If a gaffe is defined as accidentally telling the truth, then Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania just committed a gaffe. Here he is, explaining why his amendment to create universal background checks for gun purchases couldn’t get 60 votes.
“In the end it didn’t pass because we’re so politicized. There were some on my side who did not want to be seen helping the president do something he wanted to get done, just because the president wanted to do it,” Toomey admitted on Tuesday in an interview with Digital First Media editors in the offices of the Times Herald newspaper in Norristown, Pa.
Why are his colleagues so petulant?
“I would suggest the administration brought this on themselves. I think the president ran his re-election campaign in a divisive way. He divided Americans. He was using resentment of some Americans toward others to generate support for himself.”
Oh, right, the president asked rich people to pay a little more in taxes. I forgot.
So, more gun violence for everyone!!
These people are moral lepers.
It is truly amazing that, by the GOP’s own admission, their only responsibility in the whole wide world of governance is to sit and wait until the President comes to them and agrees to give them everything they want……….and they have gotten away with doing this for 4 1/2 years. Anyone who points out this blatantly obvious fact is “being divisive”.
I just don’t see any end to it. They know there are no possible consequences until 2014. And even then, they think the fallout will be negligible. Our government is completely off the rails, and that is their goal. I just don’t know how this ever gets fixed.
The end to it is not that the Republicans are going to change. It’s that they lose too much support.
I want to thank BooMan for this terrific post. Great conclusion, particularly.
For a long time I’ve been trying to view the GOP as a force fueled by outright racism. Surely they have not-racist ideological reasons for what they do.Toomey’s statement closes that door. Obama is no leftist, not even an FDR or LBJ (so far — here’s hoping). He’s one of the biggest boosters of American capitalism. There’s no reason for the rabid hate on policy grounds. The only remaining explanation is that the Republican Party, or at least its political class, runs on racism, pure and simple.
It’s not just Obama’s skin tone, it’s also the Administration’s attempts to slightly assuage the lot of the Dark Other and the unworthy poor. Once you accept the party’s core obsession, you can see the racism in everything they’ve done on issues as varied as tax reform, austerity, guns among many more. Maybe Toomey will help guide Dems/liberals to the reality based conclusion: total political destruction, not accommodation,has become the only worthwhile goal in dealing with the GOP..
True, a lot of it is racism, especially in public spending and gun policy, but there is a distinction to be made between racism an end in itself and racism as an instrument for other ends.
Obama’s economic policies are certainly capitalist, but they are nothing like the Koch Brothers. His views on government are worlds apart from Grover Norquist. His cultural and religious attitudes are very far from the religious right. On consumer issues I think he is happy with Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown, even if his public stance has to look different.
So while a lot of it is outright racism, the GOP also stirs up the residual racism of a part of the public in order to demagogue all other issues.
That’s a thin line. Can non-sociopaths with no racist agenda manipulate racism for their own benefit? I think the seed of genuine gut-level racism has to be there first.
No it doesn’t, that’s what makes them sociopaths. They’ll hurt anybody if they think it’s to their benefit.
A significant portion of the GOP base’s foaming-at-the-mouth opposition to Obama is due to racism. They also viewed Democratic governance under Clinton as not only wrong, but illegitimate- I get that. But governance was accomplished between Clinton and Congress, even during the impeachment year. OTOH, the budgeting and lawmaking processes from 2011 to now have been historically bad.
I’d also use some Occam’s Razor here- leading Republicans, from Congressional leadership on down, keep on making implicitly and explicitly racist statements. As further evidence of racism, I’d also include the Inaugural Night meeting between McConnell, Boehner, Cantor, Ryan, McCarthy, Gingrich and Luntz (am I missing anyone?). What kind of people get together to sketch out a strategy which is meant, before anything else, to oppose the newly elected African-American President on Every. Single. Thing? I feel certain that there has never been an oppositional party which behaved this way since 1860. And what was the prime motivator of opposition to Lincoln?
I rest my case.
Your comparison with Clinton is right on point, but in my view it only confirms what I’m saying.
There was no real crisis during that period, and Clinton was rather cooperative with the Republicans. And still there was non-stop vituperation, I hope you remember how insanely hateful it was, and still Clinton was characterized by some as “the first black president” — for that very reason.
