Ted Cruz left with few friends after Obamacare fight fails, government shutdown ends, debt limit rises
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said he wouldn't try to block the Senate agreement. “There’s nothing to be gained from delaying this vote one day or two days. The outcome will be the same,” Cruz said. “Once again, it appears the Washington establishment is refusing to listen to the American people.” [ What a GOOFY GUTS! What on earth does he think 2 million people have to do with 314 million people? ..He thinks 2 million is 'all people' .... he may be book smart but he is dumb as rocks when it comes to common sense ..]
TODD J. GILLMAN Dallas Morning News 17 October 2013 10:05 AM
WASHINGTON — It might be time for Ted Cruz to get a dog.
Because as the saying goes, if you want a friend in Washington, that’s what you do. And by the time Cruz’s crusade to defund Obamacare finally crashed to a halt Wednesday, the Texas senator had precious few friends left.
The government shutdown alienated colleagues in both parties. It generated fresh animosity toward the tea party and a flurry of recriminations toward Cruz. Voter support for the Republican Party plunged.
“This is a terrible deal,” Cruz said moments before the deal to reopen the government sailed through the Senate with bipartisan support. He blamed the defeat on colleagues who lacked the political courage to stand with him.
“The outcome could have been different,” he said. “Imagine a world in which Senate Republicans united to support House Republicans.”
Cruz willed himself to the center of the fight. For months, he predicted that Democrats would cave if Republicans stood together to strip funding from the health care law. He dramatized the cause with a 21-hour overnight Senate speech, soaring to unusual prominence for a freshman senator. He refrained from using the risk of a catastrophic default on U.S. debt as leverage. Still, the defeat was so resounding that it left his political future in doubt.
The vast majority of his colleagues repudiated his tactics. Some accused him of promoting himself more than any attainable goals or the health of his party.
Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the 2008 GOP presidential nominee, called the last few weeks an “agonizing odyssey.”
“This has been one of the most shameful chapters I’ve seen here,” he said, lamenting damage to the GOP for little gain. “We’re in a hole. We have to dig out. We weren’t going to defund Obamacare, and we weren’t going to keep the government shut down.”
About the only praise flowing toward Cruz on Wednesday pertained to his decision not to stand in the way of the deal Senate leaders hatched.
“At some point, when you’ve reached the end of the road, to then make life miserable for no reason, with absolutely no outcome in sight — then the pendulum swings,” said Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn.
Cruz maintained that he never had any intention of allowing default, though he hadn’t made that clear until he stepped in front of TV cameras, right at the same moment Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell had taken to the Senate floor to unveil the eleventh-hour deal he’s struck with Majority Leader Harry Reid.
“There’s nothing to be gained from delaying this vote one day or two days. The outcome will be the same,” Cruz said, adding that “once again, it appears the Washington establishment is refusing to listen to the American people.”
Cruz and his aides insisted the fight actually paid off. The flaws of Obamacare are now a topic of daily conversation in Washington and across the country, they argued.
Polls have consistently shown, though, that while Americans are unhappy with the health care law, they oppose defunding it, especially in connection with shutting down the government.
GOP strategist John Feehery called it smart for Cruz to steer clear of triggering a default. Taking blame for the shutdown is one thing; a calamity of that magnitude would have been quite another.
“He will not want to have the weight of the world on his shoulders. … He just declares victory by voting no,” said Feehery, a former top aide to former House Speaker Dennis Hastert.
But, he said, Cruz’s extremism has not just harmed the party. It will, in his view, make it impossible to win the GOP nomination for president in 2016, though Cruz could enjoy the notoriety of a Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin, or win a third-party nomination if the tea party splits off.
“This isn’t about legislating. It’s about being in the center of things,” Feehery said. “He’s become a tea party hero.”
Cruz’s popularity among party activists will get its next test Oct. 25, when he headlines a major Iowa GOP dinner.
Democrats were eager to blame Cruz for the shutdown and potential damage to the economy. Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa called it “a reckless, tea party-fueled temper tantrum.”
And fellow Republicans in Washington weren’t coming to Cruz’s defense, either, on the question of whether the shutdown was worth it.
“It certainly wasn’t anybody’s intention to have this shutdown. Hopefully we’ve all learned some important lessons,” said Texas’ senior senator, John Cornyn, the deputy GOP leader.
Some Republicans complained that the shutdown overshadowed the huge glitches when the Obamacare insurance marketplaces went online Oct. 1, shielding Democrats from embarrassment.
“Obamacare is going to be the gift that keeps on giving,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., one of the critics of Cruz’s tactics. He called it hostage-taking and political “overreach.”
That fellow conservatives would air such concerns reflected the chasm of mistrust and misapprehension Cruz has created after just 10 months in Washington.
“We’ve been asking from the beginning, what’s the endgame?” said Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., who has fumed for weeks at Cruz for prodding fellow Republicans into the showdown. She noted that Obamacare exchanges opened on schedule despite the shutdown.
GOP leaders had leaned hard on Cruz.
Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 3 GOP leader, credited the Texan for highlighting concerns about Obamacare. “But at the end of the day, if it’s clear that’s not going to succeed, you might want to fight another day and find areas that unite us,” he said. “You learn from it and move on.”
Many tea party activists hailed Cruz, along with Utah Sen. Mike Lee, as one of the few conservative leaders willing to fight. But other Cruz allies seemed to be struggling to find a silver lining.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., asserted that Cruz’s efforts “clarified” where each party stands on Obamacare — as if that hadn’t already been clear after President Barack Obama insisted he won’t allow repeal or defunding of his signature health care law.
“It’s been an unfortunate series of events in some ways,” Sessions said.
At the Texas Association of Business, a leading advocacy group in Austin, president Bill Hammond said Cruz erred in fighting to defund Obamacare, rather than push to cut spending and overhaul entitlement programs as most Republican lawmakers urged.
“It was unrealistic,” he said. “I hope that he will turn his guns on making certain that my grandchildren have Social Security and Medicare, by reforming them without raising taxes.”
The irrational fear [sic: wanton hatred] of President Obama
David Jackson (Courtsey of MSNBC)
By Jonathan Capehart October 16, 2013 at 11:37 am
Late last month, in the run up to the the health-care exchanges going live, MSNBC producer Stefanie Cargill and I went to Belmont, N.C., to ask folks what they knew and thought about the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare. Whether they were for it or against it, they were all confused by it [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2013/10/01/shared-confusion-over-obamacare/ ]. But three weeks after that trip, the conversation I had with David Jackson at the Belmont General Store still rings in my ears.
But Jackson’s forceful denunciation of Obamacare and the fact-challenged conspiracy theories he harbors show that he shares with the Confederate flag waver and Carson a troubling view of President Obama that goes far beyond quarrels over the health care law. They don’t like him. They don’t trust him. And they think he’s destroying America.
Below are portions of the transcript of my conversation with Jackson at the Belmont General Store. From illegal immigrants taking advantage of Obamacare (which they can’t [ http://politix.topix.com/homepage/7422-no-obamacare-does-not-cover-millions-of-illegal-immigrants ]) to the Muslim Brotherhood having prayer services “on the East Lawn of the White House” (which never happened [ http://www.factcheck.org/2009/09/muslim-prayer-day-sept-25/ ]), Jackson believes the president doesn’t love this country, “not one bit, not one breath that comes out of his body.” As a result, Jackson fears Obama as “the most dangerous person that’s ever walked in these United States.”
On Obamacare
Capehart: What do you think about Obamacare?
Jackson: I think it is the biggest travesty in American history. It is forcing people to pay for other people’s health care, because they’re either too lazy or they know they can get the money from someone other than themselves….
It should be thrown in the trash and be taken off the books as a giant mistake. And if they want to help poor people in this country, that’s what they should do.
On parents being able to keep their children on their health insurance policies until they are 26 years old
Jackson: Twenty-six years old, you should be out on your own supporting yourself.
Capehart: Well, it’s up until you’re 26, then after 26 — they’re no longer on their parent’s insurance.
Jackson: When I was 18, my father showed me the door – good luck. Have a good life. It wasn’t all this, keep you on your parents insurance until you’re 26. Most people are out of college with either a bachelor’s or a master’s or working on a master’s that really want to move forward. Twenty-six years old and still living off your parents? That’s lazy.
Capehart: Given the way the economy has been since the implosion of 2008, we know that lots of young people have graduated from college. They’re mired in student debt. They can’t find work. And the notion that they can stay on their parent’s health care coverage until they’re 26 has been the one bright spot in, you know, dark economic clouds that they face. You know — too bad for them?
Jackson: Yeah. Suck it up. That’s the way I look at it. Why should your parents have to pay your way? You’re an adult. Be responsible for yourself.
On Obamacare and illegal immigration
Capehart: The president and the Obama administration say the whole reason he did this is to get the 50 million Americans without health insurance to have health insurance.
Jackson: They figured out a way to get money out of the American people’s pockets. It won’t benefit — it’ll benefit a very small amount of people, and it’ll be the ones that are too lazy or unwilling to work, along with the millions and millions of illegal aliens in this country.
Capehart: You do know that the Affordable Care Act is not … undocumented workers are not eligible for Obamacare. That’s specific in the law.
Jackson: They can go into any Social security agency, welfare office, social services and they’re giving them stuff. They are handing it out to them left and right.
Capehart: What exactly are they handing out?
Jackson: Benefits! Look at them. They get food stamps. They get welfare, dependent children…. They help them with their housing, and they’re not even supposed to be in our country. They are here illegally, but, yet, they know how to work our system to get what they want. They want our health care. They want our food. They want our money, yet they don’t pay taxes. And they’ll look right at you and they’ll tell you, “No habla the English,” and laugh. But you understand what they’re saying. That really makes me angry.
On Obama
Cargill: Who do you blame for the problems with Obamacare?
Jackson: Him! This was his creation. He wanted to change our country, and he has succeeded at it. Not making it change for the better, but he has destroyed the American way of life. He has made it a point — you don’t have to work, we’ll take care of it. People hear “free” and they think it’s free. Someone behind them has paid for that with sweat and hard work….
Capehart: You mentioned earlier that the president has, I think you said, come in to change America and not in a good sense.
Jackson: Correct.
Capehart: Other than the Affordable Care Act, what other ways has he….
Jackson: We went from a triple A+ economic rating in the world to a –A for trade and for borrowing. The prices, just for example food prices have gone up at least 120 percent and it’s because of imposed taxes that he’s created and come up with. And Congress and Senate have been forced to go along with it because there’s something in the barrel that they wanted. He has forced the United States to make choices that they should never have had to make. “Do I pay the electric bill or do I go ahead and pay for Obamacare for somebody else to go to the doctor?” I don’t think that’s right.
Jackson then went on to lambaste the Democrats for resisting Republican attempts to defund or delay Obamacare. “[Republicans] are fighting for the American people as a whole: Democrat, liberal, Republican — doesn’t matter,” he said. “They are trying to preserve our Constitution.” When I asked Jackson if he believed President Obama couldn’t care less about the Constitution, he said, “Yes, sir, I totally do.” And then we fell through the black hole of conspiracy. When I asked Jackson for an example of violations of the Constitution, he had a quick reply: “Benghazi.”
Respect for the Constitution
Capehart: What specifically about Benghazi [Libya] that’s outside the realm of the Constitution?
Jackson: We are sworn to uphold, defend and protect the Constitution of the United States and parts thereof. Part of that is to protect its citizens. Those people in Benghazi screamed for help for 16 hours and they were told, “No.” They were — they were put out there. The list goes on and one and on. It’s one thing after another. The one quote that he made was, “Well if I didn’t have to deal with Congress, I could get things changed around here.” That’s not an American president. They’re supposed to work together for the common goal to make life better for the people of the United States of America….
Capehart: If you were president of the United States and you had the same kind opposition that he’s facing from the other party, wouldn’t you daydream about being able to do what you believe is the right thing to do for the American people without the obstruction that you’re facing?
Jackson: No. We have a Constitution that we’re supposed to abide by, and he violates … whenever he wants. You guys know this stuff. He makes it a point, “Well, if I didn’t have to deal with Congress, I’d do this. I’ll write an executive order.” That’s not the way our country works. That’s not the way our country was founded. Mutual respect among ALL of its people. He doesn’t respect us.
Cargill: Why do you say he’s flouting the Constitution?
Jackson: ’Cause he doesn’t respect it. He said he was going to change America when he went into office. And he has. He has no respect for our Constitution, the bylaws. He wants to do what he wants and if he doesn’t he throws a tantrum and he writes an executive order…. I can’t tell you the things that bother me about what he does.
Osama bin Laden
Capehart: What about the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden?
Jackson: I don’t think that ever happened. No one would ever give up a SEAL team’s names or what SEAL team went in there. I think that was a great mystery that they created. I do not believe they killed him, I will never believe it. Especially dropping him off at sea. No.
Capehart: So, the rationale that they dropped Osama bin Laden’s body at sea was to ensure that his burial place wouldn’t become a shrine to a martyr….
Jackson: No … nobody could prove whether it was him or not. I truly believe that.
The Muslim Brotherhood and fear of Obama
Capehart: One more question. You mentioned that your father, I think you said he fought in World War II. You said that the president doesn’t respect, honor the Constitution. But the president’s grandfather who helped raise him fought in World War II. The president is a constitutional law professor — was a constitutional law professor…
Jackson: He lost his law license, too…. [Not true]
Capehart: Was a constitutional law professor. So, despite all that, you — and correct me if I’m wrong, I’ve been listening to you these last few minutes — you don’t think President Obama loves this country?
Jackson: Not at all. Not one bit, not one breath that comes out of his body.
Capehart: So why would he run for president of a country that he doesn’t love?
Jackson: Because he wanted to change it.
Capehart: And change into what?
Jackson: Look at what our country has become. You can’t go to church without somebody persecuting you. You can’t say anything about the Muslim religion without somebody persecuting you for it. He makes it very well known what his intentions are and how he wants to change the country. And it goes completely against everything this country was founded on. He’s a smart guy, he’s brilliant. But I think he’s the most dangerous person that’s ever walked in these United States. I fear from him, and I’m not afraid of anyone. I’m afraid of him.
Jonathan: Talk more about that. Why are you afraid of him? He’s taller than I am, but he’s barely bigger than I am.
Jackson: Size doesn’t matter. It’s what’s in his heart. He does not have the American people’s best interests at heart. He doesn’t respect the American people as a whole. There have been many veterans groups that asked to have meetings with him or come to the White House and have a picnic on the East Lawn and he said no. And at the same time, this was about two years ago, the Muslim Brotherhood had 1,000 of their people come to the East Lawn for a prayer session.
Capehart: The Muslim brotherhood had….?
Jackson: They had a huge gathering. They had prayer on the East Lawn of the White House. It was in the news.
