Month: February 2009

Muddle-headed Michael Barone has crunched the November exit poll data and come to the conclusion that the Republicans should change their strategy. Instead of pandering to rural and downscale cultural conservatives, they should go after the ‘upscale’. Barone doesn’t define ‘upscale’ precisely, but it’s clear that he means people that make a lot of money and that most of them live in the suburbs. The closest he comes to defining the new pitch is to basically reiterate a variation of George W. Bush’s ‘ownership society’.

There’s a tension here, which Republicans can exploit, between the tactics of the MyObama campaign and the policies he favors that would limit choices — one-size-fits-all government health insurance, the effective abolition of secret ballot unionization elections, and environmental policies that reduce your choice of cars and increase the price of energy.

Republicans can argue that their policies will let you choose your future.

Needless to say, Bush’s ‘ownership society’ went nowhere. But a more important obstacle is spelled out by David Duke’s reaction to the election of Michael Steele as head of the GOP.

To Hell with the Republican Party!



GOP traitors appoint Obama Junior as Chairman of the Republican Party

I am glad these traitorous leaders of the Republican Party appointed this Black racist, affirmative action advocate to the head of the Republican party because this will lead to a huge revolt among the Republican base. As a former Republican official, I can tell you that millions of rank-and-file Republicans are mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore! We will either take the Republican Party back over the next four years or we will say, “To Hell With the Republican Party!” And we will take 90 percent of Republicans with us into a New Party that will take its current place!

I think the insanity of nominating “Mr. Amnesty” John McCain and now this Black racist – will lead to insurgency in the Republican ranks, and a lot of dissidents getting elected in Republican Party primaries around the country. This will result over the next four years a real move by millions of Republicans to take the party back to the populist issues that are not only right but can win for the Republican Party. We must end affirmative action, protect our gun rights and all our constitutional rights, have a moratorium on immigration, we must have protectionism, yes I said protect American businesses and their workers from NAFTA and GATT and the lie of free trade, and we must have America First, not foreign interventionism. Our boys should be home protecting the American borders a not being murdered on the borders of Iraq or Afghanistan. The time as come for Republican Party to stand up to Obama and defend American heritage, rights, and freedom!

…Let’s make this abomination in the Republican Party, the last major party of White redoubt, as a rallying cry of resistance!

What would the GOP do without these core members of their base? Michael Barone doesn’t say.

I’ve been watching Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R – Texas) debating John Kerry (D – Massachusetts) debating the economic stimulus bill and it’s related problems with bipartisanship on MEET THE PRESS. Needless to say, Kerry is pushing for jobs, education and infrastructure employment. Hutchinson is pushing for tax cuts, of course, and is threatening another 100% Republican pullout. What stuck in my mind, however, was her statement that the Infrastructure has been well-funded so far and is not a problem.
This caught me by surprise (but not, apparently, host David Gregory who seemed much more interested in trapping Kerry in a statement on Thomas Dashiell’s tax situation.) I’ll have to wait until they post the video online to catch the statement again, but I’m pretty sure our highways and bridges have not had strong Federal support and the infrastructure is falling apart. One of the reasons is the last 8 years of tax cuts pushed by the Bush Administration and six years of it with a Republican controlled Congress that threw away a surplus and cut the taxes and, finally, lost billions of dollars on war spending – read borrowing from China, etc. – and other throwaways. But Hutchinson thinks the infrastructure is covered, and let’s cut more taxes.

The Republicans got us into this mess and they seem insistent on keeping us in it, despite Obama’s visibly forward approach to working with them.

Give me a break. Jobs are disappearing in the tens of thousands (I just found out that I will probably lose my part-time teaching gig at the end of the term, so I’m back with the crowd having been jobless more than once in the last three years) and the local business economy is shrinking from area to area. Retirement funds are disappearing in big bites as 401(k)’s have their investments shrinking from month to month.

So what will the Senate do with the Stimulus Bill? Tune in next week.

Under The LobsterScope

David Broder continues to worship at the altar of bipartisanship, echoing various Republican talking points without criticism. Consider this gem (emphasis mine):

Last week the $819 billion tax and spending bill passed the House with all but 11 Democrats supporting it and not a single Republican voting yes. The first important roll call of the Obama presidency looked as bitterly partisan as any of the Bush years.

It was not for lack of effort on the part of the new president. Obama went to the Capitol to visit Republican as well as Democratic lawmakers, and he encouraged the Democratic draftsmen to scrap a couple of egregiously irrelevant spending programs they had penciled into the bill.

