The Lunatics Taking Over the Asylum

Jonathan Chait on the takeover of the GOP by its radical fringe.

One interesting sidelight of the current election cycle is that there are several races in which the Republican establishment has either lost control of the race or lost any sense of its own partisan self-interest. The Nevada Senate race is a prime example. Harry Reid, once a dead man walking, is now sitting on a nice lead because Republicans nominated a lunatic to oppose him. "A total f*** up by the state and national Republicans to allow Angle to get nominated," a source notes to Ben Smith.

But of course there are numerous such fuckups. In Kentucky, Republicans turned a rock-solid safe seat into a toss up by nominating ultra-radical Rand Paul over party hack Trey Grayson. In Pennsylvania, they turned a relatively safe seat in Arlen Specter, who had been almost completely housebroken by the right since 2004, into another toss-up. (More importantly, they drove Specter from the party and made him the 60th Senate seat, allowing the passage of health care reform.) And in Florida, they turned another safe hold into a toss-up by challenging, and driving from the party, Charlie Crist.

Florida is actually the closest thing to a rational move for the right. First, I think Crist's current lead is far from safe, because the Democratic vote is likely to consolidate above its current abysmal level and that will come out of Crist's hide. Second, Crist is a genuine moderate, so there really was a more reasonable risk-reward calculation for conservatives looking to gain a more ideologically reliable Senator at the risk of losing the seat altogether. There's at least a strong chance that the Rubio challenge will burn them.

This is four Senate seats put at serious risk by running right-wing primary challenges, plus one enormous liberal domestic policy accomplishment. In all these instances, conservatives either celebrated the right-wing primary challenge or, at the very least, quietly accepted it. There was very little pushback at the time from the party establishment, other than a feeble effort in Kentucky. I have seen no recriminations whatsoever in hindsight. And yet it seems perfectly clear that the effect of these challenges has been a disaster from the conservative perspective.  You don't have to love Sue Lowden to understand that a 90% chance of Lowden winning is better than a 20% chance of Sharron Angle winning. Nor is there any recognition on the right that conservatives paved the way for health care reform by driving Specter out. In conservative lore, the Pat Toomey primary challenge remains a glorious triumph, when in fact it's a disaster of historic proportions.

Obviously the conservative movement is intoxicated with hubris right now. Part of this hubris is their belief that the American people are truly and deeply on their side and that the last two elections were either a fluke or the product of a GOP that was too centrist. It's a tactical radicalism, a belief that ideological purity carries no electoral cost whatsoever. Right-wing tactical radicalism has an old pedigree, and of course there is an equivalent (though less influential) tactical radicalism on the left-wing of the Democratic Party. Tactical radicalism is not the same thing as ideological radicalism. Tactical radicals are a subset of ideological radicals; some ideological radicals have clear-eyed of the pragmatic steps needed to advance their goals incrementally.

In the past, the Republican Party has always managed to hold in check the tactical radicalism of its base. It's starting to run wild. In past elections, I would have totally discounted the possibility that the party might nominate a figure like Sarah Palin, because the party establishment has always been strong enough to push aside candidates who were not strong electoral vehicles for conservatism. I'm no longer sure they have that power anymore.

It's possible that the GOP wave will be strong enough in 2010 to push most or even all these weak candidates into office. If that doesn't happen, I wonder if we'll start to see some recriminations. If it does, tactical radicals will be even more emboldened, and I don't see what could stop Sarah Palin from taking the 2012 nomination if she wants it.

Deficit Posers

Matt does not understand why anyone takes Republican protestations about deficit reduction seriously.

It’s genuinely hard for me to know what would persuade people that I’m correct about this, but to recap the key points:

1) There have been two presidents who were members of the modern conservative movement, Ronald Reagan and George W Bush, and they both presided over massive increases in both present and projected deficits.

2) The major deficit reduction packages of the modern era, in 1990 and 1993, were both uniformly opposed by the conservative movement.

3) When the deficit was temporarily eliminated in the late-1990s, the mainstream conservative view was that this showed that the deficit was too low and needed to be increased via large tax cuts.

4) Senator Mitch McConnell says it’s a uniform view in his caucus that tax cuts needn’t be offset by other changes in spending.
 
5) The deficit reduction commission is having trouble because they think conservative politicians won’t vote for any form of tax increase.

