Tag Archives: GOP

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A few thoughts on the McCain and Giuliani speeches last night:

How exactly has John McCain determined that Al Qaeda was weakened by the War in Iraq? Does he know something the rest of us don’t? Because there’s plenty to indicate that Al Qaeda’s been strengthened by the diversion of resources to Iraq and the gestures towards religious crusade. If McCain can prove the contrary, that would seem to be the kind of information we’d be hearing about at the Convention. I mean, it’s not as if the Bush Administration has been shy about leaking classified information for electoral gain.

It’s always been impressive how Republicans manage to contend on the one hand that they represent decent, faithful, virgin America and defend it against the coarse and the obscene, and on the other hand that they represent common, hard-working, tough America against the lilly-livered elite (Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter With Kansas? has an engaging the discussion of the need for the myth of the liberal elite as an explanatory tool for conservatives to exempt the smut they condemn from the explanations of laissez-faire capitalism they enshrine). But it takes truly stunning rhetorical gymnastics to elide both charges in a few sentences, as Giuliani does in celebrating Bush both for being comfortable with the vulgar language of the common man construction workers and for eschewing the vulgarity of the Democrats.

So Giuliani is opposed to undemocratically elected governments which use external enemies to try to distract their citizens instead of improving healthcare. Who knew?

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Real, real strong turnout at today’s protest on the eve of the Republican National Convention. Certainly much larger than either of the anti-war rallies I attended in New York a year and a half ago. There may have been little shared ground among the protesters beyond opposition to Bush, but that message came through loud and resoundingly clear, and is about as much information as the mainstream media can be expected to communicate anyway.

Speaking of which, the most telling moment for me may have been when thousands of us, in the middle of a protest easily several hundreds of thousands large, were causing a ruckus around the Fox News Headquarters. We looked up to the channel’s gigantic display overhead, and what was on Fox News? A discussion of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. That, ladies and gentlemen, is as concise a statement of the problems with the corporate media as any.

The question hanging over the protest was what, in the event of a Kerry victory, becomes of this several-hundred-thousand-strong group, some of whom chanted Kerry’s name and others of whom wore masks mocking his face. How do those of us who identify as the left, re-energized and validated by the devastation wrought by the sitting President, organize with the same extent of urgency and breadth of coalition to hold accountable his replacement?

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Last summer, the New York Times magazine ran a cover story on “The New Hipublicans” – college Republican activists. The article, despite seeming to bend over backwards (likely cowed by the ever-present specter of “liberal media bias”) to paint the kids in as positive a light as possible, came under attack from all corners of the conservative press as another example of how out of touch the Times was when it came to conservatives. As I said at the time, if there was something leery and out of touch about the magazine’s coverage of conservative activists, it was an outgrowth of the Times‘ leery, out of touch approach to activists of any stripe, not to conservatives. One classic example would be the NYT cover story on the Howard Dean movement that so bugged me in December. Another would be today’s front-page piece on anachists, which introduces them by listing off protests at which they’ve been blamed for violence:

Self-described anarchists were blamed for inciting the violence in Seattle at a 1999 meeting of the World Trade Organization in which 500 people were arrested and several businesses damaged. They have been accused by the police of throwing rocks or threatening officers with liquid substances at demonstrations against the Republican convention in Philadelphia in 2000 and at an economic summit meeting in Miami last year. Now, as the Republican National Convention is about to begin in New York City, the police are bracing for the actions of this loosely aligned and often shadowy group of protesters, and consider them the great unknown factor in whether the demonstrations remain under control or veer toward violence and disorder.

No discussion, of course, of the role of New York City police in determining whether demonstrations veer towards violence and disorder. Instead we get this implication that civil disobedience is something to be ashamed of:

But even anarchists who are against violence are warning of trouble and admit that they are planning acts of civil disobedience…

And to top it off, a couple paragraphs for John Timoney, who oversaw the unfortunate violence of the police treatment of protesters in Philly and Miami, to blame it all on the activists without anybody to refute him.