The two ‘egregiously irrelvant’ spending programs?

200 million dollars to re-sod the National Mall
The elimination of a waiver requirement for states that want to provide a family planning component to their Medicaid programs.

The first line-item is a straight forward appropriation for something that is obviously needed after millions trampled the lawn during Obama’s inauguration. It would create jobs in the District and prevent the capital of the country from looking like the capital of New Jersey. The second-line item would help poor people avoid unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, while empowering them to make good decisions for their health and the health of their babies and their families. Lowering the state’s health costs under Medicaid might seem irrelevant to a stimulus package, but it is certainly not egregiously so. Broder lazily repeats the Republican talking points.

He thinks it’s important that Republicans have a bigger role in shaping the stimulus plan. Does he think this is important because they have good ideas that will improve the bill? Not exactly. While Broder says we have to get it right…

This bill, so much larger than ordinary legislation, even the wartime defense appropriations, is almost certain to be the biggest, if not the last, weapon the government employs to halt the sickening economic slide that has gripped the country in the past five months. So much is uncertain, and so much is riding on it, that it’s worth taking time to get it right.

…his special bipartisan pleading has no logical component other than politics.

This vote will set a pattern for Obama, one way or the other. He needs a bipartisan majority because, tough as this issue is, harder ones await when he turns to energy, health care and entitlement reform.

The good news is that Obama can find such support in the Senate, if his allies are smart about how they handle the bill and allow the Republicans, including Mitch McConnell, Lamar Alexander, Chuck Grassley and John McCain, to have a real voice in reshaping it.

But, what if Mitch McConnell et. al. don’t have any good ideas and aren’t contributing anything that will improve the stimulus package and to make sure we ‘get it right’? What then, Broder?

Former President Bush likes to fantasize that his decision to invade Iraq will be vindicated by history. It won’t. It will always be seen as ill-advised policy that was catastrophically costly in both dollars and human lives. But there is one thing that can make his blunder seem less awful. And that one thing is if Iraq can actually maintain a democratic system of government where there are free and relatively fair elections, and where there are occasional peaceful exchanges of power. I am still not sure how likely such a prospect is, but yesterday’s provincial elections went off fairly well. It’s true that five candidates for office were assassinated, and it’s also true that there were many glitches and problems with people’s voter registrations. But, overall, the elections went smoothly considering the recent history of Iraq.

Iraq’s neighbors, Turkey and Iran, also have democratic elections, although Iran’s are marred by the influence of the Council of Guardians who both determine who can run for office and hold the real power in the government. Iraq is the only Arab country that has a government that is truly elected by the people. To date, their elections have been heavily distorted by America’s influence and backdoor meddling, but going forward it is certainly possible that Iraq will develop a more purely indigenous political culture.

It is a big ‘if’, but if Iraq can hold together and maintain periodic elections that include peaceful transfers of power, it will eventually become a positive influence on its Arab neighbors. At the same time, that positive influence could be deeply destabilizing and undermine the credibility of the Assads of Syria and the royal houses of Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

Moreover, true Arab democracy is not going to start out as a natural ally of the United States. True Arab sentiment is deeply suspicious and hostile to American foreign policy in the Middle East. One of the persistent questions about the neo-conservative project is why they ever thought Arab democracy would be good for Israel’s security. Our entire foreign policy has been predicated on the idea that we cannot afford Arab democracy because a) we don’t want instability, and b) the Arab street opposes the peace agreements that Egypt and Jordan made with Israel. Have those assumptions been wrong? I never could understand the neo-conservatives’ real motives. Smashing Iraq into little pieces made sense because that would prevent them from ever projecting power again beyond their borders and threatening Israel, Kuwait, or Saudi Arabia. But building them up into a democracy? That is more likely to lead to both instability and a deterioration in Israel’s position.

As with all things in the Middle East, things are complicated and unpredictable. If the United States can help create a peace agreement in Palestine, and if Iraq can make it as a functional democracy, and if America can develop a green-based energy sector, then there might a bright future for the Middle East. If all of that were to happen, Bush’s decision to invade Iraq wouldn’t look quite so terrible. If others can take Bush’s lemons and make lemonade, maybe all of this carnage and waste will not have been for naught.

But I wouldn’t get my hopes up. For the foreseeable future, the decision to invade Iraq will be considered as the worst blunder in U.S foreign policy history. And that doesn’t even take into account the decisions the Bush administration made after they invaded.