The Rick Perry Show (Who’s Next?)

Ladies and gentlemen, The Rick Perry Show:

Touting his military background and his upbringing in rural America, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced Thursday that he’ll make a second bid for the White House.

Perry stood at a podium in front of a C-130 prop plane emblazoned with the words “Perry for President” and told the crowd at a hangar in this Dallas suburb that it’s time for an American “reset.”

“We have the power to make things new again. To project American strength again, to get our economy going again. And that is why today I am running for the presidency of the United States of America,” the longest-serving governor in Texas history said to loud applause.

Perry was accompanied by several military veterans, including Marcus Luttrell, the Navy SEAL made famous in the movie “Lone Survivor.” Taya Kyle, widow of Chris Kyle, the subject of the film “American Sniper” was also in attendance.

(Hunt and Frumin)

In honor of Governor Oops returning to the Republican Ringling, Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress notes some of the stranger beliefs Mr. Perry has expressed about the U.S. Constitution he hopes to preserve, protect, and defend.

And Simon Maloy responds to those notes with appropriately theatrical horror.

The Texas Oopsie Indicted Clown just jumped in the car.

Who’s next? Jeb? And then Bobby?

I get the argument about diversity, how more candidates is better. But isn’t there something missing from that formulation? Don’t they have to be good candidates? I mean, you know―at least a couple of them?

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Image note: Top ― Former Governor of Texas Rick Perry adjusts his tie as he listens to his introduction from the side of the stage at the Freedom Summit in Des Moines, Iowa, January 24, 2015. (Jim Young/Reuters)

Hunt, Kasie and Aliyah Frumin. “Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry announces 2016 presidential bid”. msnbc. 4 June 2015.

Millhiser, Ian. “9 Completely Bonkers Things The Newest GOP Presidential Candidate Believes About The Constitution”. ThinkProgress. 4 June 2015.

Maloy, Simon. “oh god I didn’t realize Perry is an anti-17th amendment crank”. Twitter.com. 4 June 2015.

Benen, Steve. “Flubbing the details on Perry’s indictment”. msnbc. 25 August 2014.

Mr. Paul’s Integrity

“He has integrity. That’s pretty much it in a nut shell.”

―Dominic Damiano

While we’re on the subject of Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), the question arises as to what, exactly, is this myth of integrity about the Kentucky junior.

There is, certainly, Simon Maloy’s consideration of Paul’s coming presidential run―

The true “compromise” that’s happening here is on Rand Paul’s much-vaunted libertarian principles, which he’s shown an eager willingness to shed as he moves closer and closer to announcing his presidential candidacy. He debuted on the national scene as a Republican who would stand on principle to buck the Republican establishment, and since then he’s steadily diluted his own positions to bring them into closer alignment with the mainstream of the party. The Rand Paul who once scoffed at the Republican “hawks” and “interventionists” has since joined their ranks in calling for a sustained military campaign to “destroy” the Islamic State. He used to support cutting aid to Israel, but now denies ever having espoused that position.

Reversals like these also undercut what is supposed to be the core of Rand Paul’s appeal: that he’s a “different” kind of Republican who can hold on to hardcore conservatives while simultaneously poaching traditionally Democratic voters. “Rand is the Republican who has the best chance of keeping and energizing the base while going into their constituencies,” a Paul aide said last August. “It’s kind of dangerous to have a Republican like Rand.” With each flip-flop, Rand is turning himself into the thing he can’t afford to be: just another Republican.

―but even that examination of a “spectacular crash” starts with the erroneous presupposition that the fake libertarian was ever a “man of principle”. And perhaps it is true that he was in some context a man of principle, staunchly dedicated to being a racist and misogynist with some assertion of integrity about his supremacist paranoia, but that doesn’t mean he should be allowed anywhere near children.

And with such a definition of “integrity”, neither, it seems, should Mr. Damiano.

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McLaughlin, Tom. “Rand Paul hosts fundraising dinner in Destin”. Northwest Florida Daily News. 30 March 2015.

Maloy, Simon. “Rand Paul’s spectacular crash: How a man of principle turned into a generic politician”. Salon. 26 March 2015.

A Bushwhacking

“It’s almost enough to make you feel sorry for Jeb. All he did was participate in a time-honored tradition among political elites – giving each other awards as a celebration of shared power and influence. It probably didn’t even occur to him that by putting a medal around Hillary Clinton’s neck he was implicating himself in the most significant and far-reaching political scandal of our age.”

