Tag Archives: Tea Party

As the World Turns…

My very first “official” political position was as chair of something called “the 71 Committee for Lugar for Mayor.” It was a Jewish community group supporting Dick Lugar for Mayor back in 1971.  I continued to support Lugar over the years, even as he became more and more conservative, and even after I left the GOP, partly because he is so solid on foreign policy and partly because the Democrats have thus far failed to offer any strong candidates as alternatives.

The recent Tea Party opposition to Lugar’s re-election is a perfect example of what has happened to the Republican Party. As the party has become more radical, officeholders have found it necessary to pander to a base that is increasingly composed of rabid ideologues. Highly intelligent people like Dick Lugar have had to choose between playing to the sensibilities of that base and losing elective office. Thus far, Lugar has managed that balancing act pretty adroitly; he’s been sufficiently right-wing on domestic issues to placate the crazies, and that strategy has allowed him to pursue the sensible, nuanced international policies for which he is known.

However, the right wing of the party has gotten steadily more intolerant of any deviation from their “agenda” of bumper sticker platitudes, and increasingly suspicious of anything that looks like intellect. The continued “Palin-ization” of the GOP can be seen in its increased hostility to complexity, its dismissal of science and rejection of empirical evidence, and its absolute opposition to anything that smacks of “elitism”—which apparently is defined by actually knowing what you are talking about, or (God forbid) having a degree from a decent university.

So now we have Richard Mourdock, our intellectually-limited State Treasurer, announcing a primary challenge to Lugar. Mourdock’s last foray into public policy was his lawsuit to withdraw Indiana from the Chrysler bankruptcy settlement negotiated by the creditors—despite the fact that he had previously signed a binding agreement to abide by whatever settlement the creditors’ committee negotiated and despite the further fact that Indiana did better financially under that settlement than it would have if he won the lawsuit.

In a sane world, Lugar would make short work of someone like Mourdock, and the odds still favor that result. But given the current mindlessness and anger of the Tea Party folks, and the fact that they are far more likely to come out to vote in a primary than the party’s dispirited moderates, I would be reluctant to place a very big wager.

Comments

The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

Dickens’ classic “A Tale of Two Cities” begins with the sentence, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” That’s a pretty apt description of the world the gay community inhabits right now.

Two national polls in as many months have found, for the first time, narrow majorities of Americans in favor of same-sex marriage. A judge recently struck down “don’t ask, don’t tell” and a Congressional vote that would repeal it is pending as I write this. In California, Proposition 8 has been found unconstitutional, and neither the Governor nor the Attorney General has proposed to appeal that ruling.

Signs of favorable cultural change are everywhere; the New York Times runs same-sex wedding announcements, House and Garden television routinely showcases renovations of homes owned by gay couples. (Even in the Indianapolis Star, the real estate story last week pictured the home of a gay couple with children, with no commentary whatsoever.) Poll after poll documents the overwhelmingly accepting attitudes of people under 35.

The best of times.

And then there are the dark clouds.

It is a truism that economic uncertainty generates intergroup tensions. Prejudice against Jews, Catholics, Muslims, immigrants and gays spikes in times of economic distress, and this is one of those times.

If it were only the economy, that would be troubling enough. But as I wrote last month, we seem to be in the throes of a massive cultural backlash. Older white, Protestant, heterosexual males are not going to relinquish their previously privileged status in our society without a fight. What makes it worse is that most of them cannot articulate what it is that makes them so furious—probably because they really don’t know themselves. They just know that the world they were born into (or think they were born into—that “leave it to Beaver” world that existed, if at all, for a very few families) has changed.

If you listen to the Tea Party activists for even a few minutes, you cannot help but be struck by the fact that they cannot tell you what they are for. They can rant on and on about what they are against—much like a cranky two-year-old, or that character from “Broadcast News” who was “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.”

So far, that rage has not had much effect upon the fight for gay equality. We have some crazy candidates like the woman who won the GOP primary in Delaware, who—among other things–wants to outlaw gays and masturbation (good luck with that, honey), or the Montana Republican platform provision advocating the re-criminalization of homosexuality, but those are embarrassments even to the three sane people left in the GOP.