In sum, there are zero historical examples of conservatives mobilizing to make the deficit smaller. What is true is that most conservatives oppose increases in non-military spending when those increases are proposed by Democratic presidents. A minority of conservatives are more consistent opponents of increases in non-military spending. But the key element of conservative fiscal policy is that tax revenue as a percent of GDP should be made as low as possible. This isn’t a goal they pursue that stands in some kind of balance with concern about the deficit, it’s the only goal they pursue. You can like that or not, but every single journalist who writes articles about the deficit debate that doesn’t highlight the conservative movement’s deep, decades-long hostility to deficit reduction is being grossly irresponsible.

Those Nutty Neocons

 Sully lambastes the neocons once again.

It tells you something about the laws of unintended consequences (something missing from the neocon handbook) that the man they championed as Iraq's "democratic" leader, Nouri al-Maliki, recently went to Beirut to pay his respects to a Hezbollah mullah regarded as a terrorist by the neocon chorus. It also tells you something that the neocon attempt to impose crippling sanctions on Iran is now being undermined by ... large amounts of oil supplies getting to Iran by road via Iraqi Kurdistan.
 
What has neoconservatism achieved? In Afghanistan, the best possible option is a country dominated by an increasingly Islamist and nuclear-armed Pakistan. In Iraq, the best possible option is a country dominated by Shiites far more aligned with Iran than many Sunni Arab states. And so the upshot of the Bush-Cheney years is an empowerment of both Iran and Pakistan, the two Muslim countries either with or close to nuclear capacity.

That is the end result of a policy designed above all to prevent WMDs getting into the hands of terrorists. I mean: you couldn't make this up.
 
And still they want more war. In fact, they are now angling for American support for Sunni Arab states (and Israel) to launch a war against the Shiite power of Iran. Not content with enmeshing the US in two intractable wars, they actually want America to take sides in the ancient intra-Muslim feud between Shiite and Sunni. Yes, that sounds like something brilliant doesn't it? No unintended consequences could come from diving into that briar patch.
 
And, remember, nothing in the neoconservative mind exists that can actually take account of flaws in their own thinking. Because neoconservatism is a doctrine, and a doctrine cannot have flaws, just as neocon columnist can never make errors, or account for them.

Rove to the Rescue

Steve Benen reacts to Karl Rove's op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that urges Republicans to run in the fall on protecting the Bush tax cuts as the way to generate economic growth.

That's right -- Karl Rove's "jobs and prosperity" agenda encourages Republicans to, quite literally, support the Bush/Cheney "jobs and prosperity" agenda from the last decade.

There was no indication that Rove was kidding, or that his column was published as some kind of satire.

Look, I realize that Rove isn't the sharpest crayon in the box, but his advice to the GOP is so ridiculous on its face, I'm hard pressed to imagine why the Wall Street Journal published it. His argument is that the Bush/Cheney policies that already failed spectacularly might work if we just try them again.

How would Rove suggest paying for these tax cuts? The same way Rove dealt with this when he ran the White House: by not paying for them at all. The tax cuts that didn't create jobs and didn't generate economic growth did leave us with massive budget deficits, but that doesn't stop ol' Karl from insisting that the already-failed policies will this time make reducing deficits -- the deficits Rove left for Democrats to clean up -- "more manageable."

Republicans will win, Rove concludes, if they just tell voters we should go back to the policies we already know don't work. Bush failed miserably, but if we just give his painful failures one more try, everything will work out fine.

Honestly, maybe Karl Rove is just some kind of performance artist, hoping to make Republican pundits look foolish. It would make more sense than Rove actually believing this nonsense.

John Boehner's America

Brooklynbadboy has a marvelous post on Daily Kos commenting on John Boehner's lament that "They are snuffing out the America I grew up in."

I don't know the America John Boehner grew up in.

I don't know what it's like for a high school graduate to be able to get a union job at a factory and earn enough money to support a wife and kids. I don't know what it's like to be born at a hospital and have my parents rejoice at my birth rather than cower in fear of the bill. I don't know what it's like to have food, clothing and housing expenses constitute reasonable percentage of household income.