Capehart: Where did you hear this? Because if the Muslim Brotherhood were at the White House, that’d be a huge story.
Jackson: There are so many people within his administration that are part of it. They’re admitted members of the Muslim brotherhood.
Capehart: Who? Who exactly?
Jackson: I don’t know their names. They’re not English. I don’t know their names, but they’re proud of the fact that, you know, “we work for the president.” They know what they’re doing to our country, and that hurts me.
“For the past 2 and 1/2 weeks, the Holy Spirit has been waking me up in the middle of the night and preparing me (through my reluctance and doubt) to deliver a message in the House Chamber. That is what I did last night”
“Two weeks, waking up in the middle of the night. She’s like, I can’t sleep, God’s got me in the work,” he said. "God was preparing her for this vote last night, because this was kind of the culmination of everything."
Dan Reidy, who described himself to the Post as a Pentecostal Christian, said his wife was taken to a hospital and was evaluated by a psychologist before her release.
Barack Obama launches a message to the GOP claiming the recent budget battle did more damage to the U.S. standing in the world than anything else. Really? Sarah Palin (Former Alaska Gov. / Fox News Contributor) joins Megyn Kelly to weigh in with a response. http://www.rightsightings.com/sarah-palin---kelly-file---10-17-13.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_bo7Hx80Ks [the (apparent) original; another of the same next below in hope that at least one of this remarkable display of anything but just word salad will remain available and viewable here; with comments]
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Sarah Palin First Appearance on The Kelly File with Megyn Kelly | October 17, 2013
Sarah Palin hints at GOP primary fights in 4 states
Sarah Palin and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, join veterans at the World War II Memorial during the government shutdown. Photo: Andrew Burton, Getty Images)
Catalina Camia 4:19 p.m. EDT October 17, 2013
Sarah Palin doesn't seem discouraged that her candidate lost New Jersey's Senate race or by the pummeling Republicans took during the government shutdown.
Now, the former Alaska governor and darling of the Tea Party movement is suggesting conservatives should focus on Senate races in Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee and Mississippi where the Republican incumbent is up for re-election next year.
"Friends, do not be discouraged by the shenanigans of D.C.'s permanent political class today," Palin posted on her Facebook page [ https://www.facebook.com/sarahpalin ] early Thursday, as the federal government reopened and hours after Democrat Cory Booker defeated Republican Steve Lonegan for Senate in New Jersey.
"Be energized," she said. "We're going to shake things up in 2014. Rest well tonight, for soon we must focus on important House and Senate races. Let's start with Kentucky — which happens to be awfully close to South Carolina, Tennessee and Mississippi — from sea to shining sea we will not give up. We've only just begun to fight."
GOP Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee have all already drawn challengers from within their own party who have Tea Party support. In Mississippi, state Sen. Chris McDaniel — who is allied with Tea Party conservatives — announced Thursday he will challenge incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran in next year's primary.
While some political observers believe Palin's influence has waned since she was the GOP vice presidential nominee in 2008, her words and endorsements still matter to many conservatives. Palin provided timely and important support to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas last year, which helped him defeat better-funded and better-known Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in a Republican primary.
Conservative Groups Target GOP Senator's Reelection After He Votes For Budget Deal Conservative groups endorsed the 2014 challenger to Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) after he voted for a deal to ward off the default of the U.S. government. 10/17/2013 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/17/chris-mcdaniel-thad-cochran_n_4116923.html [with (over 8,000) comments]
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Jim DeMint’s New Obamacare Attack: It Wasn’t Approved
Former Senator Jim DeMint speaks to attendees during the Heritage Foundation Defund Obamacare Tour at the Cool Springs Marriott in Franklin, Tenn. on Thursday, August 22, 2013. (Luke Sharrett/Getty)
Fresh off a humiliating shutdown defeat, the Heritage chief says Americans didn’t really OK the Affordable Care Act—as though the 2012 elections never happened.
by Jamelle Bouie Oct 18, 2013 5:50 PM EDT
This was supposed to be Jim DeMint’s moment. As head of the Heritage Foundation, chief sponsor of Heritage Action, and founder of the Senate Conservatives Fund, he had positioned himself as the Lex Luthor of American politics, a schemer who—with the help of like-minded ideologues like Texas Senator Ted Cruz—had whipped conservatives into a frenzy. With their control of the House of Representatives, and the debt ceiling and the continuing resolution, they would defund the Affordable Care Act [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/30/obamacare-fear-mongering-hall-of-fame-death-panels-and-more.html ], and land a mortal blow to the legacy of Barack Obama.
Strategic recklessness aside, the chief problem with the plan was that it needed a weak, feckless opposition. But Obama and the Democrats wouldn’t oblige. They held their ground, and when it became clear they would make no concessions, the scheme fell apart.
The obvious question is, “why?” Not only has the public voiced its intense dissatisfaction with the push to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but there’s the tiny issue of elections: We’re not even a year removed from the results of the last contest, where a solid majority of voters reelected Obamacare’s namesake.
“But aha!”, says (my imagined) DeMint, teeth bared in a mischievous grin. “The public didn’t endorse Obamacare at all!” Or, as he writes in the op-ed, “Obamacare was not the central fight in 2012, much to the disappointment of conservatives. Republicans hoped that negative economic news would sweep them to victory, and exit polls confirmed that the economy, not health care, was the top issue. The best thing is to declare last year’s election a mistrial on Obamacare.”
A “mistrial?” The only way to call the 2012 election a mistrial on the Affordable Care Act is to ignore the 2012 election.
Over the next six months, Romney would talk about the first two items on that agenda, but he would focus on the third one. From his stump speeches, to his ads, to his address [ http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/08/29/us/politics/annotated-republican-convention-speeches.html ] at the Republican National Convention, Romney was clear on his plans for the president’s health-care law: “We must rein in the skyrocketing cost of health care by repealing and replacing Obamacare.” He did the same in the days before the election, telling an audience [ http://mittromneycentral.com/speeches/2012-speeches/11212-real-change-from-day-one/ ] in Wisconsin that—on his first day in office—he would issue waivers that would “begin to repeal” the Affordable Care Act.
The notion that the law was ancillary to last year’s contest is ridiculous. If there was anything that anyone was certain to take away from the election, it was Romney’s commitment to repealing Obamacare, and the president’s commitment to defending it. DeMint’s op-ed, in other words, is a load of nonsense. The public understood what it was doing when it reelected Obama; it was—among other things—giving him a chance to implement his health-care law [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/10/03/how-the-south-blocked-health-care-for-those-who-need-it-most.html ].
Indeed, not only was the president given a second term in the White House, but Democrats retained their hold on the Senate, and won a majority of votes cast in House elections. It’s tough to read elections as a referendum on ideology, but one thing is certain: The public rejected the Republican Party and its direction for the country. And if DeMint has done anything with his anti-Obamacare stunts, he’s made it more likely that voters make the same judgment in 2014.
DeMint thinks the election results don’t accurately reflect national sentiment and therefore can’t be used to argue against his desire to move the party to the right. True conservatism never got a hearing – particularly not in regard to Obamacare, which was, after all, modeled after a Massachusetts law signed by Romney. “Because of Romney and Romneycare, we did not litigate the Obamacare issue,” he says. Essentially, DeMint is declaring a mistrial.
And they don’t count, he argues, because that darned Republican presidential candidate just didn’t push the health care issue. Sure, if you have the memory of a fruit fly, you might not recall Romney promising in every speech for a year and a half to repeal the health care law, the ads promising to destroy the law on Romney’s first day in office, or the central role the anti-Obamacare message played in the Republican pitch in 2012.
But for the rest of us, it’s getting increasingly difficult not to just laugh out loud when Jim DeMint starts talking.
In fact, the closer one looks at this, the more hilarious DeMint appears.
And yet, at this point, DeMint no longer remembers his affinity for Romney, his support for Romney’s health care plan, or Romney’s platform from last year’s campaign.
This guy’s the head of a once-relevant think tank?
{T}here is more at stake in Heritage’s transformation from august policy shop to political hit squad than the reputation of a D.C. think tank or even the careers of a few squishy GOP politicians. It is the intellectual project of the conservative movement itself. Without Heritage, the GOP’s intellectual backbone is severely weakened, and the party’s chance to retake its place as a substantive voice in American policy is in jeopardy.
As the right embraces a post-policy role in American politics, Republicans can thank DeMint for helping lead the way.
Wednesday night’s compromise legislation [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/17/obama-budget-bill_n_4112311.html ] -- which was signed by Obama early Thursday -- funded the federal government through Jan. 15, raised the debt ceiling until Feb. 7 and narrowly avoided a historic debt default.
West, however, views the Senate’s vote to end the shutdown without undoing Obamacare as “reprehensible, and we can expect even more bad behavior from a President that continues to spit on our Constitution and in our eyes ... and smile.”
During an interview Thursday with MSNBC's Al Sharpton, Grayson said Americans are "appalled by the tea party's tactics." The congressman said the right wing "has become the largest suicide pact in history," and predicted voters will push tea partiers out of Congress in the next election.
"They want their money back and they want the tea party out of their lives," Grayson said. "At this point, the tea party is no more popular than the Klan."
Grayson, known for making acidic comments about Republicans, said House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) "dragged this country" through the fiscal impasse "unnecessarily."
"The fact is that John Boehner has become a short-order cook for the far right wing," Grayson said. "'Would you like some french fries or cheese with that?' That's what he does. He takes whatever they want and he lays it out there as if it's the right thing to do."
"He has to go," Grayson said of the speaker. "Everyone who's willing to cater to the tea party has to go, so Americans finally get the government they deserve."
"When you're in a fight, people just don't like the fight, so they're going to respond negatively," DeLay said on CNN. "It's who wins and comes out of the fight that has long-lasting effects. And I got to tell you right now, out here in the real world, outside of New York and Washington, D.C., these people think Ted Cruz is a hero. They think that those Republicans in the House are heroes. And they think that Obama is destroying this country."
Cruz helped kick off the congressional chaos by speaking on the Senate floor for 21 hours in a symbolic filibuster of the Affordable Care Act. House Republicans then joined the fight, refusing to pass a spending bill to prevent a government shutdown unless it included a provision defunding or at least delaying parts of Obamacare.
But DeLay blamed the media for "completely trash[ing]" Cruz and congressional Republicans generally and said polls are "run to push a media narrative." He also said that polls are "not dynamic" and therefore, he argued, do not accurately reflect people's changing attitudes toward certain politicians.
"Ted Cruz is a leader," DeLay said. "People in this country for years have been begging for leadership, and Ted Cruz filled the void of leadership."
President Barack Obama signed a bipartisan bill [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/16/government-shutdown-debt-ceiling_n_4111483.html ] early Thursday that reopened the federal government and raised the nation’s debt ceiling, thereby avoiding default. The bill, however, only authorizes current spending levels until Jan. 15. That means Cruz may have another opportunity to employ shutdown tactics if Congress cannot broker a budget deal by January.
Ted Cruz May Have Committed Ethics Violations In 2012 Senate Campaign
By Chris Gentilviso Posted: 10/18/2013 2:45 pm EDT | Updated: 10/18/2013 2:56 pm EDT
A review of campaign financial disclosure and company documents reveals that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) may have committed ethics violations during his 2012 run [ http://www.tedcruz.org/ ].
TIME Magazine published [ http://swampland.time.com/2013/10/18/ted-cruz-failed-to-disclose-ties-to-jamaican-holding-company/ ] the report Friday, showing that Cruz failed to publicly disclose his relationship with a Caribbean-based private equity firm founded by his college roommate. The senator eventually noted the financial ties in 2013, but failed to meet Senate regulations that call for the identity and location of the company, according to TIME's review.
“It was an omission that was inadvertent,” Cruz told TIME Thursday, adding that he is working to make any necessary corrections.
Polls show that the government shutdown may have affected Cruz's favorability [ http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/ted-cruz-favorable-rating ] among American voters. According to HuffPost Pollster's compilation of 13 publicly available surveys, a Sept. 21 reading saw 26 percent view Cruz unfavorably, compared to 25.9 percent seeing him favorably. By the tail end of the shutdown, an Oct. 13 reading saw a six percent shift in the unfavorable direction [to 32.5% unfavorable, 20.1% favorable].
Why Elizabeth Warren Is 'NOT Celebrating' The End Of The Government Shutdown
By Paige Lavender Posted: 10/17/2013 9:15 am EDT | Updated: 10/17/2013 3:36 pm EDT
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) emailed supporters late Wednesday [...]:
I'm glad that the government shutdown has ended, and I'm relieved that we didn't default on our debt.
But I want to be clear: I am NOT celebrating tonight.
Yes, we prevented an economic catastrophe that would have put a huge hole in our fragile economic recovery. But the reason we were in this mess in the first place is that a reckless faction in Congress took the government and the economy hostage for no good purpose and to no productive end.
$24 billion dollars. How many children could have been back in Head Start classes? How many seniors could have had a hot lunch through Meals on Wheels? How many scientists could have gotten their research funded? How many bridges could have been repaired and trains upgraded?
The Republicans keep saying, "Leave the sequester in place and cut all those budgets." They keep trying to cut funding for the things that would help us build a future. But they are ready to flush away $24 billion on a political stunt.
So I'm relieved, but I'm also pretty angry.
We have serious problems that need to be fixed, and we have hard choices to make about taxes and spending. I hope we never see our country flush money away like this again. Not ever.
It's time for the hostage taking to end. It's time for every one of us to say, "No more."
Conservatives Misunderstand What Went Wrong Under Bush
Reuters
You'd swear from today's rhetoric that the problem was too much compromise. Nope.
Conor Friedersdorf Oct 18 2013, 9:00 AM ET
The Tea Party is composed largely of Republicans who supported George W. Bush at the time, voting for him twice and criticizing him far less frequently than defending him, only to rebel against his record at the end of his second term. At that point, partisan loyalty and shared hatred of liberals finally gave way to the realization that the GOP's time in power was a disaster for conservatives.
Humans seldom look inward when assigning blame for bygone disasters, and the story conservatives have settled on seems to be that establishment Republicans have long been selling them out by failing to fight hard enough. As a Fox News commentator put it, echoing talking points voiced by many hardliners, "I’m sure we will hear establishment apologists calling the events of recent days a compromise. But seeing how the president refused to compromise, it’s more likely the Grand Old Party was the only one bending. Establishment Republicans always talk about doing the right thing for the nation, no matter the price. But when push comes to shove, they always throw in the towel."
What ought to be evident, when Tea Partiers reflect on what they disliked about the Bush years, is that neither insufficient fight nor excessive compromise was the problem. The Iraq War, the most disastrous, budget-busting initiative of the aughts, occurred when the GOP establishment fought for war and didn't give up. The K Street Project involved neither capitulation nor compromising with Democrats. And conservatives were pleased when the establishment "threw in the towel" on immigration reform and the Harriet Meirs nomination.
