Author: Nancy LeTourneau

I'm a pragmatic progressive who has been blogging about politics since 2007.

Will Republicans Walk Their Talk? I’m Not Holding My Breath.

Amidst some good news on Friday (ie, the surprisingly great jobs report and the fact that the North Carolina Supreme Court rejected the gerrymandered redistricting map), almost no one paid attention to the fact that the House passed the America Competes Act. As I mentioned previously, the Senate passed a companion bill last June. Overall this legislation is meant to allow the U.S. to better compete with China, strengthen the supply chain, and reduce some inflationary pressures, so this is what the two bills have in common:

USICA and the COMPETES Act share certain core proposals, such as establishing a new National Science Foundation directorate and a program to seed regional innovation hubs across the country. In addition, both would directly appropriate $52 billion for semiconductor production and R&D initiatives that were authorized last year, and both include extensive provisions bearing on trade policy and foreign relations.

But there are some differences that will have to be worked out in conference before any legislation can actually go to Biden for his signature.

The Senate version received 19 Republican votes (including Senate Majority Leader McConnell), but the only House Republican to vote for it was Rep. Adam Kingsinger (R-IL). That happened regardless of the fact that 16 former U.S national security officials – including Republicans – urged passage of the bill, along with support from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, labor groups and the semiconductor industry.

Republicans have been especially bellicose when it comes to ramping up the threat posed by China. They also spend a lot of time complaining about inflation and supply chain issues, while touting themselves as the so-called “populists” who care about working class Americans. This legislation tackles all of those concerns. We’ll learn whether their rhetoric is backed up by any real desire to address these issues when we see how willing they are to negotiate a compromise between the House and Senate bills. I won’t be holding my breath on that one, though.

Who Knew Paul McCartney Was Such a Good Dad?

I recently watched the “Get Back” documentary series about the Beatles. Not being a musician, there were long segments (especially during the first episode) that were pretty tedious to me. But my favorite part came during the third episode when Paul McCartney’s soon-to-be wife Linda came to the studio and brought her daughter Heather.

It’s clear from the footage that Heather was a self-confident, precocious six year old. She played and interacted amusingly with all of the band members.

But what stood out to me was the extraordinary bond between Paul and Heather. A few still shots from that day tell the story.

 

 

 

 

 

For people my age (ie, old), we grew up with the Beatles. Paul’s reputation was as a lead singer and the “cute one.” Of course, we later saw him as one of the most talented song writers of the modern era. But until I saw this, I never knew he was such a great dad. It isn’t just the rapt attention he shows with Heather, it is her complete trust in him that shines through – something that can’t be staged.

How the Media Covers Republican Obstruction

Two of the Democrat’s major initiatives are currently stalled in the Senate: the Build Back Better Act and voting rights. Republicans have made it clear that they not only oppose these two pieces of legislation, they refuse to negotiate with Democrats on the goals of addressing the economic challenges faced by Americans or protecting the right to vote.

So how is the media handling this obstruction? A few headlines tell the story.

USAToday: “As voting rights push fizzles, Biden’s failure to unite his own party looms again”

Axios: “Biden’s Epic Failures”

Washington Post: “Biden is failing politically, and not just because of Republican obstruction”

The New Statesman: “Joe Biden’s failure on voting rights could cost the Democrats the White House”

Perhaps you get the point. Failure to pass these bills is being laid at Biden’s feet, not at Republicans for refusing to even negotiate.

Politico took things a step further, suggesting that Biden’s favorite columnists are revolting against him. Who are the columnists they talked to? The list includes David Brooks, Tom Friedman, Chris Matthews, and Josh Barro. Other than the fact that they are all white guys (mostly former Republicans), the one thing those four men have in common is that they’re all suggesting that – even on voting rights – Biden has moved too far to the left.

