What Republicans Call Personal Accountability

Why is it that in the Party of Personal Accountability, it’s always someone else’s fault? Or, in this case, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who is exploring a potential presidential bid, trying to explain his take on the politics of climate change:

You know, when it comes to climate change being real, people of my party are all over the board. There was several resolutions ....

.... I did the trifecta. I said that it’s real, that man has contributed to it in a substantial way. But the problem is Al Gore’s turned this thing into religion. You know, climate change is not a religious problem for me, it’s an economic, it is an environmental problem.

So I think the Republican Party has to do some soul-searching. Before we can be bipartisan, we’ve got to figure out where we are as a party. What is the environmental platform of the Republican Party? I don’t know, either.

So I’d like to come up with one. I’d like to have a debate within the party. Can you say that climate change is a scientifically sound phenomenon? But can you reject the idea you have to destroy the economy to solve the problem, is sort of where I’ll be taking this debate.

You know how it goes. Sure, Republicans threw in with the wrong people, and determinedly promoted false assertions of fact, engaged in character assassination, and generally threw a temper tantrum. But, you know, it’s all Al Gore’s fault.

Because, you know, no Republican is ever responsible for his or her own actions; suggesting that members of the Party of Personal Accountability should, in fact, be held accountable for their words and actions is unfair and prejudiced and why do you hate America so much?

No, really, just blame Al Gore. Had he said nothing, Republicans would not have been tempted to disagree, and thus never would have made such fools of themselves. Indeed, this is the heart of Republican “personal accountability”, to blame everyone else.

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Davidson, Amy. “A Conversation with Lindsey Graham”. Council on Foreign Relations. 23 March 2015.

Just Another Day in Conservative Insanity

Sigh.

A brief summary, via Steve Benen:

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) looked a little silly when he argued Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) may face criminal charges because he disagrees with the White House on Iranian policy. Yesterday, however, he quickly discovered he had some company among Republicans who were equally eager to appear foolish.

Yesterday morning, for example, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) suggested he’s sympathetic to the conspiracy theory, too ....

.... By yesterday afternoon, Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) went even further ....

.... Conservative media figures from Fox News and the Wall Street Journal are on board, too.

The point-by-point is actually kind of excruciating, but mainly in the context that someone actually needed to say it.

Some Guy Who Thinks He Can Be President

“Satire is tough when some politicians become caricatures of themselves.”

―Steve Benen

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has potsherds. Some of the finest-grained potsherds in existence.

Again we reiterate the importance of narrative; the tale sounds silly enough in the straightforward reporting, but the commentary can lend appreciable dimensions:

When reports surfaced last week that Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) may face criminal charges as part of a federal corruption probe, it seemed like a possible opportunity for Republicans. Because so many of the recent political scandals have involved GOP officials, I thought Republicans might connect Menendez and Oregon’s John Kitzhaber to make the case there’s something rotten in the Democratic ranks.

But Kasie Hunt reported from Iowa over the weekend that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has a very different attack in mind.

Cruz also suggested pending federal charges against New Jersey Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez were politically motivated – tied to Menendez’s support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition to a U.S. deal with Iran over their nuclear program.

“The timing is curious,” Cruz said .... “It raises a suggestion to other Democrats that if you dare part from the Obama White House, that criminal prosecutions will be used potentially as a political weapon as well,” Cruz said. “That’s a serious concern.”

The Texas Republican added, “This investigation has been going on for over a year and yet the very week they announce a pending indictment comes within hours after Sen. Menendez showing courage to speak out against President Obama’s dangerous foreign policy that is risking the national security of this country.”

Greg Sargent noted the other day that he was planning to joke about the right concocting a conspiracy theory involving Menendez, the White House, and Iran, but the mockery was already too late. “They’re already saying [it],” Greg said.

Morbid Hilarity (King v. Burwell Throwback Mix)

That King v. Burwell has even made it to the Supreme Court becomes even more of a mystery; the cynicism of the case is plainly apparent; even Justice Scalia is reduced to cheap politicking.

Perhaps, then, we ought not be surprised at Ian Millhiser’s report for ThinkProgress, which runs under the lovely title, “The Lawyer Telling The Supreme Court To Gut Obamacare Explained Why He Should Lose In 2012”, should surprise nobody:

On Wednesday, a lawsuit seeking to defund much of the Affordable Care Act appeared to hit a roadblock when Justice Anthony Kennedy expressed concerns that the plaintiffs’ reading of the law is unconstitutional. Though Michael Carvin, the lead lawyer challenging the law, attempted to extract himself from this roadblock, he quickly ran into an entirely different obstacle — his own past writings.