I don't know what it's like to grow up as child without fear of gangs, crooked police, and a proliferation of guns and ammo. I don't know what it's like to get a job as a paperboy or delivery boy because those jobs are done by adults. I don't know what it's like to come home to momma or poppa every day because one wage earner can support a family. I don't know what it's like to attend well-financed public schools with well-paid teachers that are the envy of the world. I certainly don't know what it's like to attend an inexpensive private school like John Boehner did because today only the wealthy can afford private school.

I don't know what it's like to have shop class in high school or apprentice programs to learn a trade. I don't know what it's like to be able to simply pick a college, write them a letter, and then attend. One has to hire a consultant these days and I couldn't afford that. I don't know what it's like to have no worries about my parents mortgaging their home to finance my education. I don't know what it's like to get through college without amassing a mountain of debt and ruined credit. I don't know what it's like to have multiple job prospects upon graduation.

I don't know what it's like to look forward to 30 years at one company. I don't even know what it's like to have one profession! I can't even begin to fathom what it must have been like to have an inexpensive, reliable vehicle to go from place to place. Good roads to go from place to place. Inexpensive gas to get from place to place. Public transportation that didn't take 15 percent of a paycheck. I don't know what it's like never having to choose between food and gas to get to work every day.

I don't know what it's like to go to a bank and be offered one type of 30-year fixed rate mortgage. I don't know what it's like not to have to worry about bank fees that cost more than small household appliances. Usury laws. Boy, those must have been nice! There were all those heavy regulations on banks that were in place since the 1930's. John Boehner didn't have to worry about financial crashes during his first 37 years of life because there weren't any. Since deregulation began in 1982, I've had three.

I don't know what it's like to live under a government that looked out for ordinary people. Never have. I don't know what it's like to have a government that did great things like build national highway systems or explore the heavens. Or alleviate poverty in city centers and far-away mountains. I don't know what it's like to never have to worry about the national debt. That's because in John Boehner's America rich people paid taxes. I bet it was really awesome to live in an America that was a net exporter rather than importer. A nation that was a creditor and not a debtor. A nation where the brightest minds and best salaries went into science and  engineering rather than banking and advertising.

I don't know what it's like to know there is a pension waiting for me when I retire. I've got to risk it on the stock market or else I'm surely screwed, assuming I'll have any money to save. Maybe if I can overcome 29.9 percent credit card rates, disappearing private sector unions, $100,000 student loans, 15-year adjustable-rate-mortgages, kids at underfunded, inadequate public schools, health insurance that costs more than food, the saving up of the 401(k) and then cashing in of the 401(k) and then saving up of the 401(k) again, maybe I'll just barely have some inkling of the America John Boehner grew up in.

I do know what it's like to have very low taxes. Hooray.

John Boehner grew up in an America ruled by FDR's Democratic majority. I grew up in an America ruled by Ronald Reagan's Republican majority. The America he grew up is already "snuffed out." I doubt he will ever realize that it was people like him who did the snuffing.

Don't Rile Up Taibbi

Matt Taibbi eviscerates Lara Logan of CBS after Logan blasts the RS article on McChrystal.

Lara Logan, come on down! You're the next guest on Hysterical Backstabbing Jealous Hackfest 2010!

I thought I'd seen everything when I read David Brooks saying out loud in a New York Times column that reporters should sit on damaging comments to save their sources from their own idiocy. But now we get CBS News Chief Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan slamming our own Michael Hastings on CNN's "Reliable Sources" program, agreeing that the Rolling Stone reporter violated an "unspoken agreement" that journalists are not supposed to "embarrass [the troops] by reporting insults and banter."

Anyone who wants to know why network television news hasn't mattered since the seventies just needs to check out this appearance by Logan. Here's CBS's chief foreign correspondent saying out loud on TV that when the man running a war that's killing thousands of young men and women every year steps on his own dick in front of a journalist, that journalist is supposed to eat the story so as not to embarrass the flag. And the part that really gets me is Logan bitching about how Hastings was dishonest to use human warmth and charm to build up enough of a rapport with his sources that they felt comfortable running their mouths off in front of him. According to Logan, that's sneaky — and journalists aren't supposed to be sneaky:

"What I find is the most telling thing about what Michael Hastings said in your interview is that he talked about his manner as pretending to build an illusion of trust and, you know, he's laid out there what his game is… That is exactly the kind of damaging type of attitude that makes it difficult for reporters who are genuine about what they do, who don't — I don't go around in my personal life pretending to be one thing and then being something else. I mean, I find it egregious that anyone would do that in their professional life."