Needless to say, a book like Starhawk’s Webs of Power gives a much more grounded, nuanced, relevant portrayal of anarchists and their relationships with other activists. Maybe someone at the Times should read it

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The Chicago Sun-Times is reporting that former Republican Presidential candidate Alan Keyes will receive the Republican nod to face Barack Obama in Illinois’ Senate election. I’d say Barthwell, despite her harassment of gay employees, would have managed to pull more votes for the GOP given her actually being from Illinois and her not being on record as a right-wing fringe polemicist (not that I have a problem with fringes, or polemicists…), but this race was Obama’s either way. Seeing as Keyes has largely been out of the public eye the past four years, I figured I’d put together a few choice quotes (culled from Bruce Miller’s Take Them At Their Words) from the man who would be R-IL.

On Clinton’s impeachment:

And what was fascinating, I spent part of the time in my talks addressing the vote that had taken place on Friday, and making the point that in truth the Senate did not exonerate Bill Clinton, ’cause we all know he’s guilty. They perjured themselves. (February 16, 1999)

On Democrats:

…a party without a heart or principle or respect for law or anything else, which, because of the lack of a sense of principle, now I think poses a deep threat to our future as a free people…a party that has adopted the kind of “ends justifies the means” approach that characterized the communist parties in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union – and such a party is potentially an instrument of deep repression…it has surrendered to that total abdication of moral concern which then says that so long as you succeed at doing what we want done, we don’t care how you do it. And in a nation that’s supposed to be based on Constitutionalism and the rule of law, that is a party that is a danger, indeed… (February 16, 1999)

On September 11 and abortion:

If we pray down destruction on the head of Osama bin Laden for that violation of innocent life, we have to be aware that we pray down destruction as well on a nation that is willing to enshrine in principle a right to administer the selfsame blow to those innocent lives of our offspring that ought to be more sacred in our obligation to God than any others. (July 17, 2002)

At a rally supporting Judge Roy Moore’s refusal to take down the ten commandments from his court:

The greatest danger we have faced, the greatest danger we face today lies not in the guns of any enemy. It lies not in the strength of any foreign power. The greatest danger that we face today is those who wish to tell us, in the name of freedom, that we must turn our backs on God! (April 12, 2003)

Looks like the Republicans are actually preparing to field a candidate who believes that the Democrats are about as dangerous as Stalinists, abortion-supporters are worse than Osama bin Laden, and civil libertarians are the greatest threat to our national security. The Sun-Times quotes one member of the panel which is said to have made the offer looking forward to Keyes and Obama “doing Lincoln-Douglas debates.” I’m sure Obama is psyched to debate, given that he was challenging Ryan for more debates even as he way way ahead of him in the polls, and it would certainly be entertaining to watch. I’m not sure it’s a pairing that merits the description “Lincoln-Douglas.” I am confident saying Keyes will find no more success running for Senate in Illinois than he did back in Maryland.

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Of all the displays in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, the one I found most chilling the last time I was there was a quote from Hitler, mounted on the wall, in which he sets forth his plan to exterminate my people and his confidence that he’ll get away with it because, after all, “who remembers the Armenians?” Now Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA) has introduced legislation to bar Turkey from using American money to lobby against recognition of the Armenian genocide, and the Republican leadership wants it scuttled:

A day after getting the House of Representatives to recognize the Armenian Genocide for the first time, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Glendale) was already feeling pressure Friday from the House’s Republican leadership to drop the issue. The House of Representatives accepted an amendment to the foreign operations appropriation bill Thursday sponsored by Schiff that would prohibit Turkey from using U.S. foreign aid funds to lobby against recognition of the genocide. “It puts the House on record as saying that the genocide took place, we know it took place, and we won’t allow our money to be used to deny it,” Schiff said. From 1915 to 1923, 1.5 million Armenians were killed by the Ottoman Turks, but the United States has never acknowledged it as genocide. Schiff’s amendment is the first time the House voted on a measure related to the genocide.