Many in the Tea Party seem to have conflated compromising one's principles, a bad thing, with negotiating to reach agreements that make both sides better off. The latter kind of compromise is the only way American government can function when power is divided. There is no logical reason that it should be regarded by conservatives as a dirty word -- the Bush years weren't bad for conservatives because of negotiated deals that gave both sides some of what they wanted.
Pretending that compromise is what went wrong during the Bush years helps conservatives to evade responsibility for supporting an agenda many parts of which they find indefensible in hindsight. It permits them to blame Democrats and establishment Republicans for events they themselves only rebelled against after the fact, and to delude themselves into thinking that everything will get better if only they vehemently insist on getting their way, sans compromise, all of the time.
Who wouldn't want to believe that's all success takes? It's a pretty lie that talk radio hosts find it easy to tell over and over again, despite contrary evidence, because conservatives want to believe that it's true. Reality is much harder to face. In order to mount a comeback and wield influence in American politics, conservatives need to face their own flaws, negotiate savvy compromises with President Obama and Democrats, build credibility and momentum with small gains in the short term, persuade people of their ideas and governing vision in the medium term, and implement their agenda by winning elections rather than brinkmanship. But hard truths don't attract a large enough audience to sustain a talk radio show.
“I’m just totally blown away by everything. I don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong anymore.” JEAN NAPLES, a homemaker in Doylestown, Pa. Mark Makela for The New York Times
"This is American politics at its finest." KAREN BRASKA, a driving instructor from Newtown, Pa. Mark Makela for The New York Times
"The whole system is rigged. It's not just one party." THOMAS CRYE, a real estate appraiser in Cleveland, Tenn. David Walter Banks for The New York Times
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON Published: October 17, 2013
CLEVELAND, Tenn. — “The premise was good,” said Bob McIntire, 53, an insurance executive here in deep red Bradley County, where the local Democrats would have trouble filling up a phone booth.
To Mr. McIntire, that reality was a media environment in which conservatives don’t get a fair hearing, a unified and shrewd Democratic opposition, and a Congress hopelessly compromised by Washington deal making. For Matias Elliott, a cabdriver in Colorado Springs, the reality was the harm being done to the nation’s military and to the local economy. For Jean Naples, a homemaker in Doylestown, Pa., it was the “despicable” way the shutdown disrupted funerals for military personnel killed overseas and the way her husband’s medical supply business had suffered a severe cash-flow problem during the shutdown.
Many conservatives described a dispiriting gap between conservative ideals, which they believe inspire widespread agreement, and conservative tactics, which do not. The failure to stop the health care plan left Republicans like Ms. Naples pessimistic and disillusioned. “I’m just totally blown away by everything,” she said. “I don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong anymore.”
Still, for many Wednesday night’s vote had to play out as it did, because there was no other alternative.
“The shutdown had to end,” said Andre Zarb-Cousin of Colorado Springs, who said that he believes the Affordable Care Act could destroy the country. “Who’s suffering? Veterans’ families. People being on welfare.”
Among commentators on the right, the reaction has been less driven by despair than by anger. In heated language on talk radio and on conservative blogs, many spoke of a winning if difficult strategy sabotaged in the end by weak-willed leadership.
“I was thinking about this last night, too, while I was pondering if I can ever remember a greater political disaster in my lifetime,” Rush Limbaugh said Wednesday on his radio show, “if I could ever remember a time when a political party just made a decision not to exist for all intents and purposes.”
This view of the shutdown, while infuriating to many on the right, has the virtue of being something fixable. On the conservative blog RedState [ http://www.redstate.com/ ], Erick Erickson said [ http://www.redstate.com/2013/10/16/advancing-ever-advancing/ ] the capitulation was an urgent lesson in the need to replace establishment Republicans with true conservatives. Tea Party [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/t/tea_party_movement/index.html ] members here in Tennessee agreed, saying that despite the lack of policy victories by the Republicans in Congress, the shutdown had energized the base and shown them that some conservatives, like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, were willing to stand up.
“We’re just trying to make Washington, D.C., listen, and I think we did a really good job of that,” said Donny Harwood, 49, a nurse and the director of the Bradley County Tea Party.
And in Pennsylvania, Karen Brask, 57, a driving instructor, said she had no problems with the Republicans’ hard line that led the nation dangerously close to default. “I don’t mind at all that they are in there kicking and fighting for limited government and the whole personal responsibility thing,” she said. “This is American politics at its finest.”
More common, however, was a resigned sense that America’s politics no longer works.
“The whole system is rigged,” said Thomas Crye, 69, a real estate appraiser sitting at a regular breakfast gathering at the Old Fort Restaurant here in Tennessee. “It’s not just one party.”
In Colorado Springs, a deeply conservative town that is home to the Air Force Academy and Fort Carson, a sprawling Army base, the last two weeks presented a tough contest between philosophy and tactics, between national priorities and local realities.
Mr. Elliott, 26, a cabdriver whose girlfriend is in the Army National Guard, said the decision of his congressman, Doug Lamborn, a Republican, to vote against ending the shutdown was understandable. But while no fan of President Obama, Mr. Elliott said the Republican approach over the past two weeks was shortsighted.
“It’s stupid that you shut down the economy just to get Obamacare off the list,” he said, adding, “Get Obama out of there, and get your candidate in there.”
Sam Eppley, a Republican, said he supports Mr. Lamborn. But he was worried about the shutdown’s toll, fearful of the effect it could have on the cooking store he owns in Colorado Springs, and he disagreed with Mr. Lamborn’s vote against the deal to reopen the government.
“Whether you’re for or you’re against Obamacare or some variation of it, it should not have been tied to a government shutdown,” he said, adding, “I don’t think the nation should have been held hostage over one issue like that.”
Similarly, in the swing district outside Philadelphia that has been represented by Democrats for 4 of the past 10 years and where Representative Michael G. Fitzpatrick, a Republican, is already under attack for the shutdown, no one interviewed criticized him for his vote to reopen the government.
“It was a conceivably good idea but just bad execution,” said Mr. McIntire, sitting with Mr. Crye at the breakfast gathering here, which on one morning a few years ago erupted into a table-upturning confrontation when two of the men began arguing about the president. “I think it will awaken the interest of some people. But yes, it hurt the party.”
In any case, he said, the two congressmen whose districts cover parts of Bradley County will enjoy some support for voting not to end the shutdown.
In the town of Athens a little farther north in the Third District, where a plaque marks the site of an address President Ronald Reagan delivered in 1985, that support looked less than guaranteed. Jim Greek, who owns a store with his wife across the street from the McMinn County Courthouse, described the Tea Party as something that started out as a good idea but “morphed into this monster, this zealous monster.” He suggested that the Tea Party phenomenon might have passed its expiration date.
His wife, Patti, who described herself as a Republican, was somewhat more measured. “I think,” she said of the whole episode, “it could have been handled a little bit differently.”
Alan Blinder contributed reporting from Athens, Tenn.; Dan Frosch from Colorado Springs; and Jon Hurdle from Doylestown, Pa.
The drama turned on a series of relationships, GOP warfare and Democratic unity. AP Photos
By JOHN BRESNAHAN, MANU RAJU, JAKE SHERMAN and CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN | 10/18/13 12:29 AM EDT
House Speaker John Boehner just wanted to sneak out of the White House for a smoke.
But President Barack Obama pulled him aside for a grilling. Obama wanted to know why they were in the second day of a government shutdown that the speaker had repeatedly and publicly pledged to avoid.
“John, what happened?” Obama asked, according to people briefed on the Oct. 2 conversation.
“I got overrun, that’s what happened,” Boehner said.
It may be the most concise explanation of a chaotic, 16-day standoff that prompted the first government shutdown in nearly two decades and ended only hours before the world’s largest economy nearly exhausted its ability to pay the bills. The fiscal drama turned on a series of complicated relationships, internecine Republican warfare and rare Democratic unity.
The House Republican conference ran roughshod over Boehner, a 22-year veteran of Washington who started the fight demanding to strip funds for Obamacare but settled in the end for the reaffirmation of a minor provision already in the law.
He was overtaken by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who swept in near the end to forge a bipartisan agreement, part of an attempt to shield Republicans from further damage and salvage his party’s chances of winning back the Senate next year.
A particular low point came Oct. 1 when Democrats released private emails to POLITICO aimed at making Boehner look like a hypocrite. The emails showed that Boehner had actually been deeply engaged in fixing an Obamacare glitch that would have cost lawmakers and their staff thousands of extra dollars. Hill veterans weren’t quite as shocked by the flip-flop as the utter breakdown of decorum between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Boehner.
Above all, Republicans never believed Obama would hold firm on his refusal to negotiate and Democrats would maintain an unusual level of cohesion — united by a visceral desire to put the tea party in its place and an almost mama grizzly instinct to protect Obamacare.
“It was not a smart play,” McConnell said Thursday of the GOP’s Obamacare strategy. “It had no chance of success.”
Obama and Reid stuck together, emerging as the political victors. Their hard-ball tactics were designed to “break the fever” brought on by the tea party, but it also helped drive the country to the edge of default.
Republicans cycled through every option possible during the three-week standoff to save face. Their Obamacare demands devolved from repeal and defund to a delay of the individual mandate. They revived the idea of a “grand bargain” on taxes and government spending but Reid openly laughed when Boehner raised it during a White House meeting. They offered a more narrow proposal to replace the sequester cuts for two years. Then, they went back to Obamacare.
Nothing worked.
When things were at their worst, some Republican senators urged Vice President Joe Biden to get more involved. But he told each of them it wasn’t his call. Biden participated in meetings at the White House but Reid, still angry about the vice president’s concessions during the fiscal cliff talks last December, had shut him out of direct negotiations with lawmakers this time around.
By Wednesday, Republicans just needed a way out, agreeing to a bill that looked almost identical to what they rejected three weeks earlier: a debt-limit increase until Feb. 7, an extension of federal funding through Jan. 15 and no binding strings attached.
This account of the behind-the-scenes drama was drawn from dozens of interviews with key players in Congress and at the White House. The look back reveals how Republicans waged a fight on Obamacare that their leaders knew they would probably lose but pushed anyways because many in their ranks truly believed that Democrats, like they’ve done so often before, would fold — especially under the threat of an historic default on U.S. debt.
McConnell told his colleagues this week that his party should “never” be put in the same political position again.
“We fought the good fight,” Boehner told WLW radio on Wednesday. “We just didn’t win.”
Any hope of an easy debt limit extension was dashed in late August when Boehner promised a “whale of a fight.”
Obama and Reid got on the same page early on, agreeing during strategy sessions over the summer that they wouldn’t give up anything until Republicans renewed the debt limit and government funding.
Democrats never believed that Boehner could deliver the 217 House votes he needed to cut a deal. He could shut down the government and risk default, but because of hard-line conservatives, Boehner couldn’t pass anything. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told Obama and Reid this privately, and she repeated it publicly. This belief drove the Democrats throughout the crisis: stand firm and Boehner will be forced to fold.
But they had to keep each other in check.
Reid nixed an idea in mid-September to invite the congressional leaders over to the White House for a talk. It sends the wrong message, Reid argued to Obama in a call. We shouldn’t even create the appearance of a negotiation, Reid said.
The meeting never happened.
In the House, Boehner and his leadership team ran through a spate of options — none of which his conference would accept. First, the Ohio Republican proposed keeping the debt limit and government-funding discussions separate, which Democrats were privately hoping would happen. He suggested passing a budget bill that completely funded the Affordable Care Act. A resolution would be passed alongside that defunded the law, but it could’ve been stripped out by the Senate and sent to Obama’s desk.
The proposal was dubbed the “Cantor plan,” after House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who came up with the idea. Then, Boehner would’ve had Republicans fight hard on the debt ceiling, using the sequester as a bargaining chip against Obama.
But that’s where Boehner miscalculated: he assumed House Republicans only wanted a show vote. Instead, they wanted so much more, determined to nullify the health care law and use a government shutdown and threat of a debt-limit default to get there.
Boehner’s rank-and-file were being egged on Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a populist freshman who was quickly gaining followers in the House as quickly as he was alienating his fellow Republicans senators.
In the run-up to the shutdown, Obama was weak politically; his Syria strategy was panned by both parties; Obamacare was suffering poor poll numbers; and Republicans thought they had him on the ropes.
Yet Cruz’s anti-Obamacare drive played right into Democratic hands.
“The president gets up every day and reads the newspaper and thanks God that Ted Cruz is in the United States Senate,” a Republican senator pointedly told Cruz at a closed-door meeting.
Even amiable and soft-spoken Republicans like John Boozman of Arkansas tore apart Cruz in a private GOP meeting, saying he was making GOP senators seem like they were for Obamacare when they had fought so hard to torpedo it. Boozman pointedly told Cruz he hadn’t been bullied since middle school, and he wouldn’t be bullied now.
A long haul
The first week of the shutdown was marked by a series of dead-end meetings, fruitless House votes, and a total lack of communication between Boehner and Democrats.
It became clear almost from the moment the government closed Oct. 1 that it would stay that way for awhile.
The White House received intelligence from an unlikely source: Boehner’s former chief of staff Barry Jackson. A lobbyist who spoke with Jackson passed on a detailed download to top administration officials. Chief among the insights was that Boehner would have to fight right up to the Oct. 17 debt limit deadline.
Shortly after the White House meeting Oct. 2, a ragged Boehner filled in his closest allies about his talk with Obama, telling them that the president had confronted him in the room that former President George W. Bush called the “Lewinsky suite.”
Over in the Senate, tensions were running high among Republicans.
Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) teed off on Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), lambasting him for what she considered a failed strategy with no way out. Cruz arrived late, but Ayotte wanted Cruz to hear this, too. She repeated her remarks, this time directing them at Cruz, too.
“He is so incredibly immature,” sniffed one GOP senator who attended the lunch.
The lashing humbled Cruz, who began to take a quieter role in the intervening days. But he continued to push forward on strategy that Republicans had essentially left for dead.
At one point, Cruz told GOP senators that they should force votes on bills to fund individual agencies and programs, like on veterans issues.
But McConnell bluntly told Cruz that Republicans had no procedural way of doing that. In fact, he asked Laura Dove, McConnell’s chief floor expert, to explain to Cruz how Republicans were prohibited from taking such a parliamentary tactic.
Glimmers of hope
One wild card in the whole fight was Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).
The Budget Committee chairman and 2012 vice presidential nominee hardly talked to the press when he returned to Washington from the campaign trail. He was guarded as he moved through the building, but lawmakers close to him knew he was plotting something.