When I first heard her say that, I thought to myself, "That has to be a joke. It's sarcasm, right?" But then I went back and replayed the clip – no sarcasm! She meant it! If I'm hearing Logan correctly, what Hastings is supposed to have done in that situation is interrupt these drunken assholes and say, "Excuse me, fellas, I know we're all having fun and all, but you're saying things that may not be in your best interest! As a reporter, it is my duty to inform you that you may end up looking like insubordinate douche bags in front of two million Rolling Stone readers if you don't shut your mouths this very instant!" I mean, where did Logan go to journalism school – the Burson-Marsteller agency?

But Logan goes even further that that. See, according to Logan, not only are reporters not supposed to disclose their agendas to sources at all times, but in the case of covering the military, one isn't even supposed to have an agenda that might upset the brass! Why? Because there is an "element of trust" that you're supposed to have when you hang around the likes of a McChrystal. You cover a war commander, he's got to be able to trust that you're not going to embarrass him. Otherwise, how can he possibly feel confident that the right message will get out?

The Script is Confusing

Steve Benen zeroes in on the growing confusion on the right as to whether Obama is a bully or a wimp.

The tragically embarrassing Michael Barone has decided that President Obama has resorted to "thuggery" in dealing with BP and the oil spill disaster. That seems consistent with the broader far-right push against the president -- or at least half of it.

After all, what's the conservative message about Obama? He's not only a "thug," the president and his team are also "bullies." Obama isn't above a "Chicago-style political shakedown." Bachmann thinks he runs a "gangster government."

The president, we're told, is a hardball partisan operator, who doesn't believe in compromise. One can almost imagine Obama in the Oval Office, polishing his brass knuckles.

Except, as digby reminded us, conservatives are simultaneously arguing that the president has adopted the exact opposite persona: he's a professorial pushover. The conservative line includes phrases like "limp and weak" to describe the president. He's not tough enough. He bows too much. He doesn't instill enough fear.

Is it too much to ask that the right pick one? The president can be a vicious thug, intimidating his way into getting what he wants, or he can be a spineless weakling, intimidating to no one.

He can't, however, be both.

Your Liberal Press At Work

Eric Boehlert blames the press for enabling right-wing candidates to avoid serious interviews (h/t Steve Benen).

Why are they to blame for the two Republican candidates and their current refusal to talk openly to reporters who don't work for Fox News or some other RNC-friendly outlet? Journalists are to blame because Sharron Angle in Nevada and Rand Paul in Kentucky are simply following Sarah Palin's strategy of stiffing the press; an insulting approach that journalists themselves let happen and, in a collective act of cowardice, refused to protest.

I've been writing about Palin's press boycott for months now, simply because we've never seen anything like this. We've never seen a high-profile politician categorically refuse to engage with serious, independent journalists. And we've certainly never seen a politician stiff the press and then have the press lay down in response. We've never seen the press so willingly get steam-rolled before. But with Palin and her news media boycott, that's exactly what's happened: Palin refuses to acknowledge their existence (except to ridicule it) and in return they fawn over her. 

So why is anybody surprised that controversial senatorial candidates such as Angle and Paul, after having recently stepped in on the campaign trail, are now duplicating Palin's strategy and declining to  talk to legitimate, non-partisan reporters? That's right, we now have two major party candidates running for state-wide office who pretty much won't answer questions from reporters. 

This is beyond unprecedented. It's Bizarro World. 

But guess what? It's the press' fault. They opened this door when Palin told them to buzz off. And rather than fighting back, rather than calling Palin out for this timidity and her refusal to have an honest exchange via public dialogue, reporters reduced themselves to typing up her Facebook posts as news and launching a Twitter beg-a-thon. (Boy, that'll show her!) 

 

This election cycle it's Angle and Paul who have essentially opted out of the press pool. But next cycle we'll see more and more Republicans who decide they're also done talking to the press and will only sit down for Fox News and hold audience for the GOP Noise Machine. Obviously, the long-term implications for democracy here are alarming.

But again, this is all the press' fault. When confronted with Paliln's audacious blackout, journalists blinked.