The balance of power, however, can change pretty quickly. We are less than two months away from an election where the crazy folks are energized and the rational folks are dispirited. If, as many of our pundits predict, the Republicans recapture Congress, it won’t be the party of Reagan and Bush that gains power. Difficult as it may be to believe, the current crop of candidates is far to the right of either of those very right-wing Republican leaders. Even the few centrist Republicans who remain—and they truly are few, and highly endangered—have no choice but to pander to the zealots who have for all intents and purposes taken control of one of America’s major political parties. As someone who worked hard for the GOP for over 35 years, it breaks my heart to see what has become of the party.

There’s another quote that seems apt right now: All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. If good people don’t vote in large numbers, and the haters and know-nothings take the reins of power, “the best of times” will be a fleeting memory.

Policy and Polarization

Numbers cruncher Nate Silver took a look at the recent New York Times poll of people who consider themselves supporters of the Tea Party movement, and noted that media habits were the most salient predictor of such support.

According to Silver, “Tea-partiers are disproportionately attached to, and perhaps influenced by, FOX News. And they are particularly enamored of Glenn Beck. Nationally, just 18 percent of people have a favorable opinion of Beck (the majority have no opinion whatsoever about him). But most tea-partiers do… 59 percent of those who do think highly of Beck consider themselves a part of the tea-party. This is, in fact, the single biggest differentiator of any of the items that the NYT asked about: not ideology, not any particular political belief, but whom they watch on television.”

It isn’t just Fox. Increasingly, the television programming you watch, the newspapers, magazines and blogs you read, and the other media you access have become predictors of the reality you inhabit.

Over the past eight years, I have team-taught a course with James Brown, Associate Dean of IUPUI’s Journalism School. The course is titled “Media and Public Affairs” and it enrolls both journalism and policy students. Its purpose is to explore the mutual dependence of the media and government.  When we first taught the course, it was a relatively straightforward exploration of the history of American journalism and freedom of the press: today, we aren’t even sure what “the media” is. And that’s a problem, not just for the classroom, but for the country.

In a large and diverse democracy, the ability of citizens to make informed decisions about public policy is critically dependent upon the quality, objectivity and completeness of the information available to them. We are seeing dramatic changes in the ways in which Americans access that information. At a time when the relationship between government and media has become increasingly important, that relationship has become increasingly problematic.

The media’s role in American policymaking involves two supremely important functions, that of “watchdog” and that of information provider. The watchdog function is intended to keep public administrators honest; the information function allows the public to make reasoned judgments, not just about their government’s actions and decisions, but about the all-important context within which those actions are taken and decisions made.

Governments depend upon a properly functioning media in order to make sound policy; citizens require a properly functioning media to ensure that their own policy judgments are informed.

The ideal of journalism is objectivity, difficult as that often is to achieve. Every journalist cannot be Walter Cronkite, but we cannot function as citizens without genuinely impartial and trustworthy sources of information. When we substitute commentators for reporters, when supposedly reputable news sources act like stenographers—giving us “balance” (i.e. “he said, she said”) without fact-checking who’s telling the truth—we end up in a black and white world where we can choose the “facts” we prefer to believe.

And then we wonder why everyone is so angry.

Comments

Power to the People

Back in the wild and woolly Sixties, “Power to the People” was a slogan often shouted at sit-ins and the other disruptive gatherings that characterized those tumultuous times. We hear similar chants today from those attending “tea party” events.

Reporters covering the various factions of so-called tea partiers tell us that there really is no central issue motivating them; rather, these events are expressions of frustration and anger, fueled by feelings of powerlessness. A sour economy certainly doesn’t help.

It’s easy to dismiss Tea Party folks as fringe malcontents who are being given undue attention by the media; there were all of six hundred people in attendance at the recent national “convention” that received so much coverage. Certainly, it is not a coherent movement advocating any particular goal. But outright dismissal would be a mistake; while most Americans do not share the paranoia, racism and hostility to government that characterize Tea Party gatherings, huge numbers of Americans do share participants’ frustration and their belief that our governing institutions are not working.

Whatever one thinks of Evan Bayh and his motives for leaving the Senate, it is hard to argue with his accusation that extreme partisanship and the influence of moneyed special interests have crippled that institution. Game-playing has replaced policymaking, with the result that efforts to solve our most pressing problems—think healthcare, the environment, job creation—go nowhere. Time and time again, scoring political points or keeping the other party from doing so, trumps doing the people’s business. Time and time again, serving the vested interests trumps serving the people’s interests.