For example, Brooks said that “Biden’s aggressive rhetoric on voting rights…represents how he has strayed from his roots as a moderate.” Even if you buy into the way right wingers have politicized an issue like voting rights, Brooks is completely ignoring the fact that the Freedom to Vote Act was a compromise designed in part by Senator Joe Manchin – a so-called “moderate” Democrat.

Josh Barro also seems to suffer from having a bad memory when he told Politico that “The top issue for voters is the economy. So every day that you’re talking about voting rights legislation, you do not appear to be focused on the economic problem that’s the number one issue for voters.” He doesn’t seem to remember that Republicans also obstructed the Build Back Better Act, which would have gone a long way towards addressing the economic problems faced by Americans.

I won’t hold my breath for a time when Barro calls out Republicans for their failure to even put forward an agenda to address “the number one issue for voters.” Where are Republicans focused these days? On voter suppression. For example, on the first day Republicans regained control of the Virginia State Assembly, they immediately got to work on their number one priority.

This General Assembly session, various Republican Delegates and State Senators have proposed 20 bills to restrict or limit absentee voting…

Proposed bills include reinstating a requirement of an “excuse” to vote absentee, limiting absentee voting to a week or two weeks before Election Day and eliminating ballot drop-off boxes.

Other bills would require a photo ID to vote, require absentee ballots be mailed and received by Election Day to count, and eliminate the automatic absentee voter list – in which the registrar’s office mails voters ballots for each election.

It’s clear that Democratic Senators Manchin and Sinema are giving Republican obstructionists a boost by refusing to alter the Senate’s filibuster rule to pass voting rights. But it’s also important to remember that their votes wouldn’t have been needed in 1982 when the Senate reauthorized the Voting Rights Act by a vote of 85-8 and it went on to be signed by President Reagan. Or how about 2006 when it was once again reauthorized, this time by a vote of 98-0, and signed by President George W. Bush?

When it comes to protecting the right to vote, where are the so-called “moderate” Republicans, like Senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney, Bill Cassidy, and Richard Burr? They’re all lined up with the obstructionists in their party. Are any of these columnists calling them out for moving too far to the right? Not a peep.

A group of former Democratic senators just put a lie to the idea that the push for voting rights is a move to the left. Doug Jones, who served as a senator from Alabama published a letter that was signed by a group that would fit the bill of being described as moderate. It included Senators Tom Daschle, Kent Conrad, Byron Dorgan, Heidi Heitkamp, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, Mark Pryor, Mark Udall and Mark Begich. Here’s what they said about voting rights.

Last year, we saw an unprecedented amount of misinformation regarding the winner of the 2020 presidential election, a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol in an effort to prevent Congress from certifying the election results, and partisan state legislatures trying to overturn the election in their states while erecting barriers to voting in future elections. Congressional Democrats have proposed multiple bills aimed at strengthening our democracy and advancing voter rights legislation that would instill confidence in our elections only to see them never reach the Senate floor. If the Senate cannot even begin to debate and vote on something as foundational as voting rights, we must reform Senate rules and restore the chamber to its rightful place as “the world’s greatest deliberative body.”

Protecting the freedom to vote should not be a partisan issue.

At this point, the only accurate way to tell this story is that, with an assist from Manchin and Sinema, Republicans have politicized an issue that was once bipartisan. They are not only obstructing efforts to protect the right to vote, they have prioritized voter suppression. The fact that the media isn’t reporting it that way represents their own failure, not Biden’s.

The January 6 Insurrection Was Not Just Political. It Was Also Deeply Religious.

Last week when we marked the one year anniversary of the January 6 insurrection, not many people were willing to talk about this:

https://twitter.com/Shar19L/status/1479231214569590790?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1479231214569590790%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fimmasmartypants.blogspot.com%2F2022%2F01%2Fthe-january-6-insurrection-was-not-just.html

In case you think she’s exaggerating, a pastor by the name of Duke Kwon provided the evidence in response to someone on Twitter who said that the riot had nothing to do with Christianity.