In other words, the Republicans used whatever nearest equivalent to racism they could use with Clinton (N-r lover, so to speak, trailer trash, etc.). But as you say “government was accomplished”. Why? Because those quasi-racist techniques brought only limited returns. First of all, Clinton really is white; second, the Democrats were then much stronger in congress; third. the economic situation was a lot better.
On the other hand, Obama is much more of a straight arrow than Clinton. They’ve got nothing on him but his race.
The result is, obviously a lot more racism, but it is still used, as with Clinton, to accomplish what they want in the other spheres. It has NOT worked out so well for them; Obama was reelected by a healthy majority. And even now, while blocking Obama, they are failing to do anything else. The racism is very important to them, but more as a means than an end. But they are actually more successful in stirring up racism than in achieving the goals that racism is a tool for. So it’s ugly, but not particularly successful — except in blocking.
In other words, if we now had a white president with similar policy goals to Obama, the Republicans would be doing as much quasi-racism and character assassination as possible, and for exactly the same reasons. Obama’s being black just makes it easier. The result is a great increase in racism, some for its own sake but a lot of it for the sake of other things.
I do think the distinction is important, because if you think it is ONLY racism, you stop looking any further and miss a lot of the other, more “rational” goals of these fascists.
That is what I meant when I began by writing “a significant portion…”. Agreed, most of the rest of the whole is filled by the issues you bring up here. That doesn’t discount the direct and indirect racism at play.
I’ll claim this: if a white Democrat had been elected President, I don’t believe that the McConnell/Boehner/Ryan/Luntz/Gingrich meeting would have concluded with the plan they decided to execute; in fact, I question whether they would have held such a meeting at all. Even with the need to blame Democrats for the financial crash and our mediocre recovery, their planning would not have been so thoroughly sociopathic and actively interested in hurting Americans if they weren’t rising to undermine the First Black President.
OK, I’ll buy that. But even their sociopathic planning was based not so much on uncontrollable racism as on what they believed they could get away with.
I will grant you, there definitely is that “portion” of mouth-breathing racists out, and that’s what the whole gimmick depends on, otherwise there’d be nothing to work with. But still, they went all out for four years to make Obama a one-term president, and look who’s still president.
They felt they could get away with this level of political deviancy because Obama is black.
They failed to make Obama a one-term President because they were incorrect in their judgement on what they could get away with.
Obama’s victory has done little to improve government functions, however. Now the GOP leadership and base have moved on; they’re now determined to make Obama a President who will be seen as a failure in the history books. They’re probably wrong about their capabilities there as well.
They hated Clinton, but I don’t recall them announcing that their primary legislative goal was to make Clinton a one-term president. There’s a difference in tone and direction. And it ain’t about policy.
Yes it is about policy.
A Gallup poll released in February 2013 finds that 60% of those who identify as Democrats are white, 22% are black.
Let that sink in. Only a little more than one fifth of all Democrats are black.
The Republican party, with 89% whites, really is the white party. But while nearly all blacks are Democrats, the Democratic Party is not the “black” party, it is the diverse party. There is no “black” party.
So they can play their racist games and hope it will help them, but it won’t, because their problem is a lot bigger than race.
Sorry, i forgot the link.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/160373/democrats-racially-diverse-republicans-mostly-white.aspx
That’s because their primary goal was to impeach him, in his first term, so that he wouldn’t even serve it out. Republicans were talking about impeaching Clinton long before Lewinsky. They accused him and Hillary of murdering Vince Foster, for goodness sakes. They meant this literally – that the sitting President and First Lady were murderers, felons, who should be impeached and jailed.
They underestimated Clinton and so did many Democrats, who encouraged Clinton to resign rather than face impeachment after Lewinsky. Even Clinton’s own party was afraid to stand up to the Republicans.
What was Whitewater? Nothing but an effort to deligitimize their opponents. Had Whitewater been launched on a black President, we would have been talking about how it was an example of racist opposition to black people being financially successful. We’d be missing the point that rabid conservatives don’t believe that anyone who doesn’t share their beliefs should be successful at anything (it disrupts their world view) and that the Republican party will use anything to wrest all power back to itself.
The politicians want power and the public wants validation. Both will take it in whatever forms are most easily available to them.
And in this case, unlike say Jesse Helms (to bring up a blast from the past), he is Pennsylvania’s moral leper. Hopefully you folks can do what we were never able to do here–get rid of the SOB.