Ryan decided to not engage in the government funding fight — he saw it as noise without any real impact on the larger issue. The Wisconsin Republican thought it would get resolved, and then he and Boehner could negotiate with Obama on a budget deal. As long as he had sequester spending levels, Ryan told colleagues on the House floor, he thought he could complete an entitlement and tax reform deal. The process, as some envisioned, would move through regular order, with legislative targets and an outline for a major rewrite of the U.S. tax code.
With the pressure mounting, Ryan made his move during an Oct. 10 meeting between Obama and more than a dozen House Republicans. Boehner, Cantor and other House GOP leaders had pulled together a plan to do a short-term extension of the debt limit and government funding while opening negotiations on a longer-term budget deal.
Just two days earlier, Ryan had published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal — his favorite policy microphone — entitled: “Here’s How We Can End This Stalemate.” (He had knocked his fellow Young Gun off the page, coveted conservative real estate. Cantor was also in line: he thought The Journal would run his piece that day. Cantor’s piece ended up in The Washington Post.)
Sitting around a conference table in the Roosevelt Room, Obama hammered the Republicans about reopening the government, demanding repeatedly to know “what is it going to take” to get it done. A frustrated Ryan finally stood up and urged them to come together and craft something lasting.
But what senior administration officials aides heard was a Freudian slip. “We’re going to have six weeks to negotiate the debt limit,” Ryan said.
Nobody challenged him, but White House aides mentally filed it away.
By this point, McConnell knew things were going awry with the GOP strategy in the House. So he began fielding suggestions from GOP senators like Rob Portman and Susan Collins, Ayotte and Lisa Murkowski who were working on various proposals that could potentially win Democratic support.
“I certainly was encouraging to all the entrepreneurial activity that was going on with our members and to talk to the Democratic side with the hopes that we can come with a better outcome,” McConnell said.
Even though Collins was picking up support, she never had the full buy-in of party leaders from either side.
It was a veteran Republican senator, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who McConnell instead leaned on closely for some critical advice. Several sources said that Collins was upset when she learned Alexander was given this role, given that she had been working aggressively to cut a deal. McConnell aides later said Collins was critical to the end-result and nothing was meant as a slight against her.
But Alexander was important because his politics are more conservative than Collins’ and he has a tight relationship with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Reid’s closest ally.
Last Wednesday when Democrats were still insisting they wouldn’t negotiate, Alexander and Schumer began discussing how to construct a deal. They met Wednesday in Schumer’s office, followed by a Thursday meeting in Alexander’s office, and a Friday meeting in Schumer’s hideaway in the Capitol.
Things were going so well that it appeared to several that Schumer was prepared to cut a deal with Alexander, but Schumer knew any deal had to come from Reid and would still have to be vetted by the caucus.
They set up a Saturday morning meeting between Reid and McConnell, two men who have a long personal history that has recently been roiled by a bevy of political conflicts. It was the first time the Senate leaders began to negotiate.
A day earlier, the White House and Democratic leaders put the final kibosh on the Collins plan, telling the rank-and-file to back off the talks. They could not accept the terms of Collins’ offer to extend government financing at lower levels through 2014. Patty Murray of Washington and Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, two powerful Democratic chairmen, refused to consider it.
By Monday evening, it appeared that Reid and McConnell had a deal.
But Boehner wanted one last shot. He told McConnell Monday to hold off any agreement with Reid. McConnell, who faces his own reelection battle in 2014, complied.
Boehner then tried twice Tuesday to rally his conference around proposals that would eke out some sliver of a win after a 15-day government shutdown. His last-ditch play was to reopen the government until Dec. 15 and raise the debt ceiling until Feb. 7. He tried to attach a number of conservative policies, but no combination would’ve passed.
Less than 12 hours later, Boehner declared the proposal dead, paving the way for the final Reid-McConnell solution.
“I like him, he’s a nice person,” Pelosi told POLITICO on Thursday, the day after the shutdown ended.
But Pelosi still seemed stunned that Boehner allowed the shutdown to occur as long as it did, when she repeatedly offered him Democratic support to help pass a bill to reopen the government.
“It isn’t as if he didn’t have a solution,” Pelosi said.
Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer is breathing a sigh of relief for the Republican Party now that the shutdown and debt ceiling debate have finally ended.
“Thank God it’s over, particularly for conservatives and Republicans,” Krauthammer said Wednesday on Fox News’s “Special Report with Bret Baier.”
“So [Obama’s] looking to immigration, he’s looking to carbon taxes and other stuff in the future. If he can split the Republicans in the House, essentially, he regains control of the two houses of Congress and he might be able to enact his agenda. I think that’s what he’s up to,” Krauthammer said.
He added, “I think Obama’s long game has always been, if he’s going to pass his agenda in the second term, where he doesn’t control the House, he has to fracture the Republicans in the House and by rubbing it in or by antagonizing conservatives, he’s going to help in doing that.”
Senator Ted Cruz Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images
It's open warfare within the GOP – and all of America is caught in the crossfire
By Tim Dickinson October 9, 2013 11:45 AM ET This story is from the October 24th, 2013 issue of Rolling Stone.
The day before Congress broke for its August recess, on an afternoon when most of official Washington was tying up loose ends and racing to get out of town, Sen. Ted Cruz was setting the stage for the chaos that has consumed the nation's capital in recent weeks.
The tall Tea Party-backed Texan – the state's junior senator, with less than a year in office – worked his mischief in a windowless Capitol basement, where dozens of the most radical members of the House had gathered for a meeting of the Republican Study Committee. Once a marginal group known for elevating anti-government dogma above party loyalty, the RSC now counts among its members 174 of the 232 House Republicans.
"Father, we thank you," says Rep. Michele Bachmann, opening the meeting. "You are the most important presence in this room." In a pinstriped suit and yellow tie, Cruz sits at the center of a long conference table, flanked by RSC chair Steve Scalise and by the group's most powerful member, former chair Jim Jordan of Ohio – who has routinely marshaled House rebels into battle against leadership. Jordan flashes the visiting senator a conspiratorial smile.
Soft-spoken but passionate, Cruz derides the work of House leadership, who this same week have scheduled a 40th, futile bill to roll back Obamacare. Instead of "symbolic statements" that "won't become law," Cruz says, the time has come to force a real fight – one that Republicans can "actually win." It's imperative to act now, Cruz warns, before the full benefits of Obamacare kick in and Americans get "hooked on the sugar, hooked on the subsidies." His plan: Yoke the defunding of Obamacare to the must-pass budget bill the House will take up in September. The endgame? To force a government shutdown so painful and protracted that Barack Obama would have no choice but to surrender the crown jewel of his presidency. "As scary as a shutdown fight is," Cruz insists, "if we don't stand and defund Obamacare now, we never will."
With those words, Cruz fired the first shot in a civil war that has cleaved Republicans in both chambers of Congress – a struggle that threatens the legitimacy of the Grand Old Party and the stability of the global economy. The fight has little to do with policy, or even ideology. It pits the party's conservative establishment against an extremist insurgency in a battle over strategy, tactics and, ultimately, control of the party. Each side surveys the other with distrust, even contempt. The establishment believes the insurgents' tactics are suicidal; the insurgents believe the establishment lacks the courage of its alleged convictions – while its own members are so convinced of their righteousness that they compare themselves to civil rights heroes like Rosa Parks. The establishment is backed by powerful business concerns with a vested interest in a functioning government. The insurgents are championed by wealthy ideologues who simply seek to tear down government. Both sides are steeled by millions in unregulated, untraceable "dark money."
Having backed the GOP into a shutdown fight that congressional leaders never wanted, the insurgents are winning, and establishment leaders are running scared. America is now careening toward a catastrophic voluntary default on our debt because no one in the Republican Party with the authority to put on the brakes has the guts to apply them, for fear of being toppled from power.
"I've never seen anything like it, and neither has anybody else around here," says the House's eldest statesman, 87-year-old John Dingell, who has represented Michigan since 1955. "It's a grave misfortune for the country."
When Republicans took control of the House in 2011 – fueled by the passion of the Tea Party and the virtually unlimited funding of donors like the Koch brothers – casual observers of American politics saw a House GOP united in the politics of the extreme right. But inside the Capitol, the story was more complicated. The leadership that the Tea Party had vaulted to power – Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor – were members of the GOP's tainted old guard. Although divided by a generation and by an often fierce political rivalry, both Boehner and Cantor abetted the budget-busting "compassionate conservatism" of Karl Rove. Cantor rubber-stamped the "Bridge to Nowhere"; Boehner was a frequent flier on corporate jets. They teamed up to steer the passage of TARP in the face of fierce opposition from grassroots conservatives – a moment that Tea Party leaders cite as the birth of their insurgency.
Cantor, along with GOP Whip Kevin McCarthy, had actively recruited most of the 85 incoming freshmen. "They figured they could ride the Tea Party to a majority, and co-opt all of those people," says Norm Ornstein, a scholar at the conservative think tank AEI. But from the start, leadership misjudged the new arrivals. Many had come to Washington to fight, not fall in line. "You show up in the fall," says Rep. Tim Huelskamp, a self-described Young Turk from Kansas, "and they say, 'Here's what we're going to do, and everybody follow.' And we said, 'We've got a bunch of folks who don't very much like the direction you've been wantin' to go.'"
As leadership struggled to corral the class of 2010, a fellow congressman from Boehner's home state of Ohio seized the advantage. Jordan, the RSC chair, recruited 78 freshmen into his fold. The RSC suddenly comprised a majority of the majority party, and Jordan found himself in a position of tremendous power and leverage, concepts that the wiry but broad-shouldered third-term congressman understood in his bones – he won two NCAA championships wrestling in the 134-pound class.
Boehner never knew what hit him. The speaker would soon suffer two stinging defeats at the hands of Jordan and the RSC. The first came during the 2011 debt-ceiling battle, when Boehner shut out his conference to negotiate with President Obama a $4 trillion "grand bargain" that combined modest tax increases with draconian spending cuts. By any objective standard of Washington deal making, Boehner had extracted extraordinary concessions from a sitting Democratic president.
Believing the old rules of Washington still applied, Boehner was confident that where he led, House Republicans would follow. But Jordan's RSC simply wouldn't abide any deal that raised taxes, and more than 170 members were united against the speaker. If Boehner pressed ahead, the Grand Bargain could only pass with a majority of Democratic votes – a scenario that Cantor feared would spark a mutiny. So he spiked Boehner's deal. "We were preventing the speaker from making a bad mistake for himself and the rest of the leadership team," a former leadership aide tells Rolling Stone.
Jordan's intransigence forced Republican leaders and the president to settle on a smaller, cuts-only package that cost America its AAA credit rating and created the blunt across-the-board spending cuts known as the sequester. Jordan and more than 60 House radicals opposed even that final deal, but he still claimed victory: "Conservatives stood firm," he gloated. "We [forced] Washington to begin addressing its spendingdriven debt crisis."
Jordan beat Boehner again a year later during the fight over the expiring Bush tax cuts. In December 2012, the speaker introduced a compromise measure to preserve the Bush rates for incomes of less than $1 million. "We're going to have the votes to pass," Cantor declared. Grover Norquist – the keeper of the Republican Party's anti-tax pledge – gave his blessing. But Jordan and his loyalists locked arms against it. "We're the party that says you shouldn't raise taxes," Jordan responded. After Boehner couldn't find the votes, he tearfully recited the serenity prayer before his conference, asking God's strength to accept "the things I cannot change."
With Boehner bowed, Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell crafted a compromise that sailed through the Senate on a vote of 89 to 8 – an astonishing display of bipartisanship in the chamber of Congress that people used to think of as the broken one. In a public rebuke of his House's right flank, Boehner brought the bill to the floor and joined a minority of Republicans and Nancy Pelosi's majority bloc of Democrats in voting for it. The message was clear: The Capitol was uniting against the destructive House partisans. Jordan fumed at the passage of what he called a "classic Washington deal."
Seeking to restore discipline to his House, Boehner tried to play the tough guy. He kicked four Tea Party troublemakers – including Huelskamp – off their favored committees. "They were fired because they were assholes," says a source close to leadership. But once again, Boehner misread his opponents. Far from backing down, the backbenchers mounted a January coup that came close to toppling Boehner. Huelskamp cast his ballot for Jordan.
Chastened, the speaker was beginning to understand that he needed to stop feuding with his fellow Buckeye. Jordan – a politician with almost zero national profile – has emerged as the commander the House GOP's opposition bloc, says Rep. Justin Amash, a libertarian-leaning 33-year-old Republican from Michigan. "Jim Jordan is a strong leader," Amash says. "Leadership understands that if his concerns are not addressed, there could be a large group – 40 to 50 – that doesn't stick with leadership on big votes."
Jordan eschews the spotlight, but he has strong allies. He sits on a shadow leadership team, dubbed the Jedi Council, that Boehner would deputize as a silent partner in shaping the House's agenda. (Other members of the group are Paul Ryan, current RSC chair Scalise, and former chairs Jeb Hensarling of Texas and Tom Price of Georgia.) At the beginning of the new Congress, stinging from the loss of the tax battle, Jordan and the Jedi were eager to lead Republicans into a new confrontation with President Obama over the debt ceiling. They'd drawn a dangerous lesson from the previous battle: Brinksmanship works. But the first possible moment for such a fight would be in February, right in the middle of Obama's re-election honeymoon. So the Jedi decided to hold their fire. At a House Republican strategy retreat in Williamsburg, Virginia, in January, Boehner accepted their plan, along with a list of other strategic aims, known as the "Williamsburg Accord."
The hard-liners were firmly in control. In February, the House temporarily suspended the debt ceiling – intending to give the president's poll numbers three months to come back to earth. In March, Republicans rallied around a new, even more extreme version of the Ryan budget and forced Democrats in the Senate to produce a budget of their own for the first time in four years. The strategy was to showcase the parties' contrasting visions – a Democratic budget that raised taxes and never got to balance versus a Republican budget that slashed safety-net programs to achieve balance in 10 years.
In the spring, the House forced the sequester – $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts triggered by the first debt-ceiling deal – to go into effect. The RSC was delighted; they'd feared leadership might lose their resolve on spending reductions that hit defense contractors and other financial backers of the GOP. "A lot of us were very concerned that leadership wouldn't commit to locking in those cuts," said current chairman Scalise, a gruff congressman from Louisiana.
But no one would see quite how radical the party had become until July, when after months of keeping the specifics under wraps, the House unveiled a slate of bills comprising the most reactionary major-party legislative program in a generation. It was calculated to block every facet of President Obama's agenda, whether halting his executive orders to curb carbon pollution or stymieing spending on infrastructure and research intended to jump-start the economy. The bills also punished the GOP's most hated agencies – slashing the IRS budget by a quarter, the EPA budget by one-third, and eliminating funding for public broadcasting. Even Appropriations chair Hal Rogers, an old-guard Republican who once brought so many earmarks home to his district in Kentucky that they dubbed him the "Prince of Pork," conceded almost apologetically, "These are tough bills."