As the young woman in the video above said, “You cannot combat far right extremism without understanding that it is inextricably linked to white evangelicalism in the United States.”

Katherine Stewart, author of the book “The Power Worshipers,” has been trying to warn us about the danger posed by Christian nationalism for a long time. Here’s what she wrote back in 2018:

The great thing about kings like Cyrus, as far as today’s Christian nationalists are concerned, is that they don’t have to follow rules. They are the law. This makes them ideal leaders in paranoid times…

I have attended dozens of Christian nationalist conferences and events over the past two years. And while I have heard plenty of comments casting doubt on the more questionable aspects of Mr. Trump’s character, the gist of the proceedings almost always comes down to the belief that he is a miracle sent straight from heaven to bring the nation back to the Lord. I have also learned that resistance to Mr. Trump is tantamount to resistance to God.

This isn’t the religious right we thought we knew. The Christian nationalist movement today is authoritarian, paranoid and patriarchal at its core. They aren’t fighting a culture war. They’re making a direct attack on democracy itself.

Of course, not all white evangelicals are Christian nationalists. For those who find the ties between Christianity and violent extremism to be reprehensible, this is not a time to get defensive, but to call it out. As an example, David French is doing yeoman’s work on that front. His latest piece is titled, “A Nation of Christians Is Not Necessarily a Christian Nation.” For the nationalists who are willing to destroy democracy in the name of returning to some mythical day in the past when this was a Christian nation, he says:

The Christianity of the United States of America, both as a matter of individual expression and institutional justice, is an enormously complex topic, but one thing I can say with confidence—there was no golden age of American Christianity. And we cannot look back at any moment and say, this is when America was a Christian nation.

What conservative Evangelicals are “losing” today isn’t so much liberty as power.

The fact that so many are unwilling to name the religious roots of the January 6 insurrection is an example of the power conservative evangelicals still wield in this country. But as the young woman says in the video above, “we can’t push back against something we’re not willing to talk about.”

What Happens When a Member of Congress Threatens Treason?

Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene has been threatening a “national divorce” between red and blue states over “irreconcilable differences.”

Her threat turned into a trending topic on Twitter when she took the whole idea a step further.

Basically what she’s saying is that, under a national divorce scenario, red states could decide that anyone who moved there from a blue state would be barred from voting during a “cooling off period.”

I have one question for Rep. Greene: Would your home state of Georgia be one of those red states? In the 2020 election, 49.47% of Georgians voted for Joe Biden, 51% chose Raphael Warnock, and 49% voted for a Democrat in congressional races.

I realize that Greene isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I don’t think she’s thought this one through. She could very well find herself living in “blue America” if her national divorce scenario actually came to pass.

On a more serious note, what we have is a member of Congress threatening secession, which is treason. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has stayed silent as members of his caucus posted videos of killing their political opponents or called them terrorists. But even more damning is the fact that, at this point, he hasn’t said a word about one of them threatening treason. That is how far down the rabbit hole the GOP has gone.

What the rest of us are left to contemplate is whether Greene represents the fringe right or the Republican base. Sen. Chris Murphy – who has never been known to be alarmist – weighed in on that question.

In addressing the same question, the always level-headed Steve Benen wrote that “the line between the GOP mainstream and the GOP fringe has grown awfully blurry.” When a member of Congress threatens treason and the leadership of her party stays silent, that might be the most optimistic take on where things stand.

ABC’s “The View” Demonstrates the Absurdity of Bothsiderism

According to a report in Politico, ABC’s show The View, is having trouble finding a conservative host.

Sources close to the show said that the search has stalled as executives struggle to find a conservative cast-member who checks all the right boxes. They will not consider a Republican who is a denier of the 2020 election results, embraced the January 6 riots, or is seen as flirting too heavily with fringe conspiracy theories or the MAGA wing of the GOP. But at the same time, the host must have credibility with mainstream Republicans, many of whom still support Donald Trump.