But a joint House-Senate committee must approve the amendment, and Republican leaders in the House are already starting to fight it. In a joint statement, Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) insisted the committee drop the amendment and said the House would not consider officially recognizing the Armenian Genocide this year. Republicans fear that recognizing the genocide will hurt the United States’ relationship with Turkey, a strategic military ally. The United States and Turkey jointly operate an air force base in Incirlik, on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. “Turkey has been a reliable ally of the United States for decades, and the deep foundation upon which our mutual economic and security relationship rests should not be disrupted by this amendment,” Hastert, DeLay and Blunt said in a written statement.

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Matt Yglesias has chosen, in healthcare,a strange example to advance his case for how left-wing Clinton’s policy would have been if not for Republican resistance. True, as Matt observes, he made some significant tactical blunders on the issue, but I’d say Theda Skocpol (no raging socialist she) was right to argue that the most profound and damaging of these was that he proposed a relatively moderate reform thinking it would appease his opponents on the right and in so doing only managed to alienate his allies on the left while earning himself no olive branch from the HMOs and confusing everybody in between with a complicated, uninspiring plan.

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Matt Yglesias points out that most Americans don’t resent trial lawyers nearly as much as Republicans seem to think they do:

There are a lot more potential product liability plaintiffs than potential defendants — we all buy stuff, and relatively few of us own companies that make stuff. What’s more, if ordinary people really hated plaintiff’s attorneys, it’s hard to see how it would be possible to ever win these big jury awards that the “tort reform” crowd hates so much.

Indeed. And he channels Ruy Teixeira’s numbers to prove it. They’re encouraging. Not that long ago I was watching the old, bad movie The Devil’s Advocate whose premise is pretty much summed up in its plot, and whose end essentially argues that the devil’s scheme is to fill the world with lawyers so that sinners can get off easy. Personally, if I were devil, I’d follow Shakespeare’s advice and kill all the lawyers – all the better to remove all checks and balances and screw the masses, be it the profiled and wrongly accused or the victims of corporate malfeseance and crimminal wrongdoing the right loves to hate. Are there nasty lawyers out there? Of course. There are also a hell of a lot of nasty congressmen.

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More on felons and the political process: The Associated Press apparently did some research, discovered that America Coming Together (ACT), one of the largest national groups sending canvassers out to register and educate voters for the election, had hired some former felons, and they were shocked – just shocked. ACT’s response, to their credit, has been defending its policy:

We believe it’s important to give people a second chance,” Elleithee said. “The fact that they are willing to do this work is a fairly serious indication that they want to become productive members of society.”

RNC Chair Ed Gillespie, shamefully but unsurprisingly, is claiming that having been convicted of a felony should disqualify Americans from handling official documents with private information. His essential contention – that the democratic process is too pure to be sullied by the involvement of those with crimminal records – should be all too familiar to those who saw it marshalled by a slew of dKos posters to defend Arizona’s disenfranchisement of felons in the name of keeping Nader off the ballot.

More power to ACT for hiring everyone who’s prepared and qualified for the hard, urgent work of empowering people to make demands of our democracy. I know I’ve found few people as excited about that work here in Florida as those felons who’ve been purged from the process. Everyone (almost) claims to want to see those who’ve served their time productively and smoothly reintegrated into society. Except not into my neighborhood. Not into my workplace. Not into my democracy.

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A month ago I wrote here about a “Catholic Voting Scorecard” prepared by Catholic Democrats to remind voters and the media that abortion isn’t the only issue on which the Conference of Bishops has taken a contentious stance, and that it shares more of them in common with the Democrats than the Republicans. Now Nathan Newman shares a survey of Catholic Senators compiled by Senator Durbin:

Unsurprisingly, Democratic Senators do poorly on the pro-life rating, but the news is in the Domestic and Foreign Policy ratings. Using the stated legislative priorities of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), Durbin has ranked the Senators on Catholic positions from the minimum wage to the right to unionize on the domestic front to the Iraq War Resolution and Global AIDS funding on the international side. And some Catholic Republicans are way off the Church’s legislative priorities. Senator Sununu and Santorum received the lowest domestic ratings (23%) with Bunning and Santorum tied with the lowest ratings in foreign policy (6%). Other Catholic GOPers with notably low ratings were Senator Domenici (27% Domestic, 12% International) and Murkowski (33% Domestic, 7% International). BTW Kerry had the highest domestic rating of any Catholic Senator (95%). Of course, conservatives will say only the abortion issue counts. Now, many Catholic leaders may say it counts more– and Durbin gives it its own rating, but it should raise questions in some quarters– hint to the media– that additional stories on who is a “good Catholic” could be done.

Now the Republicans can only be expected to keep exploiting the mantle of faith as long as it appears a potent strategy. But it’s time for the media to wisen up and broaden its sense of what construes Catholic politics. It’s time for the Church to levy the kind of pressure it has on behalf of what it calls “unborn children” towards fighting the poverty faced by children born in this country every day. And it’s time for the Democrats, religious or not, to stop shrinking from hypocritical attacks from Republicans.

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Part of my job at the Philadelphia Unemployment Project two summers ago was tracking several Philadelphia newspapers each day for coverage of the impact of debates over the welfare reauthorization bill on the lives on thousands of Philadelphians. The short summary of that research would be: there wasn’t any. This is probably when I developed my now deeply-ingrained dislike of the Philaelphia Inquirer, and also when I started joking that were the city of Philadelphia to explode, the paper’s banner headline would read “SUBURBAN FAMILIES FACE DELAYS GETTING TO WORK.” Unfortunately, that still seems to be the case. There was one exception yesterday, however: a good piece on the dangers posed by the PA Welfare Department’s proposed cuts in assistance for transportation, rightly titled, “Paths to better lives are at risk“:

Created during welfare reform in the late 1990s, the QuickSilver is among two dozen local transit services that may dwindle or disappear through widening holes in Pennsylvania’s safety net. Facing a budget crisis, the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare plans to cut 30 percent of funding for these routes under the department’s proposed budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 – which could mean fewer buses or none at all on some local routes serving nearly 3,000 people a day. The department threatens to ax the program by mid-2005, if the funding problems remain. Working with SEPTA, seven agencies in Southeastern Pennsylvania provide transportation for poor workers isolated from suburban jobs. Some have grown weary of unpredictable state support for transit…”These are real people that really need this service,” said Tom Klevan, coordinator for Altoona’s transit provider.

As Congress remains focused on Iraq, welfare reform languishes with Head Start and transportation funding in a long line of issues overdue for legislative reauthorization. As a result, welfare grants to states remain stuck at 1996 levels. In a sign of the times, Andrew Bush, who presides over federal welfare aid for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is on assignment in Iraq, advising its new government how to build a welfare system.

More like this, please.

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As Memorial Day approaches, Secretary of Veterans Anthony Principi claimed Thursday that “our active military respond better to Republicans” as the White House announced its plans to cut the budget for veterans. The question isn’t how we on the left can support the troops but oppose the war – the question is how Bush and company can continue to support the war but oppose the troops.

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Dennis Hastert made news yesterday questioning whether John McCain was a Republican. Republican and Democratic commentators alike would do well to remember, before the former get too indignant and the latter do too much gloating, how conservative John McCain actually is.  He’s vehemently anti-union, anti-choice, and pro-war.  What McCain is is a traditional conservative who, to his credit, is more ideological than partisan, which sets him apart from any number of Senators on both sides of the aisle.  McCain’s increasingly apparent disgust with the Bush Administration is an indication of Bush’s lack of fidelity to the American conservative tradition in favor of an even more dangerous radicalism, not a demonstration of McCain’s liberalism.  He’s not our Zell Miller – Zell has simply become an opportunistic conservative who gets more airtime as a Democrat.  He is also, emphatically, not the man to fill out John Kerry’s Presidential Ticket.