Carvin claims, in a case called King v. Burwell, that Obamacare should be read to deny tax credits that enable millions of Americans to afford health insurance in states that elected not to set up their own health exchange (under the Affordable Care Act, states have “flexibility” to decide whether to set up their own exchange or to allow the federal government to do so). During oral arguments on Wednesday, however, several justices raised concerns about the catastrophic damage Carvin’s reading of the law could inflict on those states’ insurance markets ....

.... Carvin tried to downplay the risk that consumers would simply stop buying plans in the law’s health exchanges if the tax credits were cut off, claiming that these consumers would still be attracted to exchange plans by the fact that the exchanges offer “one-stop shopping” for people looking to buy insurance. He also claimed that Congress wasn’t worried about the risk of death spirals if the tax credits get cut off. According to Carvin, “there’s not a scintilla of legislative history suggesting that without subsidies, there will be a death spiral.”

But Carvin himself sang a very different tune three years ago. Indeed, Wednesday was not the first time he’s stood in the well of the Supreme Courtroom and asked the justices to gut the Affordable Care Act. Carvin was also one of the lead attorneys in NFIB v. Sebelius, the first Supreme Court case attacking the law.

In a brief filed in NFIB, Carvin explained that “[w]ithout the subsidies driving demand within the exchanges, insurance companies would have absolutely no reason to offer their products through exchanges, where they are subject to far greater restrictions.” And, contrary to his more recent suggestion that Congress never envisioned any danger if the tax credits are cut off, Carvin wrote in 2012 that “the insurance exchanges cannot operate as intended by Congress absent those provisions.”

In a subsequent brief, Carvin elaborated that “the federal subsidies are the incentive to participate in the exchanges, and without those subsidies, there will be no mechanism to sustain the exchanges.” He also seemed to contradict his central claim that different states are treated differently depending on whether their exchange is operated by a state or the federal government. The Affordable Care Act, according to the Michael Carvin of 2012, “enables uniform and acceptable federal premium subsidies”.

A John Looking for Something to Kiss

Question #1: What is the Speaker of the House on?

Question #2: Where can I get some?

We had occasion, yesterday, to review the Speaker’s odd behavior during a press briefing on Wednesday, but apparently Mr. Boehner’s message didn’t come across well enough; the pesky press had the audacity to ask him questions on Thursday. Walter Einenkel picks it up from there:

The easy joke is that it is kinda gross and strange and weird. It’s a bad attempt at lightening the mood by Boehner. The real grotesque quality is not that Boehner did something awkward and condescending, it’s the fact that he is being asked a very serious question, about the single issue he is there to discuss, with real information at his fingertips. His response and that of some of the press is that this is a game where no one asks or expects real answers as there is no reason for anyone to say anything with integrity or honesty or import.

The question being asked is not how John Boehner makes kissy faces to nieces and nephews when they leave after the holidays. It’s about thousands of people’s salaries. Government employees charged with protecting every American citizen living on American soil. It’s a serious question.

The Netanyahu Way

There is a lot going on, but in terms of our House of Representatives meddling in the Israeli election, there comes a point when one no longer wonders at the character of this Prime Minister. Mr. Netanyahu is beset by scandal, increasingly viewed as a bully with nothing left but to whine about how everybody should feel sorry for him, and apparently in need of foreign intervention in order to secure a new term. In other words, Benjamin Netanyahu is a disgraceful coward and, as such, perfect company for the likes of our House Republicans.

• Should we be surprised that Netanyahu’s speech before Congress is such a bad idea that he kept his own National Security Advisor in the dark? (Tikkun Daily)

• Nor should we be surprised that Netanyahu and his supporters disdain rule of law in favor of cheap politicking. (Haaretz)

• Here’s a proposition: Netanyahu undertakes cynical politics, but won’t do anything to dispel that appearance because it would be too political. (msnbc)

• Remember that no matter how much Netanyahu wants to insist that criticizing Israel crimes against humanity in Palestine is some form of anti-Semitism, Israel does not equal Judaism, and Judaism does not equal Israel. (Tikkun Daily)

And one other thing. It sometimes occurs to wonder why so many non-Jewish Americans are so interested in maintaining a Judeosupremacist state and protecting war crimes. This, perhaps, is the sickest of ironies; that support comes from our evangelical Christian sector, where many believe in something akin to premillennial dispensationalism. They need Jewish people to control Israel and Jerusalem, so that when Jesus comes home, He can kill them.

