefinitely detain anyone, even citizens, suspected of aiding terrorists.

I can’t think of anything more profoundly unAmerican.

It’s bad enough that large numbers of Congressmen and Senators support this assault on the Constitution and the rule of law. For Obama–who clearly knows better–to sign it is simply inexcusable.  Laura Murphy, the longtime head of the ACLU’s Washington office, said it best:

“If President Obama signs this bill, it will damage both his legacy and American’s reputation for upholding the rule of law. The last time Congress passed indefinite detention legislation was during the McCarthy era and President Truman had the courage to veto that bill. We hope that the president will consider the long view of history before codifying indefinite detention without charge or trial.”

In ordinary times, when we had two responsible political parties, the loyal opposition would provide a corrective to Executive Branch over-reaching. The saddest thing about the farce that is our current political environment is that no such counterbalance exists; indeed, the major movers of this appalling provision include Lindsay Graham and the ever-angrier John McCain. The same GOP that contests the power of the White House to reform health care evidently has no problem handing over the power to arrest and indefinitely detain American citizens.

We can only hope the Supreme Court remains sufficiently “activist” to invalidate this incredibly unAmerican measure.

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I Don’t Get It

There’s a pretty robust public debate–in which I’ve engaged–about the refusal of congressional Republicans to even consider raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans. That debate has centered around the practicality and morality of their position: practically, government needs the revenue that would be raised by what would historically be considered a very minimal raise in the rate; morally, it seems truly wrong to demand yet more sacrifice from the beleaguered middle class while giving the rich a pass.

That debate is worth having, but what I don’t get is the politics of the position.

I understand that the people who fund GOP campaigns–the Kochs, the Scaifs, etc.–look favorably upon the Republican position. And I understand that money matters (far more than it should or than it used to, thanks to Citizens United). But I can’t believe that a political party can win a national election on a platform that advocates hollowing out the public purposes of government–“starving the beast” is the way Grover Norquist puts it–in order to protect the pocket-change of the powerful.

Leave aside whether the GOP position makes any economic or moral sense. I can’t imagine it making political sense. You can rename plutocrats “job creators” all you want, but it is pretty clear that they aren’t creating any jobs (at least not here in the US), and without that rather thin defensive reed to lean on, it is hard to envision any but the most ideologically rigid buying that snake-oil.

What am I missing?

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More GOP Insanity

Back in the Ice Age, when I was still Republican, the GOP used to be a party of grown-ups. It is painful to watch what has become of the Grand Old Party–and even more painful to see what it’s doing to the country.

Neil Pierce’s current column is yet another example.  As he reports,

“There’s no sane way to say that America’s criminal justice system is “OK.” It costs over $100 billion a year; it imprisons hundreds of thousands for minor drug possession or sale; overall it’s incarcerating 2.3 million men and woman — the most of any nation on earth.

But that didn’t stop 43 Senate Republicans from recently wielding the weapon of a filibuster to torpedo a proposal by Sen. James Webb (D-Va.) for a bipartisan national commission to undertake a stem-to-stern examination of how we apprehend, try and punish in America.”

The entire column is worth reading, but the essence is that the GOP claims a STUDY of the criminal justice system would be an infringement of “states rights.”

Mull that over for a minute. We have now gotten to the place where simply informing ourselves about what is happening in our country cannot be tolerated. Information has become the enemy.

I suppose I shouldn’t be so stunned; these are the people who deny the existence of global climate change, who insist that evolution is just a “theory” (betraying their ignorance of the meaning of scientific theory), and that people are poor not because they can’t get jobs but because they’re lazy. They’re the people who sneer at educated “elitists.”

So now the party that talks endlessly about the need to cut costs has killed a perfectly reasonable, modestly priced study aimed at determining why we are overspending by billions for a system that is both inefficient and inequitable–a study to help us spend less to make Americans safer.

Welcome to the age of the new and improved “know nothings.”

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The Good Old Days

I have officially become one of those cranky old people who bemoan the passage of the “good old days.” Which is sad, since the good old days weren’t all that good.

Most of all, I miss the Republican Party I was a part of–a party that didn’t have an embarrassing slate of kooks for Presidential candidates, a party that had a platform rather than a religiously-held extremist ideology. It was genuinely pro-business,  pro-family and pro-good-government.

How times–and definitions–have changed!