It isn’t only the U.S. Senate. The Indiana Legislature seems equally unwilling or unable to address the issues Hoosier voters really care about—improving education, creating jobs, reforming and streamlining our outmoded government and election systems.

What are Indiana lawmakers—of both parties, it should be noted—spending time on? Well, there’s always time to debate another anti-same-sex marriage amendment to the Indiana Constitution. Or to micro-manage local school board decisions about when school should start.

This year, lawmakers spent time on a bill prohibiting employers “from adopting or enforcing” rules against employees bringing guns to work. Perhaps you didn’t realize what a truly important problem that was—surely, every employee has the right to pack heat on his employer’s premises! The bill says employers have no right to prohibit workers from bringing weapons, so long as they are kept in a locked car, trunk, or glove compartment. Virtually every employer in the state is opposed to this bill, which has sailed through the House 76 to 21, and will easily pass the Senate.

I would suggest we return power to the people by voting these incumbents out of office, but unfortunately, voters no longer choose their representatives. Thanks to gerrymandering and the precision of modern computers, lawmakers today choose their voters.

It won’t surprise you to learn that the General Assembly hasn’t spent much time on proposals to eliminate gerrymandering, or to return power to the people.

The Sad Demise of the GOP?

I was an active, committed Republican for 35 years. I worked in a Republican city administration; I ran for Congress as a Republican, and I was “mainstream” enough to win a four-person primary. That was in 1980.

Over the years, the GOP drifed ever further from the principles that had attracted me. A principled concern with limiting the authority of government morphed into a belief that government could and should do nothing. (The sole exception being the imposition of conservative Christian prohibitions on personal sexual and reproductive behavior.) Wariness about large-scale government welfare programs became full-throated support for corporate welfare and welfare for the rich at the expense of the most vulnerable. Belief in separation of church and state disappeared. 

I just read that, in Alabama, Republican gubernatorial candidate Bradley Byrne got himself into trouble by publicly stating, “I believe there are parts of the Bible that are meant to be literally true and parts that are not.” This evidently was enough to derail his statewide campaign. Byrne has since backpedaled, assuring voters, “I believe the Bible is true. Every word of it.”

Why in the world is a candidate for Governor even talking about his religious beliefs? Absent a belief in ritual murder or something similar, what difference should it make to voters?

Over at Political Animal, Steve Benen recently reported on the ever-more-radical Tea Party contingent of the GOP. ”

Today’s Republican establishment is, as far as this crowd is concerned, a bunch of sellouts. Just as the Republican Party has become as far-right and stridently ideological as it’s ever been, this still-fringe “movement” insists even conservatives aren’t conservative enough.

We’re talking about a well-intentioned, passionate, and deeply confused group of people — the folks who believe Democrats are “fascists,” the president is Hitler, and programs like Social Security and Medicare are socialist, unconstitutional boondoggles that need to be abolished — who are now intent on dragging an already far-right party over the cliff.

There’s nothing wrong with passionate citizens getting involved in the political process. But the American mainstream may not appreciate the fact that uninformed crazies — who think death panels are real, but global warming isn’t — intend to take over the Republican infrastructure, more than they already have.

Under normal circumstances, the American mainstream would see this and be repelled in the other direction. A Republican brand that was already in tatters after the extraordinary and spectacular failures of Bush, Cheney, DeLay, et al, would suffer in the eyes of the public as the right-wing fringe gained more influence.

But that’s what makes 2010 dangerous — the mainstream doesn’t realize the radical nature of the Tea Party “movement”; Democratic voters feel underwhelmed by the pace of progress; and the electorate may very well reward radicalization.

The consequences of the rise of nihilists are hard to predict, but the possibilities are chilling.”

He’s right, but even if the radical takeover of the GOP has the more likely effect of keeping it a minority party for the foreseeable future, America will have lost something really important. We need both parties. We need reasoned disagreement over policy. We need an effective opposition party that keeps the party in power on its toes. We need grownups participating in the political process.

I can still remember when being a member of the Republican Party was respectable, but my grandchildren don’t.

Comments