Obama's Speech

Ezra on Obama's oil spill speech:

I'd go so far as to say that last night's speech got the worst reaction of any speech Obama has given since his address at the DNC convention in 2004. Ross Douthat rounds up some of the commentary, and to unexpected comic effect, here. But for all that, it wasn't that bad of a speech. It's more of a bad situation.
 
Start with the BP spill. I thought the president did all right in this section, but the reality is there's not a whole lot he can do. The oil gushing into the gulf is not going to be stopped by words, and it's not even clear that it'll be stopped by policies. If there were an obvious path forward, it would've been tried by now. Sarah Palin tried to claim otherwise, but even Bill O'Reilly wasn't credulous enough for that one. If they could stop this thing, they would.

Then there's a climate bill. There's no speech Obama could've given that would've gotten him to 60 votes, or anywhere near to it. Democrats pretty clearly believe that any tax or price on carbon is a loser for them, so any effort by the White House to set that out as a marker will just allow Republicans to beat them over the head with it. The end result is no carbon bill, and even less of a chance for one at some future date.

So operationally speaking, the gap between what people want to happen right now and what Barack Obama could do, or set in motion, with a speech was pretty large. But there was a hunger, I think, for Obama to convince us that he had some kind of plan. Particularly on a climate bill, very few got that sense. And that's where the frustration comes from.

As Brad Plumer writes, climate change is "arguably the biggest, most severe problem the world faces. And it's going to be incredibly tough to avert." The fact that there's not currently 60 votes for what we need to do doesn't change the fact that it needs to be done, and so it doesn't exempt us from figuring out a way to get from here to there. Like most everyone else, I don't know how to get from here to there. But then, I didn't run for president. And right now, I'm pretty glad of it.

A New Approach to Taxes

Kevin Drum proposes a new twist on taxation as an intriguing sop to corporate interests

I figure Mark Halperin is useful for letting us know what the current DC conventional wisdom is, and today he says that the business community's love affair with Barack Obama is over. To be honest, I thought it was over sometime around January 21st of last year, but what do I know? In any case, Halperin writes that not only do the nation's CEOs hate the White House, but things are still going downhill:

The President's current priorities are all liable to make a now bad relationship that much worse. The financial regulation bill is viewed as a typically ignorant Washington overreach. The ongoing efforts to deal with the BP spill are seen as proof that Obama is an incompetent manager and serial scapegoater of large corporate interests. And the attempt to use the Gulf crisis to revive the stalled effort to get Congress to pass major energy legislation appears to many business types as a backdoor gambit to raise taxes on corporations, mom-and-pop enterprises and consumers.

Even by bizarro standards I don't get the "scapegoater of large corporate interests" thing at all. Is the business community upset that Obama is blaming BP for a blowout at BP's oil platform? Or what?
 
But forget that. The other two items suggest a way to take those business lemons and make lemonade out of them. Here's my idea: Obama should propose that the corporate income tax be abolished completely, to be replaced by a carbon tax and a financial services tax. And then sit back and see what happens.

Here's the pitch: corporate income taxes are a drag on businesses and are ultimately paid by consumers anyway. That's bad. Conversely, a tax on carbon would reduce our oil use and spur energy efficiency. That's good! Likewise, a tax on financial transactions would reduce speculative volatility and help stabilize the financial sector. Also good! So we'd trade one bad tax for two good Pigovian taxes.

What's more, although receipts from the corporate income tax are down right now thanks to the recession, within a couple of years they should be back up to around $400 billion a year. A financial services tax is probably worth around $100 billion a year, give or take, and that means we'd need a carbon tax of around $300 billion to keep everything revenue neutral. This is far higher than anything we could dream of without the grand corporate income tax bargain and holds out hope of being big enough to actually make a difference.

Am I serious about this? Why not? Everyone should love it. Taxing carbon and financial speculation is a lot more useful than taxing business activity, and I imagine the boffins on the appropriate committees could figure out ways to keep the distributional impacts fairly small. And getting rid of the corporate income tax would not only make business owners deliriously happy (or should, anyway), but it would remove forever Congress's ability to provide quiet subsidies and corporate welfare handouts for their buddies. Conventional wisdom says that the corporate tax code needs to be seriously overhauled every few decades, but why bother? Why not get rid of it altogether instead?