To be honest, I don’t watch the show myself. But I’ve seen enough of it to know that the point of their political segment has always been to include hosts that argue from both the left and the right. That is an example of bothsiderism that is presenting the executives with a tough call in this era of asymmetrical polarization.

In their search for a host, the executives at The View are looking for a conservative who rejects Trump’s big lie about the 2020 election, the January 6 riots, fringe conspiracy theories, and the MAGA wing of the party. On the other hand, they want someone who has credibility with “mainstream Republicans,” the majority of whom embrace all of those things.

Not only do about 60% of Republicans believe the big lie, they also say that doing so is “an important part of their own partisan identity.” Almost 40% of Republicans think that violent action by citizens might be necessary to protect America. More than half of Republicans (56%) believe the conspiracy theories of QAnon are mostly or partly true. For Republicans, those aren’t fringe beliefs these days. The MAGA folks aren’t a wing of the GOP. They ARE the GOP.

While the executives at The View want a host that doesn’t spout the same fascist themes we hear from someone like Tucker Carlson, they also want a conservative who has credibility with what amounts to the Fox News crowd. No wonder they’re having trouble finding someone to fill that bill.

All you need as proof that a person like that doesn’t exist is to take a look at what happened to Rep. Liz Cheney. She called Trump out for his attempt to overthrow the election. For doing so, she’s been ousted from the Wyoming GOP and stripped of her leadership position in the House.

I’m sure that the executives at The View want to maintain the viewership of any conservatives who watch the show. But finding a rational person who can appeal to an irrational audience is just not going to happen.

Gingrich Is the Last Person Who Should Be Accusing People of Having Mental Health Problems

Prior to Donald Trump’s entry into politics, the two Republicans that concerned me the most were Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich. That wasn’t simply based on the kind of havoc they created while in office. As a recovering therapist, it seemed clear to me that both men were sociopaths – the most dangerous mental health issue for anyone with power. I would now add Tom Cotton to the list. But that’s a story for another day.

Of course, Trump raised the stakes on what Republicans were willing to tolerate when it comes to mental health issues. More recently, it has been interesting to watch as Liz Cheney (certainly her father’s daughter) broke ranks and is calling Trump out on his attempted coup. But Gingrich has becomes a total Trump enabler.

During an appearance on Fox News Monday night, Gingrich once again ramped up the rhetoric when he called Biden the most dangerous president since James Buchanan – who set the stage for the Civil War. Incendiary enough for ya? He went on to say this about “the left:”

You have to start with the notion that these are people who need therapy. Their level of anger — I am serious. We try to deal with this as though it’s a political problem. It’s not a political problem. It’s a mental health problem. These people are crazy.

OK. So Gingrich wants to talk about people with mental health problems. I’m here to oblige.

Back in August of 2010, Esquire published a long expose on Gingrich that mostly featured interviews with Marianne Gingrich, his second wife of 16 years. At the end of the article, Marianne talked about the weekend Newt told her he was having an affair (with his current wife).

He asked her to just tolerate the affair, an offer she refused.

He’d just returned from Erie, Pennsylvania, where he’d given a speech full of high sentiments about compassion and family values.

The next night, they sat talking out on their back patio in Georgia. She said, “How do you give that speech and do what you’re doing?”

“It doesn’t matter what I do,” he answered. “People need to hear what I have to say. There’s no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn’t matter what I live.”

Those remarks from Gingrich represent classic sociopathy – assuming you are so exceptional that the rules don’t apply.

Then in 2011, when Gingrich was preparing to run for president, he was confronted with the facts about his infidelity. Here’s what he said:

There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate.

First, he blames his moral failings on his patriotism. Unbelievable! But then, notice the passive voice of “things happened in my life.” He literally couldn’t say that he – Newt Gingrich – did things that weren’t appropriate. The inability to own personal responsibility is yet another hallmark of sociopathy.