The unified Republican strategy drove toward a new debt-ceiling standoff with the president. At Williamsburg, Republicans agreed to fight for spending cuts needed to put the country on a "10-year path to balance." The promise sounded hardcore, and a few RSC members interpreted it to mean that Republicans would settle for no less than forcing Obama to implement the Ryan budget. "It's the next logical step," declared Huelskamp. In reality, the promise was strategically ambiguous – crafted to unite factions that did not actually see eye-to-eye – and designed by Boehner to give him room to make a deal that didn't require a humiliating defeat of the president. As Indiana Rep. Todd Rokita, a member of the budget committee, explained to House conservatives, there was plenty of low-hanging fruit in the budget that could be traded for a short-to-medium-term increase in the debt ceiling – including $200 billion in future Social Security cuts President Obama asked for in his own budget. "That's worth something in terms of a debt-ceiling increase," Rokita said, ticking off other cuts that could be cobbled together to broker a decidedly ungrand bargain, including changes to farm policy and federal flood insurance.
The strategy – very explicitly – was not to turn the debt ceiling into a do-or-die standoff over Obamacare. And at least on the surface, House Republicans were united. There was one problem. The Jedi had bought themselves too much time. Originally, they'd expected the debt-ceiling fight to arrive in May. But with the economy improving, tax revenues spiked. Then mortgage giant Fannie Mae repaid $60 billion in bailout money. Treasury was flush. And it was now becoming clear that members who were promised a knock-down fight with the administration before the summer recess – the spoils from which they could tout to their constituents back home – weren't going to get one.
The Young Turks began to grow restless.
*
On August 20th, nearly three weeks after Cruz first made his pitch to House conservatives, the senator took his campaign against Obamacare to the next level, joining his mentor – former South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, now president of the Heritage Foundation – for the Dallas stop of DeMint's nine-city "Defund Obamacare Town Hall Tour." The original Tea Party uprising of 2009 took place in stuffy community centers and church basements. But tonight's event – which packs a capacity crowd of 2,000 into the grand ballroom of a Hilton – feels less like a grassroots insurrection than a corporate convention. Jumbotron projection screens flank a large stage decorated with Texas and United States flags. On a riser at the back sits an array of camera-pleasing, demographically unrepresentative audience members – African-Americans, Latinos, young people.
Just a few years ago, the Heritage Foundation was a stodgy, deeply conservative think tank at the heart of establishment Washington, its main business offering right-wing-policy solutions, not driving government gridlock. In fact, the cornerstone of Obamacare – universal health care based on a mandate for individuals to buy insurance – was originally dreamed up by Heritage. Tonight, DeMint will denounce Obamacare as "the most destructive law ever imposed on the American people."
If Cruz is the frontman of the defund fight, DeMint is the man behind the curtain, orchestrating the battle through a tight network of outside pressure groups under his sway, including Heritage Action for America and the Club for Growth. In Congress, DeMint wasn't much of a legislator – more like a Super PAC who happened to be a senator. Finding many of his Republican colleagues repulsively moderate, DeMint launched the Senate Conservatives Fund, which raised millions from the Tea Party's grassroots to elect a new guard of anti-government hard-liners, including Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, Cruz in Texas, Rand Paul in Kentucky, Mike Lee in Utah and Marco Rubio in Florida. SCF also backed a crop of fringe candidates – including Christine O'Donnell in Delaware and Todd Akin in Missouri – who won primaries with Tea Party support, but whose oddball views on witchcraft and rape (respectively) sank their general-election prospects, keeping Democrats in control of those seats. Surprisingly, that suited DeMint just fine: He has said he'd rather have a Senate with "30 Marco Rubios than 60 Arlen Specters."
DeMint holds the religious views of the extreme right, arguing that homosexuals and even sexually active unmarried women should be barred from jobs as teachers. But DeMint is best known as an inflexible economic conservative. Not to mention a first-class opportunist: Last December, he walked away from the Senate in the middle of his second term for a job that would give him even more power in his quest to revolutionize Republican politics.
DeMint quickly put his stamp on the organization. In the first high-profile study released under his tenure, Heritage warned that comprehensive immigration reform would cost taxpayers $6.3 trillion. The math was wildly at odds with the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which calculated that reform would reduce the deficit. And it soon came to light that its top author once claimed to be able to rank the intelligence of different ethnic and racial groups – starting with Jews at the top and blacks at the bottom. "The scholarly quality of Heritage's work was never up to academic standards," says Bruce Bartlett, a former fellow at the think tank. "But there was some degree of quality control. That's gone out the window under DeMint."
With his defund-Obamacare road show, DeMint marshaled the Tea Party to his side – and against congressional leaders. An online petition at Dontfundit.com gathered nearly 2 million signatures. Heritage Action folded new recruits into its army of 5,600 trained "Sentinels" across Republican districts who parrot DeMint's talking points. It's all part of a sophisticated strategy – modeled, surprisingly, after the Obama campaigns – to turn up the heat on Washington lawmakers. The big idea, says Mike Needham, Heritage Action's 31-year-old CEO, is to keep members of Congress "enveloped in our message" – both on the Hill, "where he's hearing it from our six lobbyists," and at home, "where he's hearing it from a well-informed Sentinel who is a Tea Party leader."
*
Once again, the GOP establishment had underestimated the strength of the party's insurgent wing. Initially, old-guard Republicans seemed to believe they could derail Cruz with a few bons mots. North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr excoriated Cruz's plan as "the dumbest idea I've ever heard." Karl Rove warned that when Washington can't keep the lights on, "it's an iron law that Republicans get blamed." Eric Cantor assured the National Review that the plan didn't have traction in the House: "No one," he said, "is advocating a government shutdown."
But by the time Congress reconvened on the morning of September 10th, 80 radical members – including Jordan – had signed on to an open letter demanding that the budget bill "affirmatively de-fund" Obamacare. Worse, top voices in the Tea Party had turned against House leaders with the kind of venom usually reserved for the president: "If this thing is not defunded, it's Boehnercare!" thundered Mark Levin, the right-wing radio host.
With the speaker in the cross hairs, it was Cantor who was chosen to announce the leadership's new strategy to keep the lights on in Washington: He declared that within a week the House would vote to pass a single bill with two parts – one defunding Obamacare, the other funding the government. The bill would force the Senate to vote up or down on Obamacare, before then considering the budget. Standing ramrod-straight in a banker's suit, Cantor flashed unusual vitriol: "It's time for the Senate to stand up and tell their constituents where they stand on this atrocity of a law!"
Just a few years ago, a bill of this complexity would have passed before anyone outside the Capitol even understood what was in it. "It used to be a closed system," says Matt Kibbe, CEO of FreedomWorks, whose Super PAC spent almost $20 million last election cycle backing Tea Party candidates. "You usually didn't find out until after the vote."
But no sooner had Cantor's press conference wrapped than his clever strategy began to unravel.
That same morning, thousands of bused-in Tea Party activists from as far away as Tennessee, gathered in the withering heat of the Capitol's West Lawn to demand that Congress "exempt America" from Obamacare. Some activists held signs that were shocking in the traditional manner of Tea Party hyperbole: "Defund O'Hitler Care!" Others targeted a new enemy: "Traitor Boehner Speaks Not for We the People."
One by one, the leading lights of Tea Party Washington took the stage to denounce the Cantor Plan as an empty gesture – and worse. Standing tall in a white button-down and black ostrich-skin boots, Cruz blasted the House leadership for "procedural tricks" to let Harry Reid fund Obamacare. He was joined by fellow DeMint loyalists: Rand Paul demanded that House members with a backbone stand against the "invertebrate caucus." Utah Sen. Mike Lee, whose cherubic face belies his extreme message, drew a line in the sand: "If you fund this law, you're for it!"
Back inside the Capitol, the anti-Cantor Plan forces already had their hashtag. "I do not support the #hocuspocusplan," tweeted Rep. Justin Amash. First elected in 2010, Amash recently led the charge to defund the NSA's surveillance of average Americans. He has a wide following on social media, which he uses to communicate directly with his constituents, explaining every vote he casts, in detail, on his Facebook page. Mostly, Amash votes no – including 136 times against the Republican Party line. Visiting the congressman that afternoon in his office – decorated with a framed poster of Ayn Rand – I ask him how he can so casually defy leadership. "Why be for leadership?" Amash asks. "It's more popular in your district to be against leadership. Better just to vote your constituency."
But for all his fiery rhetoric, Amash and his fellow insurgents know that keeping the grassroots on their side is as much a matter of survival as of principle. Thanks to the efforts of groups like DeMint's to give it a top-down structure, the Tea Party is no longer a ragtag army. Regimented troops can now be marshaled to the barricades within minutes. The phones in Amash's office have been ringing off the hook because the Senate Conservatives Fund has sent an e-mail blast instructing activists – including the signers of the Dontfundit.com petition – to bombard the phones of 29 of the most extreme House members to demand they oppose the Cantor Plan. The group even threatens to "recruit and fund a primary challenger" to House Rules Committee chairman Pete Sessions if he aids leadership in bringing a vote to the floor. Sessions, who has served in the House since 1997, has a lifetime score of 97 percent from the American Conservatives Union. But SCF labels him a "Texas RINO" – Republican in Name Only – adding, "We can't sit back and let wishy-washy Republicans like Pete Sessions destroy our freedoms."
That evening on the House floor, McCarthy, the majority whip, is prowling for votes. The Cantor Plan is in full meltdown mode. But McCarthy is all smiles and buddy punches to the shoulders. Behind the scenes, Jordan has turned on leadership with familiar vigor and is whipping to hold his opposition bloc together. For Jordan and his outside allies, the task at hand is not even that difficult. A determined minority in the House today can command powers of obstruction far greater than even the filibuster in the Senate. The big, strategic votes in the House are party-line affairs. Leadership needs 218 supporters to even bring a vote to the floor. To block the Cantor Plan, Jordan and his outside allies need to pick off just 17 defections, or fewer than 10 percent of RSC members.
Outside Cantor's Capitol suite, a sense of doom is setting in. The majority leader's communications chief had insisted to Rolling Stone just days earlier that "this is not a hard place to govern." Now he looks like he might literally start pulling out his hair. Cantor emerges from his office looking shellshocked. He flashes a campaign smile and is whisked away.
Less than 36 hours after it was announced, the Cantor Plan is dead. Though McCarthy's team won't share its vote count, the opposition pegs the "nay" block at 50 to 80 votes. "They weren't close," says Kentucky freshman Tom Massie with a smile. Why were so many members insistent on a do-or-die fight over Obamacare? "There's a lack of trust between the conference and the leadership on this issue," Massie says. "If our members genuinely believed that our leadership does want to defund Obamacare – and is willing to stake some political capital on that effort – then we'd entertain other ways of achieving that."
Tom Cole, a member of the House leadership from Oklahoma, is furious at the newly elected senators and outside groups that forced this fight on the House: "Most of those guys never served over here and didn't help create the Republican majority over here in the House – but they are certainly ready to lead it." He's even more angry at the stupidity of the strategy to threaten a government shutdown. "Look, I'm open to anything that would stop Obamacare. Kill it. Slow it down," Cole says. "I just don't want to put a gun to my own head and say, 'Repeal it or I'm gonna shoot!' That's what the argument is about right now."
But the following week, House leaders conceded to the demands of the defundistas. They put a continuing resolution vote on the floor that affirmatively defunded Obamacare. No tricks, no gimmicks. The GOP House members passed it with 230 votes – loading the gun.
Americans are used to rRepublican-led houses running on near-martial discipline. "A couple of years ago, the speaker and majority leader, they had all the power," says Freedomworks' Kibbe. "They don't anymore." The 50-year-old Tea Party leader does not look like your standard GOP operative. He wears hipster glasses and Diesel jeans and has pencil-thin sideburns that jut across his cheeks. The House today, he says with a wry smile, is "beautiful chaos."
The old Republican command-and-control structure ran on cash. "It was a patronage system," says a GOP aide. "Raise money for the [campaign] committee, and get put on a good [House] committee that lets you squeeze lobbyists for more money." Members with the greatest talent at raising cash could hope to be plucked from the back bench and placed on a leadership track. The current House leaders are all products of that old machine. But the system that made these men powerful has been disrupted. "They don't have the same levers that previous leaders had," says a GOP strategist who will be involved in the 2014 midterms, "to intimidate or coerce the conference to move in step."
The irony is that the Republican Party brought the state of affairs on itself.
Boehner gained the speaker's gavel by agreeing to reforms that would weaken the power of the office. In the aftermath of Tom DeLay's criminal indictment in 2005 for laundering corporate cash to Texas campaigns (his conviction was overturned this fall), Boehner campaigned for minority leader as a reformer. In 2010, Speaker Boehner put teeth to his promises, banning pork-barrel projects in appropriations bills. The reform was logically consistent for a party that had made "wasteful Washington spending" its bête noire. But the speaker himself has bemoaned the loss of leverage on must-pass legislation. "It's made my job a lot more difficult," Boehner has said. "I've got no grease."
Back in 2010, old-school Republicans, hungry to return to power, cheered on the Tea Party insurgency. But what was once seen as an electoral blessing is now understood as a governing curse. "Most of these Tea Party folks think that government is obscenely out of control and that the only way to get it back in line is to draw a hard line," says the GOP strategist. In the past, pressure from the business community could force House hard-liners to embrace ideologically unpalatable compromises like the TARP bailout. But the sway of K Street and the Chamber of Commerce is much diminished among these radicals. "In the past, Boehner could call a lobbyist and say, 'I need you to lean on this member,'" says a fellow at a right-wing think tank who asked to remain anonymous. That kind of pressure is actually counterproductive with new arrivals who got elected in their primaries by denouncing lobbyists, business PACs and the D.C. establishment.
Partisan gerrymandering of 2012 locked in the Republican electoral gains of 2010. In redrawing congressional districts following the census, the GOP focused its efforts on protecting House incumbents – making their districts as red as possible. Last November, this redistricting effort produced a shocking subversion of representative democracy. In the popular vote, almost 1.4 million more Americans cast their votes for Democratic House candidates than voted for Republicans. But Republicans maintained a commanding majority in the House. "Gerrymandering saved them," says Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
Today, the number of true swing districts in the House is vanishingly small. Only 17 Republicans won in districts that Barack Obama also carried. Meanwhile, the number of what elections-data savant Nate Silver calls "landslide districts" – districts that are 20-plus points more Republican than the nation at large – has swelled to 125, up from 92 just a decade ago.
Members from these über-safe districts don't fear the challenge posed by a mainstream Democrat in the general election. They dread a well-funded primary opponent running to their right. "You've got very small numbers of people who vote in GOP primaries," says Bartlett, who served in the Reagan administration. "It doesn't take very many of these Tea Party people to show up to find out you're on your ass."