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Image note: Detail of cartoon by Dave Granlund, 25 February 2015, via Cagle Post.

Election Reflection

It seems a vicious cycle.

One party, usually the Republican Party, stoops to a new low in campaigning. The people validate the maneuver because negative ads, argumentative fallacies, and outright lies are much more entertaining than boring policy details. Now it’s on the market. The other party must play along, or else get waxed yet again. And that’s when voters start complaining.

It’s been this way at least since Atwater.

Who remembers 2004?

With John Kerry on the Democratic ticket, a pack of angry conservatives who showed up for basically any election he was involved in unleashed their fury on the nation, denouncing him as having received combat awards he did not deserve. It got so bad that a man named Paul Galanti denounced truth as un-American. But the ringleader, named Larry Thurlow, swore up and down that he had eyes on Kerry and the future Massachusetts senator and U.S. Secretary of State did not do what the reports earning his medals said he did.

One of Kerry’s awards was for pulling a man out of the drink under fire. This is an ironic setup, of course, because life provides great punch lines.

Larry Thurlow himself received awards for that day.

And there was a third medal. Eventually a reporter figured out who received it and obtained the relevant reports.

That medal was for pulling Larry Thurlow out of the drink, while under fire.

You would think that would pretty much end the fake scandal. Except it didn’t.

The accusations continued to erode Kerry’s credibility, despite the fact of being untrue.

So the question is: In a competitive marketplace, why would what works not be adopted by competitors?

So every time Americans reward that kind of vice with votes, they are simply setting themselves up for more viciousness.

And then they complain about the wretched state of our politics.

There seems to be a contradiction in that outcome.

It is almost as if we are enacting a modern variation on the ancient scapegoat ritual, and elect politicians specifically to complain about them. And while that might seem an entertaining sport of some kind, it also has real, living consequences.

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Wuerker, Matt. “Poli Sci”. Daily Kos. 6 November 2014.

An Interesting Analysis

Cynicism in politics:

Political analysts keep urging the Republican Party to do more to appeal to Hispanic voters. Yet the party’s congressional leaders show little sign of doing so, blocking an immigration overhaul and harshly criticizing President Obama for his plan to defer deportation for undocumented migrants.

There’s a simple reason that congressional Republicans are willing to risk alienating Hispanics: They don’t need their votes, at least not this year.

Republicans would probably hold the House — and still have a real chance to retake the Senate — if they lost every single Hispanic voter in the country, according to an analysis by The Upshot.

Such a thing would never happen, of course, but the fact that the Republicans may not need a single Hispanic vote in 2014 says a good deal about American politics today.

(Cohn)

Say what you will about the potential cynicism of Nate Cohn’s analysis for The New York Times; electoral politics is a numbers game.

No wonder Jennifer Rubin is so anxious to poodle for the GOP on the immigration point.

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Cohn, Nate. “Why House Republicans Alienate Hispanics: They Don’t Need Them”. The Upshot. 21 October 2014.

A Quote … and an Onion Metaphor

“I have my concerns about President Obama’s foreign policy. But nothing eases them like listening to his Republican critics. There’s an onion-like quality to the arguments GOP politicians often deploy against Obama’s policies in the Middle East. Peel away the layers of grave-sounding but vacuous rhetoric, and you’re left with almost nothing intellectually nourishing at all.”

—Peter Beinart

There really is something to the idea that Republicans have simply lost the plot of their own myth. We might, for instance, ask ourselves just when it became a complaint that a president preferred to understand a situation before sending people to start shooting and bombing and killing?

Just sayin’.

And it is true; we all have our concerns about something President Obama is doing or failing to do. But that is rather quite the way things are supposed to be. Another question we might pause to consider: When did perfection become our expectation?

Appalling

There is a reason Amanda Marcotte is so angry:

There’s been a major boneheaded failure already in these nascent attempts at pretending to have “compassion” for the migrant children and pretending that the desire to send them back is borne out of this “compassion”. Adam Kwasman is one of those frothing-at-the-mouth anti-immigrant state legislators in Arizona—naturally, he’s also running for Congress—and he was trying to strike the “I just care so much about these kids!” pose by describing what he said was a bus full of migrant children that he believed were afraid.

In pure politician bullshit mode, Kwasman said, “I was actually able to see some of the children in the buses. The fear on their faces …. This is not compassion.” He went on to imply that the Obama administration is somehow failing at “border security” and that being stricter about it in some abstract way would prevent the “sad” kids, presumably by allowing them to die quietly in the desert instead of make it across the border. Compassion!

There is, of course, a punch line. And do you really want to know?

Really?