―Simon Maloy

One might be tempted to wonder what chance Jeb Bush has if the hard right not only isn’t behind him but, actually, stands in specific opposition. And, certes, we have the example of Mitt Romney to consider. But then arises the question of just how far a hardline conservative candidate can make it in the general election; while a Clinton-Bush showdown is often spoken of as a tiresome prospect, who here really thinks enough people in enough states will be able to rationalize, even to themselves, the idea of being an “independent” or “centrist”, and give their vote to a Rubio or Paul? True, most people who call themselves “independent” are actually Republicans afraid to admit their real party identification, but the way in which they push back against that argument is to reject the hardliners.

As Simon Maloy explains:

The explanation ForAmerica offers for why this video disqualifies Jeb is that Hillary will use it to defang any attacks he might direct at her record as secretary of state. “Jeb has absolutely no credibility to criticize her because he has already anointed her as a great public servant.” Eh, perhaps? If you go and watch Hillary’s full remarks, she celebrates Jeb and the whole Bush family for sharing her love of America and the wisdom of the Founding Fathers. Treating praise for the enemy as an unforgiveable political sin is problematic since part of being a politician is showing magnanimity by mechanically lauding your opponents’ patriotism and shared love of public service.

But this is Benghazi we’re talking about, and there’s nothing more important in the minds of conservative activists when it comes to Hillary Clinton and 2016. Jeb hasn’t really said a whole lot about Benghazi (at least not compared to some of his 2016 rivals) but when he has remarked on it, he’s said what conservatives want to hear – that it showed weakness, emboldened enemies, etc. If there’s danger for Jeb, it’s that he’ll come off as a squish compared to other would-be candidates like Ted Cruz or Rand Paul, who declares every few months or so that Benghazi disqualifies Hillary from ever holding public office again.

The reality television market sector has nothing to compare to the 2012 GOP presidential primary, and the upcoming electoral season―the Ames Straw Poll is all of six months away―would appear to be promisimg an even bigger spectacle. GOP 2016 is going to be a show of shows, and Americans who plan to travel abroad between then and the presidential election should probably spend some time rehearsing their sheepish shrugs and noncommittal answers for when our international neighbors ask them just what the hell is going on in the U.S.

Such as it is, one fun exercise in smacking our heads against desks will come in trying to comprehend how the Republican clown car steers its way back toward the political center; leading prognostications suggest the press will help by moving the center in relation to wherever the GOP troupe crashes.

Brought to You by the Letter ‘A’

The life cycle of bad ideas is a curious thing.

No, wait, no it isn’t. Something about history repeating itself and not being smart enough to recognize the point goes here. At any rate, Simon Maloy tries to explain a thing or two about the latest revival of supply-side mysticism:

they love cutting taxes for rich people, and they’re also enthusiastic deficit scolds. There’s a seemingly irreconcilable tension in that worldview that arises from a straightforward assumption: cutting tax rates for the people who pay the largest share of taxes will result in the government taking in less revenue.

The way they get around this dilemma is through the magic of dynamic scoring. Basically, when they calculate the cost of a tax cut, they assume that cutting taxes will produce an explosion of economic growth that will actually result in higher tax revenues. Cutting taxes, therefore, won’t increase the deficit – it could actually lower it! This is, to put it mildly, a contentious idea. Dynamic scoring on its own isn’t a particularly controversial practice, but strong proponents of supply-side economics vigorously abuse it in order to make some ruinous economic proposals seem palatable.

One of the biggest adherents of dynamic scoring is Rep. Paul Ryan, the incoming chair of the House Ways and Means Committee. The most recent of his celebrated ultra-conservative budget proposals made enthusiastic use of dynamic scoring in order to achieve balance in 10 years while simultaneously slashing tax rates and boosting defense spending. When you just assume that lowering tax rates will supercharge economic growth, anything becomes possible.

This is hardly news: The presumed increased revenues resulting from tax cuts are simply presumptions.

Those who remember Voodoo Reaganomics occasionally scratch their heads and wonder, “What? We’re still having this discussion?” And those who remember the financial crisis that started with the Bear Stearns collapse in 2007 can always blame it on the president who was elected in 2008 and didn’t take office until 2009. The idea is simple enough, that if the government takes less money in taxes, that money will produce even more in taxes under lower rates by staying in the consumer and business economies. The result, of course, is a widening gap between rich and poor, a private business sector that has become so privileged it feels the products and services it offers in exchange for money are merely obstacles they must overcome in order to get what is rightly theirs—namely the money in your pocket—and a resounding, persistent failure to produce the promised returns. All of these, of course, are why Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI01) calls “dynamic scoring” by another moniker, “reality-based scoring”.