To keep this threat fresh in members' minds, the Club for Growth recently launched a campaign called "Primary My Congressman!" that seeks to oust centrist Republicans from safe seats – and replace them with the hardest of the hardcore. "The Club for Growth is a cancer on the Republican Party," said Steve LaTourette, a recently retired moderate House Republican from Ohio. "The only thing that grows when the Club for Growth gets involved is the number of Democrats in office."
Republicans were also ecstatic when the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision undermined the system of regulated campaign finance. But this boon to the wealthy donor class has become the bane of those trying to forge party unity. Now donors can microtarget the faction of Republicanism that suits them best. "There's a difference between rich Republicans used to working through K Street and the guy who just sold his plumbing business and happens to be a total libertarian winger," says the think-tank fellow. The rise of outside money has made a mockery of what used to be the leadership's biggest stick: "If leadership says, 'We're not going to fund you if you don't vote with us,' the members laugh," the strategist says. "'Keep your $10,000. I'm going to take $200,000 from an outside group.' Or better yet, 'I'm going to start my own Super PAC and send out e-mails about how John Boehner is standing in the way of our shared values.'"
In the last election, for instance, John Ramsey, a 21-year-old Ron Paul fan from Texas, used money he inherited from his grandparents to create the Liberty for All Super PAC. He funded the winning campaign of libertarian Kentucky freshman Massie with more than $629,000 in independent expenditures. As a result, Massie – a gregarious, MIT-educated 42-year-old – is a party of one, free to buck GOP leadership. Indeed, in his very first week in office, Massie joined in the coup effort that nearly stripped Boehner of his speakership.
*
The chaos now roiling the House is, in many ways, a battle between the two most powerful GOP party bosses – Karl Rove and Jim DeMint. For Rove, the activists of the Republican base have always been useful rubes. Republicans in the Rove school campaign on wedge issues that rally grassroots Republicans to the polls. But once these politicians get to Washington, they shift to fight for the interests of the party's financial backers. In the emerging party of DeMint, however, the base that Rove scorns is everything. Only the daily pressure of grassroots activists, DeMint believes, can force Republicans to deliver in Washington on the smallgovernment promises they make to their constituents back home.
These two schools of governing can't, ultimately, be reconciled. The DeMint school believes in combat, and in turning every possible government choke point into a high-stakes confrontation: You win by standing on principle, refusing to yield and letting the chips fall where they may. As Cruz put it to activists in Dallas, "If you have an impasse, one side or the other has to blink. How do we win? Don't blink."
"The elites have different agendas than the rank and file," says Bartlett, the former Reagan official. "Your average Tea Party people may be content to have gridlock forever, but the money people – the corporations, the lobbyists – they need stuff." And people in that camp have a lot riding on John Boehner and Eric Cantor.
Boehner and Cantor have learned to speak the language of the Tea Party – the majority leader more fluently than the speaker – but their real job is to keep the old Republican-patronage machine humming. In their political bloodlines and in their donor networks, both Boehner and Cantor are deeply connected to the politics of Rove. Boehner's signature accomplishment was steering George W. Bush's education initiative No Child Left Behind to passage – a law that Needham decries as "a gargantuan federalization of education" and "an anathema to conservatives." For his part, Cantor was a key member of the 2003 Tom DeLay whip team that twisted arms in an infamous all-night session required to pass the deficit-financed Medicare prescription-drug plan, a Rove-driven gift to Big Pharma and the most sweeping expansion of the program since the days of Lyndon Johnson.
Boehner is renowned as a "Chamber of Commerce Republican" – and the campaign-finance data are unambiguous: In the 2012 election cycle, Boehner was the House's top recipient of campaign cash from 34 different industries, from hedge funds and investment firms to coal mining, studentloan companies, hospitals, nursing homes and Big Tobacco. He was also the top recipient of campaign cash from lobbyists themselves, raking in $393,000 according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. In D.C., the speaker's clubby network of staffers and lobbyists is known as "Boehnerland," and its members include heavy hitters for Citigroup, UPS, Altria, AmEx, Akin Gump and the National Federation of Independent Businesses. "The Boehner folks barbecue on Sunday together, they go on vacations together, they name their kids after each other," says the former leadership aide.
Although he's positioned himself as a kindred spirit of House insurgents, and has even joined the RSC, Cantor is perhaps more deeply knitted into the Republican establishment than Boehner is. It was Cantor's prodigious fundraising talents that elevated him to the fast track in 2003, when he became chief-deputy whip after just one term in Congress. Married to a former Goldman Sachs VP, he speaks the language of the investment class and is said to sell financiers on the "return on investment" of their political donations to the party. He's been a fierce defender of the hedge-fund loophole that taxes the income of top investors at less than the rate of their secretaries – once arguing that taxing "carried interest" at normal rates would hurt "the average blue-jean-wearing American." Over his career, he's raised more than $2.4 million from the investment community.
The drama in the GOP House used to center around the palace intrigue between Cantor and Boehner. The rift was real – but exacerbated by hyperloyal staffers, in particular, Boehner's former chief of staff, Barry Jackson, who has since decamped for K Street. By all accounts, the speaker and the majority leader now enjoy a smoother working relationship. "The guys agree on most policy," says the former leadership aide. "I mean, there's very little dividing line on that." The two men even share the same benefactor: The Cantor-affiliated Super PAC YG Action Fund received $5 million from casinos magnate Sheldon Adelson last cycle – the same amount that the Boehner-affiliated Congressional Leadership Fund got.
*
The budget fight produced a worst-case hybrid of Republican governance. The forces of DeMint succeeded in grinding the gears of Washington to a halt – provoking the first government shutdown in 17 years. But not before the forces of Rove had whittled a big, existential battle over the size of government down to a squabble over poll-tested tweaks to the president's health care law.
In the end, Republicans did not shut down the government for a full repeal of Obamacare. Rather, they furloughed nearly 1 million federal employees, shuttered national parks and brought other core functions of government to a halt, because they couldn't persuade Democrats to agree to a one-year delay in the mandate that Americans buy insurance – or face a $95 fine. Said New York Rep. Peter King, one of the few centrists left in the House GOP, "[This] whole thing has become madness."
The madness has also ratcheted up the danger of a catastrophic federal default, looming on October 17th. Left to their own devices, House radicals won't pull themselves back from this brink: "If we miss the deadline, it's no big crisis," RSC member John Fleming of Louisiana told Rolling Stone. "It can be used politically." But if Boehner sidelines the Tea Party contingent and defuses the debt-ceiling crisis with the help of Nancy Pelosi and Democratic votes, it's likely to be his last act as speaker.
Even the men who put this chaos in motion have admitted they don't have a strategy for the endgame. They just wanted to put the ball in play. Speaking on September 19th, after the House had all but guaranteed a federal shutdown, Jordan invoked the coach of the NFL's New England Patriots. "Even Belichick," he said, "doesn't script out the whole game."
What was once an uneasy alliance between Tea Partiers and Republican loyalists is increasingly marked by hostility—and many on the right now want a divorce.
Tired of feeling taken for granted by a party that alternately panders to them and sells them down the river, in their view, Tea Partiers and others on the right are in revolt. The Republican Party itself is increasingly the focus of their anger, particularly after Wednesday's deal to reopen the government, which many on the right opposed. Now, many are threatening to take their business elsewhere.
“Conservatives are either going to split [from the GOP] or stay home,” Erickson, the influential editor of RedState.com and a Fox News contributor, told me. “They’ll first expend energy in primaries, but if unsuccessful, they’ll bolt.”
Erickson, a former Republican elected official in Georgia, stressed that he wasn’t advocating such a split, only foreseeing it. “I think the GOP is already splitting,” he said, with grassroots activists feeling “played” by elected officials’ unfulfilled promises to defeat Obamacare.
The calls for a split mark a new, more acrimonious chapter in the long-simmering conflict between the Tea Party and the Republican establishment. Steve Deace, an Iowa-based talk-radio host, said his audience has never been angrier. “They’re tired of electing a bunch of Republicans who care more about what the media thinks about them than what the people who elected them think,” he told me. “Why do I care whether John Boehner or Nancy Pelosi is the speaker of the House? Why do I care whether Harry Reid or ‘Ditch’ McConnell is the Senate majority leader? What changes? Nothing changes.”
The Republican establishment, these conservatives say, doesn’t seem to understand that the Tea Party isn’t a wing of the GOP. “It’s an autonomous force,” said Jenny Beth Martin, national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots. In emails and conversations across the country, Martin told me, she’s hearing more rumblings about taking the Tea Party out from under the GOP than ever before, though the organization hasn’t taken a position on it. “When either party is doing the right thing, the Tea Party stands with them," she said. "And when either party is doing the wrong thing, we hold them accountable.”
The recent government shutdown, and the infighting it laid bare between Republican factions, convinced many conservatives that the institutional GOP would rather sell them out than stick up for them. “There are two views on the right. One says more Republicans is better; the other says better Republicans is better,” said Dean Clancy, vice president of public policy for the Tea Party group FreedomWorks. “One view focuses on the number of Republicans in the Senate, the other on the amount of fight in the senators.”
When Beck made his appeal to "defund the GOP," he told his listeners to stop giving money to Republican committees and give to FreedomWorks instead. "We kind of agree," Clancy told me. “Giving to the party committees is wasted money, because they’re just incumbent protection clubs .... Sometimes you have to beat the Republicans before you beat the Democrats. Just because they're 'our guys' doesn’t mean they'll be our guys when it counts."
Dissatisfaction within the ranks appears to be one driving factor in the record-low approval numbers recorded for the Republican Party in several recent polls. A Gallup poll last week, for example, found [ http://www.gallup.com/poll/165317/republican-party-favorability-sinks-record-low.aspx ] just 28 percent of Americans had a favorable opinion of the GOP, the lowest level of support in the two decades Gallup has asked that question. Among Republicans, 27 percent saw their party unfavorably—twice the percentage of Democrats who held a dim view of their own party.
To some Republican institutionalists who have long seen the Tea Party as a destructive force, the talk of a schism merely confirms what they've always suspected—that these activists are a radical, destabilizing force, nihilists devoid of loyalty. Some, like the renegade moderate David Frum, urge the Tea Party to go ahead and leave: “Right now, tea party extremism contaminates the whole Republican brand,” Frum wrote on CNN.com this week [ http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/14/opinion/frum-tea-party-third-party/ ], wondering “whether a tea party bolt from the GOP might not just liberate the party to slide back to the political center.” Representative Charles Boustany of Louisiana lashed out at his intransigent colleagues Wednesday, telling National Journal [ http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/gop-congressman-rips-tea-party-colleagues-i-m-not-sure-they-re-republicans-20131016 ], “I’m not sure they’re Republicans and I’m not sure they’re conservative.”
But most party loyalists seek to placate and explain the Tea Party fervor, and to urge the rebels back into the fold. Ed Gillespie, a former Republican National Committee chairman and George W. Bush aide, said he understood where they were coming from. “A lot of them are new to the process,” Gillespie told me. “They weren’t Young Republicans or College Republicans. They didn’t come up through Republican clubs, and they feel that the Republican Party in the past has not fought hard enough or stood firm enough on these issues.”
Gillespie chalked the tensions up to the party being out of power and lacking a unifying leader; he pointed to similar dislocations in the past, including Ross Perot's third-party candidacies in the 1990s. “I would rather have them trying to shake up the existing party than run as third-party candidates—that would be completely self-defeating,” he said. “We live in a two-party system in the United States. If you’re going to translate your ideas, your beliefs, your principles into policy, it’s got to be done through the electoral process, and that involves participating in a political party.”
Gillespie and others said party institutions have been weakened by changes in campaign-finance law. (The ostensible head of the Republican Party, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, did not respond to requests for comment for this story.) They noted that the pragmatists and the Tea Partiers don’t disagree on policy, only on what tactics will make the most progress possible toward goals like reducing spending and reversing Obamacare. And they pointed out that conservatives stand little chance of winning elections outside the two-party framework—though their pleas for unity signaled an awareness that Republicans might be equally crippled by the loss of their ideological base.
“Everybody understands standing your ground, hoisting your flag, and making your stand, but at some point, you have to decide if your stand is sustainable,” said Ari Fleischer, the former George W. Bush press secretary. “A lot of people who got elected in 2010 came to Washington as conservatives, not as Republicans. They came to change what was wrong in Washington—they don’t have the same expectations or practical goals as others.” But as for the threats of deserting the GOP, Fleischer said, “I don’t know what that means. Are they going to start a third party? What’s the chances of success for that?”
Some establishmentarians worry the Tea Partiers are already blithely driving the GOP into the ground. “I don’t think they care about the party. I think they care about issues and philosophies,” said Tom Davis, a former congressman from Virginia and onetime chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee. “I have a philsophy, too. But parties are coalitions. What they would like is for the party to be a private club with a litmus test .... The party they would design would be a regional party that would not be viable in many parts of the country.”
Tim Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor and Republican presidential candidate, blamed “gerrymandered districts” and “the political news-entertainment complex” for empowering passionate minorities within both parties. “If you’re a libertarian or a Tea Partier, you tend to be skeptical toward anything viewed as the establishment, so to the extent you view the traditional Republican Party as the establishment, it follows that there’s room for skepticism,” he said. “But neither party can be successful unless they can get a reasonable amount of support from the whole coalition.”
In the Tea Partiers’ view, the clueless establishment hasn’t yet internalized the seriousness of the threat to its supremacy. The grassroots has taken control, and it will have its way or secede. “This is where the wind is blowing,” Deace said. “I don’t think you can put Humpty Dumpty back together again. People like me are not just taking marching orders anymore—they actually want something in return for a vote.”
It will not be possible, Deace predicted, for the two factions to coexist. “This is going to end in divorce,” he said. “One side is going to win control, one side is going to lose, and the losing side will go do something else. There will not be a reunification.”
Earlier this month, Glenn Beck rented several rooms in downtown Salt Lake City at the Grand America Hotel to display an "Independence Through History" exhibition. This accompanied his "Man in the Moon [ http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/56560616-78/moon-beck-stage-mankind.html.csp ]" rally, which took place just a few miles away at the USANA Amphitheatre.
The exhibition occupied two small rooms and brought together a panoply of objects spanning three centuries. Early American currency was presented alongside 18th century Bibles, sculptures of simian "slaves" and presidential memorabilia. Many of these items derived from the personal collection of David Barton, a publisher of tea party literature.
The adjoining room contained objects from Glenn Beck's personal collection. This included a hooded KKK cape and a swastika banner which had been used at Nuremberg. Underneath was an illuminated vitrine containing a copy of Mein Kampf signed by Adolf Hitler, a stack of love letters by Hermann Göring, and a satin handkerchief browned with Hitler's blood. Nearby was an early edition of Anne Frank's Diary.