In Congress, the GOP has again defeated President Obama’s proposal to create jobs by repairing America’s deteriorating infrastructure. The party I used to belong to would have sponsored such a measure. Indiana’s two Senators participated in the Senate filibuster–something I would have expected of Dan Coats, but that constitutes one more shameful effort by Dick Lugar to ingratiate himself with the crazies who detest him for the sin of previously being thoughtful. But the GOP did offer an alternative to the President’s bill–they reaffirmed that America’s national motto is “In God We Trust.” Not that anyone had suggested otherwise.

A pro-business party understands that economic prosperity depends upon the creation of jobs that allow people to purchase goods from businesses. Whether they trust God or not, most businesses depend upon a well-maintained infrastructure, and a calm social order. Republicans used to understand that.

They also used to understand that responsible economic policies were the best way to be “pro family.” Today, we have the embarrassing spectacle of Rep. Joe Walsh, first-term Tea Partier, getting a “Pro Family” award from the Family Research Council, despite the fact that he owes over 100,000 in back child support for his own children. But he was “pro family” because he voted to repeal healthcare, defund Planned Parenthood and uphold DOMA. Words fail.

Good government? When I was in City Hall, in a Republican Administration, the party put a premium on professionalism and careful analysis. The people I worked with would never have been guilty of the gross incompetence that led to the Litebox blunder. They would never have relinquished control of the city’s parking infrastructure for 50 years, in order to enrich a well-connected vendor at taxpayer expense. (And the Mayor I worked for–who really wasn’t a “politician”- would never have stooped to accusing an opponent of responsibility for an increase in rapes that occurred during the time she served as Deputy Mayor for Economic Development.)

There was plenty wrong when I was politically active. The administration I served was far from perfect, and Republican politicians weren’t saints. But next to what we have today, they sure look good. I miss them–and America desperately needs them back.

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Supporting (some of) the Troops

As most readers of this blog probably already know, a gay soldier asked a question about gay service members at a recent GOP Presidential candidate debate, and was roundly booed by the audience. The Tea Party members who were present in large numbers in that audience—and the candidates who remained silent then and afterward—evidently saw nothing inconsistent between wrapping themselves in the Stars and Stripes and dishonoring a citizen who has put his life on the line for them.

In fact, it has been interesting to see just how far the Republican base has strayed from its previous “support the troops no matter what” posture.

Recently, Republican Representative Buck McKeon, the Chair of House Armed Services Committee, publically announced that he is willing to see the entire defense authorization bill fail if Congress refuses to pass his proposed provision preventing military chaplains from marrying same-sex military couples.

Think about that for a minute. A Republican who is the Chair of the Armed Services Committee is saying that he would hold up the funding for all our military men and women, including troops now in the field, just to keep military Chaplains from performing same-sex weddings.

Even in the wake of repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” Republican Presidential candidates are insisting that they will re-instate the ban if elected. I’m waiting for a reporter—assuming we still have some of those—to ask these critics who are oh-so-picky about who can be a soldier just how they intend to fill the ranks without a draft. Enlistments are down, and it isn’t exactly a secret that recruiters have been bending the rules, taking enlistees with low IQs and felonies—but not gays, heaven forbid!—in order to make their quotas. (Somehow, I doubt that the “patriots” will step up to fill the gap themselves.)

Wasn’t it just a few years ago that the GOP talking points included accusations of treason against people who just wanted to trim some of the Pentagon’s more wasteful budget requests?

If hypocrisy smelled, we’d all be suffocating these days. The troops are “our boys” and we owe them so much—unless they’re gay, in which case we don’t even owe them constitutional equality.

It isn’t only on GLBT issues, of course—look at the reactions to the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrators. Right-wing commentators on Fox and elsewhere are waxing positively hysterical over the chutzpah of the lefties who dare to criticize corporate greed. Current front-runner Herman Cain (the self-styled mogul who grew his pizza business into something like the 8th largest chain in the country) has characterized the demonstrators as “too lazy” to hold jobs, and “jealous” of those who have made something of themselves. Lest he be misunderstood, he’s repeatedly said that the jobless have no one to blame but themselves. (Let them eat cake…er, pizza.)

These descriptions of the “hippy” protestors might have a bit more gravitas had the same people not reacted so differently to the emergence of the Tea Party. When Tea Party “patriots” took to the streets, those who now pooh-pooh and disparage Occupy Wall Street as an unruly mob celebrated the folks in tri-corner hats as citizen activists who were taking their country back. The excesses—the hateful rhetoric, the misspelled racist signs, were conveniently overlooked or attributed to a “small fringe.”

We need to work on some new political slogans for these folks. We’ve had “Free Speech for Me, but Not for Thee.” How about “Support Our Heterosexual Troops” or “God Bless the Americans Who Agree With Me”?

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