There was, of course, this moment in 1995 when Gingrich turned a personal pique into a national crisis:

So excuse me if I reject any notion that Newt Gingrich is one to talk about people with mental health problems. Instead, his claims will be added to the overflowing vault of Republican projection.

Why Trump Wouldn’t Listen to Republicans, Fox News Hosts, and His Own Son

I would urge everyone to watch Chris Hayes provide a step-by-step breakdown of how Donald Trump attempted a coup – highlighting the former president’s action is the state of Georgia.

When all else failed, Trump summoned his supporters to Washington on January 6 and sent them to the Capitol to stage an insurrection.

We now know that, as the violence was unfolding and members of Congress feared for their lives, Trump did nothing for three hours. According to evidence released by the January 6 committee on Monday, his inaction came as Republicans, Fox News hosts, and his own son texted Mark Meadows pleading with him to get Trump to stop the attack.

Most of the commentary so far has focused on the duplicity of the people, like Laura Ingraham, who went on to be dismissive of the violence. But it is also important to understand why the former president didn’t heed their call and remained intransigent – leading Rep. Liz Cheney to accuse him of “extreme dereliction of duty.”

I was reminded of how Tony Schwartz, ghostwriter of “Art of the Deal,” described Trump.

Early on, I recognized that Trump’s sense of self-worth is forever at risk. When he feels aggrieved, he reacts impulsively and defensively, constructing a self-justifying story that doesn’t depend on facts and always directs the blame to others…

To survive, I concluded from our conversations, Trump felt compelled to go to war with the world. It was a binary, zero-sum choice for him: You either dominated or you submitted. You either created and exploited fear, or you succumbed to it…

In countless conversations, he made clear to me that he treated every encounter as a contest he had to win, because the only other option from his perspective was to lose, and that was the equivalent of obliteration.

What Schwartz described is the basis of most of the 30,000 lies Trump told while in office. His narcissistic ego is compelled to create a delusional reality in which he wins, even when he loses, because the admission of a loss is the “equivalent of obliteration.” Any appeal to compassion in order to challenge the delusion will certainly fall on deaf ears. But the same is true for rational arguments.

Of course, the major battle in this zero-sum game was the 2020 election. Trump literally couldn’t contemplate the reality that he lost. So he created the Big Lie and led a coup to overturn the election. First and foremost, it was a lie designed to assuage his own ego. He needed to fool himself into believing that he didn’t lose. Anyone who challenged the lie must be repudiated and demonized (at best) – which is why the former president said that it was “common sense” for the January 6 insurrectionists to want to hang Mike Pence.

I don’t write this to in any way excuse Trump for his actions. But it’s clear that he he exhibits the traits of a narcissistic sociopath (a combination of Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder). Even so, he must be held accountable for his actions.

But there are two other things to keep in mind. With an assist from most Republicans and right wing news, a large block of the voting public has bought into the delusions Trump created. They are prepared to jettison our democracy in order to maintain those delusions.

It is also clear that Donald Trump is setting things up to run again in 2024. That is why we have to take Bart Gellman’s warnings seriously.

Technically, the next attempt to overthrow a national election may not qualify as a coup. It will rely on subversion more than violence, although each will have its place. If the plot succeeds, the ballots cast by American voters will not decide the presidency in 2024. Thousands of votes will be thrown away, or millions, to produce the required effect. The winner will be declared the loser. The loser will be certified president-elect.

As Chris Hayes pointed out in the segment I referred to above, it was the former president’s incompetence that played a large role in ensuring that the coup was unsuccessful. Will practice improve those odds? Or will we once again see that malfeasance gives way to incompetence? None of us know for sure. We can’t take the risk to find out.

A President for ALL Americans

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland recently tweeted two intriguing photos.

I didn’t recognize the picture on the left. It was apparently taken in 1948 after passage of the Pick-Sloan Flood Control Act, which was the federal government’s attempt to “control” the Missouri River. It called for a series of dams, including the Garrison Dam, which created the 200-mile-long Lake Sakakawea. As a result, 436 of Fort Berthold Reservation’s 531 homes, as well as every square foot of the enviable farmland tilled by the people of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara nations, were flooded. Initially the tribes fought back.