Lacking any deference to professional standards of display, Beck's exhibition offered no connection between these items and the early Americana nearby. From a museological perspective, the show was brazenly dilettante. Known to be a fringe demagogue, Beck has often drawn parallels between Nazi history and contemporary American politics, acts which have brought him much criticism — and parody. The exhibition at the Grand America, however, represented a departure from Beck's usual rhetoric.
To start, I can't help wondering what prompted Beck to collect such macabre objects and include them among his personal belongings. What are the virtues of owning Goehring's love letters, Hitler's signature or a few drops of his blood?
Surely, harboring such items adheres to a personality cult and suggests a sympathizer rather than a critic. The very presence of these objects begs the question: How does this material survive?
More than 70 years old, most of the detritus of Germany's Nationalsozialisten was destroyed after the war and continue to be banned to this day. The survival of such "memorabilia" can only be achieved with help from Nazi sympathizers wishing to pass on the torch.
The proximity of the bloody handkerchief with Anne Frank's diary was deeply offensive, and insensitive to Salt Lake City's Jewish community. Among them are Holocaust survivors and their descendants, including myself, who found this profoundly distasteful.
Just imagine exhibiting Osama bin Laden's blood together with an item belonging to a 9/11 victim. The thought turns the stomach and is the very zenith of ignorance.
To add insult to injury, Beck's displays were met with complete apathy by the citizens of Salt Lake City. Visitors wound their way through the room in an almost robotic torpor, demonstrating neither revulsion nor too much interest either. Nor has there been any comment in the press or media. Gee, isn't this how this stuff was received the first time around and, consequently, mushroomed out of control?
To be sure, the above grievances do not characterize a "typical" neo-Nazi. Beck is not a skinhead who desecrates Jewish gravestones. Moreover, harboring such material and disseminating it to such a lackadaisical audience is within Beck's constitutional rights.
Still, it reveals more about tea party sensibilities and Beck's personal values than I dared thought possible.
Alexandra Karl is an art historian and educator. She lives in Salt Lake City.
Yesterday, Tea Party conservative Glenn Beck decided to give parents a lesson on how to convince their children that rights come from God. Apparently, in Beck’s mind, parents need to physically bully their kids into believing: “challenge them, get in their face … teach them a lesson — push ‘em!” And if you don’t, Beck warns, they’ll “run around like little girls crying.”
Wow.
Beck, by the way, has been married twice, is a Mormon, has two children from each of his two marriages, is 49, and lives in Texas.
“Well, they’re going to cry,” Beck mocks his viewers, “‘I’ll hurt their feelings.’ PUSH ‘EM!,” Beck screams. “Because if you don’t do it now, it’s going to be much worse when they’re pushed and they’re shoved and they’re shot. Push them! Teach them! They need to know the truth, and they need to be pushed up against the wall once in a while, so they know they can defend themselves, they know they can survive, they don’t run around like little girls crying at the drop of a hat! PUSH ‘EM!”
Contrary to Beck’s suggestion, children actually do have rights. It’s called the law, and every day parents are arrested for child maltreatment, which, yes, may actually include pushing kids up against the wall.
Child maltreatment includes all types of abuse and neglect of a child under the age of 18 by a parent, caregiver, or another person in a custodial role (e.g., clergy, coach, teacher). There are four common types of abuse:
Physical Abuse Sexual Abuse Emotional Abuse Neglect
Say this for Tea Party Republicans: They don’t back down. No apologies for triggering a partial shutdown of the federal government, then refusing to raise the debt ceiling without concessions. Condemnation rains down on them from the White House, from foreign capitals, from public opinion polls, but the Tea Party rages on.
They say they have no choice: Deficits are out of control; something must be done and soon. “Politicians have very effectively addicted Americans to government, but it’s not sustainable,” says GOP Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. It’s that sense of being on the brink of disaster that feeds Tea Partiers’ determination to fight to the end. For them, the debt-ceiling deal reached by the Senate on Oct. 16 is merely a cease-fire.
But the Tea Party’s belief that things are slipping away is misplaced. Obamacare aside, events have actually gone the movement’s way ever since Republicans wrested control of the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterm elections. Discretionary spending has been falling. Federal-employee head count is down. And since 2010, deficit reduction has been more rapid than in any three-year period since the demobilization following World War II.
Discretionary spending (i.e., spending excluding transfer payments and interest) will fall even more in the decades ahead if the laws that the Tea Party helped get on the books stay there. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that, under current law, by 2038 total spending on everything other than the major health-care programs, Social Security, and interest will decline to the smallest share of the economy since the 1930s.
Ronald Reagan had nothing on today’s Tea Party when it comes to shrinking the parts of government that require annual appropriations by Congress. “That part of the budget has been cut very significantly, I think more than anyone would have expected or would have thought even was possible before the 2010 elections,” says Ed Lorenzen, executive director of the Moment of Truth Project, which was launched by would-be budget cutters Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles. Tea Partiers like to see themselves as underdogs in a war against profligate spending. But the truth is they’ve already won.
That victory, however, has come at a high price. The Tea Party pushed for heavy spending cuts when the economy was weak, needlessly depressing output and keeping the unemployment rate high. The International Monetary Fund, which supports long-run deficit reduction, declared in June that the U.S. program was “excessively rapid and ill-designed.” It nearly tipped the economy into recession, says Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics (MCO). The Congressional Budget Office estimated in September that waiving spending caps now would create about 800,000 jobs by the end of 2014.
What’s worse, the cuts the Tea Party achieved have come almost entirely on the discretionary side of the budget, choking everything from medical research to antipoverty programs to food inspection. Discretionary spending is the most vulnerable because it must be appropriated annually. The Tea Party, and Washington in general, have scarcely touched the real problem: entitlements such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which are on track to soak up huge portions of the national income in coming decades. “Most economists, I dare say all economists, recognize that we have a long-run fiscal problem that needs to be addressed. But you can’t address it by cutting discretionary spending alone,” says Joel Prakken, co-founder of Macroeconomic Advisers, a St. Louis-based forecasting firm.
In political terms, the Tea Party’s scorched earth strategy has produced some impressive legislative wins but damaged the movement’s popularity. Now its blunt tactics threaten to make deficit reduction seem like a fringe issue, one of concern only to extremists. The Greek king Pyrrhus, after whom Pyrrhic victories are named, once said, “If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.”
To understand why Tea Party heroes such as Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota rail against compromise, it’s instructive to recall how the Tea Party got started in the first place. Federal debt jumped by nearly $5 trillion during the eight years in office of Republican President George W. Bush, for whom most Tea Partiers have little but disdain. Then the Obama administration used deficit spending to fight the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. The debt has grown an additional $6.1 trillion during President Obama’s 4½ years in office to its current level of $16.7 trillion. Each year of the historic runup, deficit hawks heard the same thing from leaders of both parties: “Now isn’t a good time to get the debt under control.” “Maybe next year, when the economy’s healthier.”
That maybe-next-year message left Tea Partiers determined not to be fooled again. The 2010 midterm elections produced the biggest realignment of congressional seats since 1948, giving Republicans a majority in the House. Although the economy remained weak, stimulus was henceforth off the table. The debt-ceiling struggle in the summer of 2011 gave deficit hawks an opportunity to flex their new muscle: The Budget Control Act that emerged from the last-minute debt-ceiling deal put tight caps on discretionary spending for 10 years starting this year.
Conservative Republicans, however, insisted even those cuts didn’t go far enough. So the deal also created a 12-member bipartisan supercommittee to agree on additional reductions. The fallback in case the supercommittee failed (which it did) was sequestration: automatic, across-the-board spending cuts. Those sequestration cuts were never supposed to take effect, but they did on March 1, because Congress couldn’t agree on a more rational plan.
Sequestration, though indiscriminate and destructive, looks positively enlightened in comparison to what’s happened to the budget this fall. The government went into a partial shutdown on Oct. 1, the start of the fiscal year, because Congress failed to pass either a 2014 budget or a continuing resolution to keep spending going at last fiscal year’s levels. That has reduced spending below sequestration levels while wreaking havoc on everything from Head Start to collection of delinquent taxes. It’s cut the economy’s annualized growth rate by 0.1 percent for each week it’s lasted (although presumably most of the lost output will be recovered via catch-up spending and back pay).
Things could get worse. Failure to raise the debt ceiling either now or in the future would limit the government to spending only what comes in. The country would have instant budget balance—and, most likely, an instant recession.
Decision-makers in business are worried, and it’s crimping their hiring, according to a survey by CEB (CEB), a business advisory firm formerly known as the Corporate Executive Board. Says Executive Director Michael Griffin: “It’s like bringing a caged bear into the boardroom. Even if you’re confident that it’s not going to escape, it’s hard to ignore it and go on with your plans.”
While the downward spending ratchet gets most of the attention, the Tea Party has won on taxes, too—insisting successfully that deficit reduction should come from lower spending, not higher revenue. In 2010, President Obama agreed to temporarily extend the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. The justification at the time was that they were a kind of stimulus, albeit one benefiting the rich. Last winter, under heavy pressure from Republicans, Obama signed a law making permanent most of the Bush tax cuts except those for individuals with taxable incomes over $400,000. (The bill also ended the payroll tax holiday, which was always intended to be temporary and in any case was of less value to the wealthy.) The president has barely broached tax hikes since; vociferous Tea Party opposition seems to have pushed them right off the agenda.
Fiscal policy is probably subtracting 1.5 percentage points from the economy’s growth rate in 2013, taking into account this year’s spending cuts and higher taxes, estimates Zandi of Moody’s Analytics. The Federal Reserve can’t offset the harm by cutting interest rates because the federal funds rate is already at zero. So the economy is expected to grow only about 1.5 percent this year, barely above stall speed. “At stall speed,” Zandi says, “job growth is no longer sufficient to forestall an increase in unemployment. As soon as unemployment ticks higher, you’re in recession. You’re in a vicious cycle down.” He says the U.S. economy should avoid that fate—unless Congress stumbles into a default at some point. “The minute Treasury doesn’t pay someone, we’ve opened Pandora’s box.”
Fiscal policy would not look like this if the key players in Washington trusted one another more. (No smirking.) Tea Partiers insist on “front-loading” cuts in discretionary spending despite the harm to a still-recovering economy—and to the fabric of government—because they don’t trust others’ commitments to cut entitlement spending at some point in the future. The breakdown in trust is tragic because pivoting toward long-run entitlement reform really would be better for all concerned. “We’ve drifted into this environment where we have these calendar-created crises,” says Prakken of Macroeconomic Advisers. “It’s nobody’s idea of the best way to do things.”
Prakken, a hawk on long-term deficits, backs the idea of a gradual, long-term deal. “It would be wonderful, would it not, if our elected officials announced some grand bargain that seemed credible, realistic, with enforcement mechanisms that make it very difficult for future regimes to overturn,” he muses. “Maybe coupled with fundamental tax reform and higher revenues. Implemented over 30 years with very little fiscal drag created—that would be a wonderful outcome.”
He’s right. The federal government really does need to tighten its belt eventually, but not with the scale and immediacy the Tea Party insists on. Tea Partiers are in no mood for nuance. They fear that the Republic is in danger from wily liberals who are skilled in the art of brinkmanship. Democrats are “very good at this. We’re obviously very bad at it,” Michael Needham, chief executive officer of Heritage Action for America, the political arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation, told the Wall Street Journal this month.
In fact, the Tea Party is all too good at brinkmanship. The true believers are winning their battles in Washington. It’s the rest of the country that continues to lose.
The intra-party tensions between the Republicans’ corporate allies and their Tea Party base have been simmering for a while, but the recent shutdown and debt-ceiling crises appear to have brought the hostilities to a boil.
Dan Danner, the head of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, a powerful Republican ally, recently argued [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/10/us/business-groups-see-loss-of-sway-over-house-gop.html ], “There clearly are people in the Republican Party at the moment for whom the business community and the interests of the business community – the jobs and members they represent – don’t seem to be their top priority. They don’t really care what the N.F.I.B. thinks, and don’t care what the Chamber thinks, and probably don’t care what the Business Roundtable thinks.”
A battle for control of the Republican Party has erupted as an emboldened Tea Party moved to oust senators who voted to reopen the government while business groups mobilized to defeat allies of the small-government movement.
“We are going to get engaged,” said Scott Reed, senior political strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “The need is now more than ever to elect people who understand the free market and not silliness.”
Dear Tea Partiers, I’m reasonably certain that “silliness” comment was intended for you.
“I don’t know of anybody in the business community who takes the side of the Taliban minority,” said Dirk Van Dongen, longtime chief lobbyist for the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, who has known Boehner since the lawmaker’s first election.
Remember, this isn’t a liberal Democrat comparing Tea Party lawmakers to the Taliban; this is a prominent corporate lobbyist and long-time ally of the Republican House Speaker.
At a minimum, rhetoric like this speaks to the frustrations of private-sector leaders who mistakenly thought a Republican majority in the House would mean a focus on economic growth and job creation.
More broadly, with GOP primary season on the way, we’re likely to see two of the party’s most dominant wings go head to head, which could get ugly in a hurry.
As for which faction will be in the driver’s seat and which will be the passenger, it’s not altogether clear which contingent party officials are more scared of. With Tea Party numbers dwindling, are they still the force they were in 2010? Can Big Business back up their pleas with people power or can they only write checks? Have the crises of the last few weeks tipped the scales in one direction or the other?
The answers are about to come into sharper focus very soon.
RNC chairman Reince Priebus has said he would 'stand with Ted Cruz any day.' Reuters
By MAGGIE HABERMAN and ANNA PALMER | 10/18/13 5:05 AM EDT Updated: 10/18/13 1:18 PM EDT
Republican donors were horrified in November after pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into campaigns for president and Congress with nothing to show for it. A year later they’re appalled by how little has changed, angered by the behavior of Republican lawmakers during a string of legislative battles this year capped by the shutdown, and searching for answers.
In conversation after conversation, donors express growing frustration with the party and the constellation of outside groups they’ve been bankrolling. After getting squeezed last year by an array of campaign committees, party committees and disparate super PACs, many of them are still sitting on their checkbooks — a worrisome sign for the party with the 2014 midterm elections fast approaching.
Some donors are looking to take matters into their own hands.
New York City GOP mega-bundler Paul Singer has held a series of informal, and a few very formal, discussions in recent months with other extremely wealthy donors about how best to spend their cash in 2014, including debating the idea of forming a new entity to play a serious role in the midterm races. Its focus would be on improving the quality of Republican candidates in the hopes of avoiding more Todd Akin-like candidates who blow eminently winnable races.