How do you run an election campaign without DIVIDING the electorate into those that are for you and those that are for the other guy? That is inevitable. Calling that “divisive” is what’s divisive.
As if Obama was divisive in telling people why they should vote for him, whereas Romney telling people why they should vote for him was bringing the country together? Yeah, right.
This is as devoid of logic as the Germans describing their retreat an “advance to the rear”.
Not to mention their party’s explicit embrace of the makers vs. takers and 47% memes.
Noticing that was the real class warfare.
Projection. Toomey haz it.
Romney’s campaign was based on hating the moochers, looters and takers and their supposed leader, Barack Obama, who he showed open contempt for at every opportunity. McCain’s campaign was mostly an incoherent mess, but Palin waltzed in and quickly accused Obama of palling around with terrorists. Bush’s reelection campaign was based almsot exclusively on painting Kerry and liberals as spineless surrender monkeys. Divisiveness now and forever is really the only way Republicans know how to campaign.
But Toomey, while apparently not batshit insane on gun laws, is otherwise a teabagging freak. So he may believe that twaddle about the President being a big ol meanie. He probably also realizes the media loves any talking point that allows them to blame Obama for the Republicans’ mindless dumbfuckery.
Our entire political class is truly no more mature than a high school detention hall. The media’s need to blame Obama, exclusively, for the GOP’s idiocy seems rooted in some sort of “he’s cooler than we are and we HATE HATE HATE it” jealousy. And our elected representatives (well, the GOP, at least) are making policy decisions based not on what they believe to be right, but on a shallow need to avoid being seen helping a rival.
Meteor time.
also, so much for all the Broderian calls for Weekly WH Dinner n’ Drinks with Repubs! The charm offensive, that’ll turn em around, ha-ha. Looks like Obama better start showin’ a movie with dinner!
They don’t like you none, Mr. Obammy. Get it? jeebus.
(shrug) they know they’ll get cover from “progressives”, who will simply blame Obama. so there’s little downside for them.
Do you think Republicans really think that way?
And do you think the complaints of the emo-prog, professional left, firebagger, whatever types about President Obama actually have an influence on the national political discourse?
They might where sheriffruitfly is from, but they absolutely carry no weight in my neck of the woods. Here it’s the Blue Doggies who are undermining Obama.
Sheriff’s from Seattle, as am I. The Obama-is-Satan crowd is doubtless noisier here than in NC, but just as irrelevant to the local, state, or national political process. They’re too pure to get soiled by all that.
Mind you, a lot of their complaints are based in reality, which at least puts them ahead of the TeaPartiers. But it’s all about ideology in a vacuum, with no political context as to what is actually possible vs. what a perfect world should look like.I sympathize with the idealism, but I’m at a point in my life where I have no interest in International Days of Action demanding that unicorns fart glittery rainbows.
“Here it’s the Blue Doggies who are undermining Obama.”
Quoted for truth.
In the real world, outside of a handful of people on the internet, progressives have reliably had Obama’s back, while it has been the conservadems who’ve stabbed him in the back.
and this is why we can’t have nice things. or safe things. or sensible things. or functional things. or …
Things. We just can’t have things. Ever. The makers get to take them all. Well, a very small subset of the makers, anyway…
no, we can have things. just shitty things. always.
They didn’t just vote against the bill, they filibustered it, voting against even allowing it an up or down vote. We’re acclimated by now to think of the senate requiring 60 votes to pass anything, but this is extreme. Not filibustering wouldn’t have been helping the President, it would have been not obstructing . So what he should have said they couldn’t pass up the opportunity to obstruct the legislation coming up for a vote, because the President wanted it.
Wow, the balls on these guys! Ugh and I’m too sure that some idiot will be nodding their heads along not ever realizing that this is basically the RNC pot calling the kettle blackkety black. I hate politics! RNC Hits Obama for Failure on Gun Control
well it was kind of Romney’s whole campaign.
No, he “asked” (he’s the President of the United States, by the way, not some amateur op-ed contributor) them to pay a lot of taxes. And then some more. And then some more. And then more and more and more forever and ever amen to finance his plan to turn us into a Scandinavian welfare state adapted to an economically segregated, racially heterogenous society.
They are correct to oppose him, within limits. You are a partisan and likeminded fellow, so you are free to continue to talk about “common sense solutions” and patriotism and all that crap, but there are reasons why these policies are opposed and have always been opposed. Opposition may not be empirically justified, nor may it be morally tenable (but then again, maybe your enemy operates under a different code of morality, hmm?). But so be it.