But these arguments were no match for the government’s determination to tame the Missouri and spare any ill effects being visited upon its constituent white farmers—who owned less than 10 percent of the land lost to the series of dams the Pick-Sloan Flood Control Act of 1944 installed above Yankton, South Dakota. The rest was all Indian land.

Out of options, the tribes accepted the government’s offer of $5 million in exchange for their homeland. At the signing ceremony on May 20, 1948, in Washington, D.C., the bureaucrats were straight-faced. The suit-clad tribal chairman, George Gillette, stood just to the right of Interior Secretary Julius Krug, crying into his hand.

Gillette was right to weep. The affected tribes went from a thriving community to one that experienced an 80% unemployment rate.

That is the kind of story racist right wingers don’t want taught in our schools because it could make white people feel uncomfortable – never mind how it affected Native Americans.

The picture Haaland posted on the right took place as she and tribal leaders witnessed Biden signing proclamations that restored the original boundaries of Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante and Northeast Canyons, and Seamounts National Monuments. It was Secretary Haaland who shed tears that day, but for the opposite reason.

That is a reminder that, without much notice from mainstream media, Biden is following in Obama’s footsteps when it comes to fulfilling the promises he made to our native brothers and sisters. In addition to restoring monuments and naming the first Native American to a cabinet position, here are some of the things the Biden administration has done in its first year:

The CARES Act allocated $8 billion for tribes to combat COVID-19.

The infrastructure bill allocated $31 billion to tribes for health care, housing and education programs.

Two Native American women have been nominated (and confirmed) to serve on federal courts.

The first Native American, Charles Sams, has been confirmed to head the National Park Service.

The president signed an executive order “Improving Public Safety and Criminal Justice for Native Americans and Addressing the Crisis of Missing or Murdered Indigenous People.”

The Annual White House Tribal Nations Summit (initiated by President Obama) has been revived.

Given this country’s history with Native Americans, nothing makes me more proud of my support for this president than watching him keep these promises. Biden is demonstrating what it means to have a country for ALL Americans, a future for ALL Americans, and a president for ALL Americans.

Only One Political Party Is Demonstrating How Democracy Is Supposed to Work

Republicans have made it clear that they don’t care about governing.

As negotiations continue among Democrats about how to proceed with President Biden’s agenda, the media has once again become obsessed with their “Democrats in disarray” narrative. Leading the pack is, of course, Politico. I would imagine that those kinds of storylines create more clicks than the piece I wrote recently about learning to live with uncertainty.

But even beyond that observation, I am in total agreement with Melanie Sill.

https://twitter.com/melaniesill/status/1443881605194473472?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1443881605194473472%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fimmasmartypants.blogspot.com%2F2021%2F10%2Fonly-one-political-party-is.html

We’re watching Democrats hash out their differences. Of course, we all agree with one side more than the other. There have been elected officials who work to breach the divide and those who seem to be intent on making it worse. But that’s always the case.

One of the reasons these kinds of negotiations seem different is that one of the political parties is MIA. The history of our two-party system has usually been one of negotiation and compromise between Democrats and Republicans. But over the last decade, Republicans have made it clear that they don’t care about governing.

Initially, President Biden reached out to Republicans. That is precisely how the infrastructure and Build Back Better bills were split into two. The former passed the Senate with bipartisan support. But now House Republicans are backing off. That is precisely why almost every Democratic vote in that chamber will be necessary for passage.

So Republicans are content to sit back and do nothing while Democrats hash out their differences to get the legislation passed. One party is demonstrating how democracy is supposed to work while the other does nothing but lie and attack, as Sen. Marsha Blackburn did Sunday morning.

You’d be hard pressed to find a media outlet telling that part of the story – which is precisely why the GOP gets away with their abandonment of the democratic process.