You see, sometimes a joke is funny because it’s true. In the Republican Party, a fantasy is true because it sounds funny.

No, wait, that’s still not right.

The thing is that we have an ongoing supply-side experiment in progress, and that is called Kansas, where Gov. Sam Brownback and his supporters—self-described (ahem!) “Brownbackers”—have produced not the fantasy results but, rather about what you might expect. Fiscal affairs in Kansas government are a bit sensitive at the moment, but don’t worry, the fantasy math says things will work out okay in the end.

Strangely, Mr. Ryan, the GOP vice presidential nominee in 2012, is considered something of a budget wonk.

Perhaps they have the wrong vowel.

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Maloy, Simon. “Paul Ryan’s ‘reality’ problem: Why his justification of ruinous supply-side tax policies is warped “. Salon. 1 December 2014.

Is Jennifer Rubin Sinister or Merely Stupid?

Even the simplest of differences can create false appearances. For instance: Is Jennifer Rubin sinister or stupid?

In the end, though, the difference is one of valences. Sinister forgives stupidity in some cases for the fact of reasonable execution, but even the sinister is cultivated around a germ of ignorance.

In the first place, there is Rubin’s arrival at The Washington Post. Eric Alterman of The Nation noted last year—

It is no secret to anyone that conservatives have conducted a remarkably successful, decades-long campaign to undermine the practice of honest, aggressive journalism with trumped-up accusations of liberal bias. They have made massive investments of time and money in groups and individuals devoted to “working the refs,” and these have yielded significant ideological dividends—which, as might be predicted, have only encouraged them to keep it up.

—as a preface to his discussion of Jennifer Rubin as “The Washington Post’s Problem”. She was the third in a string of quota hires made as part of an attempt to deliberately throw their political coverage rightward in order to fend off attacks of being too liberal. Ben Domenech, their first hire for the position, turned out to be a sharp-tongued plagiarist, which was kind of embarrassing for the Post, as you might imagine. Next they plucked Dave Weigel from Reason.com, and one can reasonably say the Reason franchise has never been the same. Yet for all the quality of this pick, Post editors deemed him unsuitable for the task after realizing that he just wasn’t conservative enough. So the newspaper turned to rabid right-winer Jennifer Rubin, and the disaster of her term as a staff blogger really is hard to describe. Alterman’s review for The Nation is an excellent read, but it is also something of a headache insofar as truth is stranger than fiction and the twists and turns of Jennifer Rubin’s greatest contribution to our political discourse would seem to have something to do with mainstreaming hardline rightist tinfoil in major news media. After the 2012 election, Rubin’s ability to change her story without the slightest hint of shame, or even decency, was pretty much on display for anyone to see. Simon Maloy tried to sketch the degree of self-contradiction in her coverage of the Romney loss; it isn’t pretty.

Your (sigh) 2016 GOP Presidential Prognistication, v.1

There is, of course, the idea of epistemic closure, what others might refer to as the Bubble, or the Right Wing Echo Chamber. After all, one might wonder at the idea that presidential-caliber political operatives were shellshocked on election night^†. To the other, the effect is easy enough to see, but in truth it really was hard to believe. And yet amid the right-wing media circus that included arbitrarily adjusted statistics to tell us all the real, “unskewed” poll results, Jennifer Rubin stood alone amid the wrong-minded noise, head and shoulders above her deluded colleagues, and managed the sort of electoral season that the Washington Post really ought to be embarrassed about, except that she’s not as bad as the two people who held the job of WaPo right-wing blogger before her.

But the newspaper’s cruel joke against conservatives remains unbowed. In recent days the Maven of Mistakes has announced her field of candidates for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination. No, really.

• New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie

• Former GOP vice presidential nominee, and Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan

• Florida Sen. Marco Rubio

• Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker

• Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush

• Former Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton

• Texas Gov. Rick Perry

• Bonus coverage of the field that just shouldn’t bother, namely Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, as well as former Sen. Rick Santorum.

Sounds kind of fun, doesn’t it?

No?

Well … er … right.

One Marianne Doherty lamented, as Romney supporters countenanced defeat, “It makes me wonder who my fellow citizens are. I’ve got to be honest, I feel like I’ve lost touch with what the identity of America is right now. I really do.”

And, well, yeah. If Republicans want to keep feeling that way, they should keep their heads firmly sealed inside the Bubble.

I mean, really. Look at that list. The only real question is how much of his soul Gov. Christie is going to have to sell in order to seal up the nomination.

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^† Apparently, Romney’s campaign, from top to bottom, had no idea what was about to happen. How does one get to the premiere league of American politics, yet be so blind?