When some Texan official said that Obama was a graver threat than North Korea, he was right. North Korea never accomplishes shit. They kill South Koreans sometimes, and our troops are there on the DMZ, but their history is one of mostly talk. Obama’s out there actually threatening every second of every minute of every hour of every day.
Liberals need to own up to the fact that we are adherents to a fanatical, unrelenting, expansionist ideology that can never be appeased. The word ‘progressive’ necessarily means that we aren’t ever actually done, it’s all just progress, step by step. When have you seen a liberal ever truly declare victory? Never, our demands are unceasing. They grow by day.
Liberals are in fact coming after the guns. We know this because there are liberal societies out there in the world who have disarmed, and mysteriously they don’t have a lot of gun-related homicides any more. The math checks out. So when gun control promoters talk about how the legislative language protects against a compulsory registration database, that doesn’t matter. A future congress will create that database. Conservative bigots won to make discrimination against gay people law. But how long did it hold up? Twenty years? That sucks for the discriminated gay people during that time, but it wasn’t the end of the story. It’s never the end of the story. Our demands are relentless.
Republicans are in turmoil because they are beset by the cognitive dissidence of being small-r republicans by job description and simultaneously insurgents by necessity. There are two branches of insurgents, zealous anarchists who would burn everything to the ground and those who would prefer not to reign over ashes should they win. The GOP has far too many anarchists who would see the government obliterated, having been irreparably tainted by the enemy Obama. They don’t know how to be a proper insurgent force, while still maintaining routine government function.
It will be an ugly year to watch.
You write these kind of posts from time to time and I do see them as useful, but c’mon!
Taxation is at its lowest levels in the last 50 years. It has been on a downward slope since JFK first slashed marginal rates. The modest uptick under Clinton was obliterated by Bush. And Obama has cut taxes over and over and over again.
So, cut me a break with the bullshit.
The status quo would be a compelling argument…if the president was advocating for its continuation.
Since instead he’s called for the most aggressively progressive taxation on the 1% since the 70s:
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/numbers/displayatab.cfm?DocID=3887
the fact that taxes are very low now should not be your focus. Who are you trying to spin here? Europeans finance their state broadly through consumption taxes, but it is undeniably the Democratic position to tax America’s hyperactive financial activity instead. And since the Democratic approach to income inequality has been completely ineffective thus far, it’s a big pool of money to try and tax.
Well you’ve articulated what goes on in some minds. Yes, that’s the narrative they tell themselves, and that’s their ideology, or religion, or substitute for religion.
ANd of course, a lot of people who think like that are far from millionaires, and a lot of millionaires don’t think like that.
The comparisons to Europe are ridiculous. I lived in Europe almost seven years. It’s a very different place from the USA, different culture, different history.
One millionaire’s much the same as another, in the sense that all money is green. Yet views differ greatly, and for lots of millionaires, raising taxes is well within their comfort zone.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/27/millionaire-tax-warren-buffett_n_1035763.html
You forget that it really is a culture war an progressives are winning. The next step is cultural change that gets rid of firearms without draconian state intervention.
The core of that is dealing with racism. And voter ID is the last counter-revolutionary step to rolling back the clock. Defeating that counter-revolution opens the way for reducing firearms just like the availability of Plan B reduces abortions. They take away the political issue by which racism and sexism can continue to be held in being.
Yep, value-added taxes are regressive as hell and do nothing to encourage higher wages. But reducing the marginal value of stealing from someone’s wage is one of the factors (organized labor is another) of why the Eisenhower years saw higher wages. And yes, it was a rather unique historical situation as well.
Where we are falling down, however is in defending the notion of public infrastructure–highways, education, healthcare, …Every single last piece from prisons to military to highways to water to electricity is being rapidly privatized–often with Democrats greasing the skids.
“Where we are falling down, however … in defending the notion of public infrastructure.”
That is so true. I went to GOOD public schools. I got my BA from Brooklyn College in the 1960s and the tuition (factoring in a NY State scholarship) amounted to $50 a semester. And I was one of millions.
Public sector is where the plutocrats are really cannibalizing this country.
GOP should have a field day with this:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/04/30/presidential-proclamation-loyalty-day-2013
Good Day!!Your topic is interesting…