“He wants to win,” one donor who attended a session said of Singer. The donor stressed that the hedge fund billionaire’s meetings, like other informal gatherings among the monied class this year, were taking place well prior to the government shutdown.
Still, some donors think the reluctance about giving among their ranks may have reached an inflection point over the way a number of Republicans in Washington acquitted themselves the past few weeks.
Donors and business leaders, whose words used to carry great weight with candidates ever worried that the money spigot might be turned off, now face a new reality. It’s a Frankenstein syndrome of sorts, in which the candidates they’ve helped fund, directly or indirectly, don’t fear them, and don’t think they need them.
Many business leaders are exasperated by their diminished influence among congressional Republicans since the 2012 election, and by the rising clout of groups like the Senate Conservative Fund, which have run ads against incumbent Republican senators for not taking enough of a hard line on the shutdown.
Where there is agreement — as is the case with donors who believe the Republican National Committee should be shored up — there is also dissatisfaction with the slow pace of progress.
At issue is not just the shutdown, but legislative battles earlier this year, such as the stymied attempt at immigration reform. Several Republican donors said watching that effort run into headwinds among conservative House members, combined with the tortured standoff over the government shutdown and potential debt default, had left a sour taste in their mouths.
Some expressed frustration that the national party has not taken a strong stand. That sentiment extends to the RNC, whose chairman, Reince Priebus, wrote shortly before the shutdown that he would “stand with Ted Cruz any day” against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
Fred Zeidman, a Texas-based bundler who supported Mitt Romney and George W. Bush, is among those who don’t want to give to party committees right now.
“Why do I want to fuel a fire that’s going to consume us?“ he asked.
Singer, meanwhile, is considering a do-it-yourself approach.
At a meeting convened by the executive of 30 to 40 donors over dinner in New York City late last month, major donors discussed how to prevent a repeat next year of the devastating 2012 cycle. One idea broached is to form a new entity — probably not a super PAC — that could be a driving force in midterm races, according to sources familiar with the discussions.
Harold Hamm, a onetime energy adviser to Romney, was among the meeting’s participants, who were strongly encouraged to keep the discussions confidential, according to two sources. People familiar with the meetings stressed that no decisions have been made, and that these were among a number of discussions various groups of donors have held over the past 10 months.
Despite his business background, Singer’s issue is not with the tea party per se — he has been a major donor to the Club for Growth, which has backed Cruz, a progenitor of the movement to defund Obamacare — but with the GOP at large losing race after race.
Singer is also still a major supporter of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, hosting events for it recently. But the committee has been struggling mightily since 2012, outraised by its Democratic counterpart and hit even harder amid the shutdown.
The fundraising woes for the GOP have been especially pronounced with New York-area donors, according to a number of Republican sources. At an event hosted by the NRSC a few weeks ago, donors vented about the inability of leadership to control Cruz and other vocal senators affiliated with the tea party.
An Oct. 30 National Republican Congressional Committee event in New York City, which is expected to feature attendees from the financial services sector, is still proceeding apace, according to a committee spokeswoman. But a senior Republican familiar with an event planned in New York on Nov. 4, also with Wall Street donors, said the response has been tepid.
“It’s difficult,” the source said before the shutdown and debt ceiling standoff was resolved. “These are people who make a living analyzing risk. They want to know when the government will open and when the debt limit will be responsibly raised. Though most senators are working to that end, it’s impossible to give a clear answer, so until the path is clear, it’s difficult.”
Strains between the donor class and the party are taking a toll on GOP-leaning money groups. And after their sweeping losses last cycle, the Karl Rove-founded Crossroads groups, which recently held a donor conference in Washington replete with presentations, are among those feeling the hardest pinch.
Multiple sources familiar with Crossroads’ fundraising say that a year after the groups spent $300 million only to see Republicans lose the White House and several winnable Senate races, fundraising has taken a hit. According to the most recent filing American Crossroads, the 527 version of the group, made with the Federal Election Commission, it had just over $2 million to spend. That super PAC files with the Internal Revenue Service and is not required to disclose donors.
Still, Crossroads spokesman Jonathan Collegio insisted the recent event went well.
“Many of the supporters and donors there expressed confidence in what we were doing and how we’re adapting, the much-improved candidate field for the cycle, and continue to believe Crossroads is the best investment after maxing out to candidates and party committees,” he said.
In November, Priebus faced an angry group of donors who demanded changes to the party’s primary calendar and, according to sources present at the meeting in New York, asked him to try to shrink the influence of Iowa on the presidential nominating process.
Instead, the grass roots — with its ability to raise money in low-dollar amounts online and spread a message through self-selected conservative-leaning media — have only demonstrated to major donors the limits of the national party’s influence.
Al Hoffman, a mega-donor and former U.S. ambassador to Portugal, said conservative activists have delivered an unmistakable message to donors and business leaders who warned about a potential default on the debt: “We don’t care.”
“So many in the House are hard-right reactionary tea party,” he told POLITICO during the shutdown. “And those Republicans, it appears, are ready to self-immolate, and are willing to risk the destruction of the party by risking the destruction of the economy, by risking a default.”
He added, “I am desperate to get the Republicans moving again … in my view we’re becoming a party of irrelevancy.”
Hoffman said he was set to meet with Priebus privately this past Wednesday. “What he really needs to do is tell me in such an impassioned way what his ideas are, how we can bring these Republicans together,” Hoffman said before the get-together.
In an email, Priebus insisted he is seeing and hearing positive things from donors, and did not witness a falloff in donations during the shutdown.
“I spend three to six hours a day on the phone with donors,” Priebus said. “Generally the things that we focus on at the RNC have to do with our ground game, our digital upgrades and our primary and debate calendar issues. Our main focus targets issues that are universally accepted by all opinion leaders and supporters in our Party. Our donor numbers have been consistent and strong.”
Some longtime Republican fundraisers cautioned against over-reading the current mood, suggesting that at this point in either a midterm or a presidential cycle, most donors are not fully engaged. Woody Johnson, the New York Jets football team owner who is a major fundraiser for the RNC and held a cattle call-style fundraiser for the party at his home a few weeks ago, echoed that the GOP is moving in the right direction.
“Under Reince’s leadership the RNC and party have experienced enormous growth and renewal,” Johnson said in an emailed statement. “The donor community understands the need to build our infrastructure and technology and are enthusiastic about the progress Reince is making on all of these fronts.”
4 Ways The Shutdown Deal Helps The Tea Party, Hurts Everyone Else
By Mark Gongloff Posted: 10/17/2013 11:38 am EDT | Updated: 10/18/2013 9:18 am EDT
With the government back open and the hellstorm of a U.S. debt default delayed, you're probably feeling pretty good about things, right? Like maybe we've thwarted the Tea Party's quest to destroy the U.S. economy? Sadly, no.
Although House Republicans seem to have failed miserably [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/us/politics/government-reopens.html ] to ransom the economy over Obamacare or "spending" or "disrespect" or whatever the last three weeks of idiocy and terror were about, they actually won [ http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-17/tea-partys-victory-against-government-spending-comes-at-high-price ("The Tea Party's Pyrrhic Victory", above)], Bloomberg Businessweek points out in its latest cover story. The deal Congress struck to get the government back to work and raise the debt ceiling maintains a Tea Party pogrom happening since at least 2010, slashing spending at the fastest rate since the end of World War II, according to Businessweek. Rather than helping the economy, the latest debt deal is another disaster for it in four very specific ways:
2. The Harsh Spending Cuts Of The Sequester Are Still In Place.
The Tea Party's fervor about debt and deficits, which purely out of coincidence blossomed immediately after the election of President Obama, has pushed the government into a series of belt-tightening measures, frustrating the economy's recovery from the worst recession since the Great Depression. In fact, government spending has been the weakest of any recovery since 1948 [ http://www.epi.org/publication/deal-deal-shutdown-debt-ceiling-biggest/ ], according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. The latest round of brutal cuts, the sequestration that helped "solve" the Tea Party-driven fiscal-cliff crisis earlier this year, are still in place, dragging on the recovery and costing potentially three million jobs [ http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/07/deficit-austerity-republican-jobs-economy ].
3. The U.S. Is Perilously Close To Being Downgraded Again.
Jack Lew: Government Shutdown, Debt Ceiling Fight 'Got Close To The Edge' 10/20/13 WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew says the just-resolved budget fight was "a little bit scary" because it "got close to the edge," and the lesson has to be that U.S. won't be put in that position again. "It can't happen again," said the Obama administration's chief spokesman on the economy. [...] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/20/jack-lew-government-shutdown_n_4131822.html [with (a bit truncated at the end) embedded video, and comments]
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What to Expect During the Cease-Fire
By Robert Reich Posted: 10/17/2013 7:56 am
The war isn't over. It's only a cease-fire.
Republicans have agreed to fund the federal government through January 15 and extend the government's ability to borrow (raise the debt ceiling) through Feb. 7. The two sides have committed themselves to negotiate a long-term budget plan by mid-December.
Regardless of what happens in the upcoming budget negotiations, it seems doubtful House Republicans will try to prevent the debt ceiling from being raised next February. Saner heads in the GOP will be able to point to the debacle Tea Partiers created this time around - the public's anger, directed mostly at Republicans; upset among business leaders and Wall Street executives, who bankroll much of the GOP; and the sharply negative reaction of stock and bond markets, where the American middle class parks whatever savings it has.
The saner Republicans will also be able to point out that President Obama means it when he says he won't ever negotiate over the debt ceiling. The fact that he negotiated over it in 2011 is now irrelevant.
On the other hand, there's a significant chance of another government shutdown in January. By then we'll be well into the gravitational pull of the 2014 midterm elections. Every House member is up for reelection - mostly from safe (often gerrymandered) districts in which their major competitors are likely to be primary opponents from the Tea Party right.
These opponents will be challenging them to show what they've done to sandbag Obamacare and shrink the size of government. The President and the Democrats have made it clear they'll protect Obamacare at all costs. Which means the real action between now and January 15 will be over the federal budget. The threat of another government shutdown is the only major bargaining leverage House Republicans possess in order to get what they consider "meaningful" concessions.
We know the parameters of the upcoming budget debate because we've been there before. The House already has its version -- the budget Paul Ryan bequeathed to them. This includes major cuts in Medicare (turning it into a voucher) and Social Security (privatizing much of it), and substantial cuts in domestic programs ranging from education and infrastructure to help for poorer Americans. Republicans also have some bargaining leverage in the sequester, which continues to indiscriminately choke government spending.
The Senate has its own version of a budget, which, by contrast, cuts corporate welfare, reduces defense spending, and raises revenues by closing tax loopholes for the wealthy.
Here, I fear, is where the President is likely to cave.
He's already put on the table a way to reduce future Social Security payments by altering the way cost-of-living adjustments are made - using the so-called "chained" consumer price index, which assumes that when prices rise people economize by switching to cheaper alternatives. This makes no sense for seniors, who already spend a disproportionate share of their income on prescription drugs, home healthcare, and medical devices - the prices of which have been rising faster than inflation. Besides, Social Security isn't responsible for our budget deficits. Quite the opposite: For years its surpluses have been used to fund everything else the government does.
The President has also suggested "means-testing" Medicare - that is, providing less of it to higher-income seniors. This might be sensible. The danger is it becomes the start of a slippery slope that eventually turns Medicare into another type of Medicaid, a program perceived to be for the poor and therefore vulnerable to budget cuts.
But why even suggest cutting Medicare at all, when the program isn't responsible for the large budget deficits projected a decade or more from now? Medicare itself is enormously efficient; its administrative costs are far lower than commercial health insurance.
The real problem is the rising costs of healthcare, coupled with the aging of the post-war boomers. The best way to deal with the former - short of a single-payer system -- is to use Medicare's bargaining power over providers to move them from "fee-for-services," in which providers have every incentive to do more tests and procedures, to "payments-for-healthy-outcomes," where providers would have every incentive to keep people healthy. (The best way to deal with the latter - the aging of the American population - is to allow more young immigrants into America.)
More generally, the President has been too eager to accept the argument that the major economic problem facing the nation is large budget deficits - when, in point of fact, the deficit has been shrinking as a share of the national economy. The only reason it's expected to increase in future years is, again, rising healthcare costs.
Our real economic problem continues to be a dearth of good jobs along with widening inequality. Cutting the budget deficit may make both worse, by reducing total demand for goods and services and eliminating programs that lower-income Americans depend on.
The President has now scored a significant victory over extremist Republicans. But the fight will continue. He mustn't relinquish ground during the upcoming cease-fire.
Harry Reid Says Hiking Defense Spending For Social Security Cuts Is A 'Stupid Trade'
By Ryan Grim and Sam Stein Posted: 10/17/2013 3:48 pm EDT | Updated: 10/18/2013 11:36 am EDT
WASHINGTON -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has no interest in a budget deal that trades sequestration relief for entitlement cuts, believing that future spending reductions scheduled to hit the Pentagon give Democrats the upper hand. Instead, the Nevada Democrat told The Huffington Post on Thursday, any large-scale debt-reduction deal must include increased revenue in exchange for changes to mandatory spending programs.
The government funding and debt limit bill signed Wednesday night sets a Dec. 13 deadline for budget negotiators to report back to Congress. If no deal is struck, Congress will have until Jan. 15 to approve continued government funding or face another shutdown.
Reid's hard lines -- which were offered just hours after Wednesday night's deal was signed into law -- reflect an increased sense among Democrats that after a big shutdown victory, they are in a strong political position heading into the next crucial months of debt-reduction talks.
Reid noted that while the coming year of sequestration cuts -- if fully implemented -- would be painful, the worst of it will recede in coming years, as spending levels begin increasing automatically. That gives Democrats more leverage to say no to lopsided offers.
"I would like to suggest that maybe the Republicans aren't too happy with next year's sequestration. Who does it hurt, non-defense? I get an extra billion dollars this year compared to [last] year. Defense? They lose $23 billion," Reid said, referring to the Pentagon. "So I would think there should be some people among the Republicans in the House and Senate who would say we should take a look at that."
Two in particular, Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), have been adamant about addressing the effect sequestration is having on the military.
Reid also said that he would make sure to protect Social Security against attempts to trade cuts for sequestration relief, calling such a bargain "a stupid trade."
"That's no trade. We are going to affect entitlements so we can increase defense spending? Don't check me for a vote there. I'm not interested in that," he said.
"It is the most successful social program in the history of the world. The program is not about to go broke, so take it easy on Social Security," Reid said.
President Obama made a similar commitment during a meeting with the Democratic Senate caucus last week, but added that if the Republican offer also included infrastructure money or investment in early childhood education, a major priority of Obama's, it would at least be worth considering. The president added that he was open to reforms to Social Security Disability Insurance.
If Republicans want to trim Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, Reid said, they'd have to give on tax revenue in exchange. Asked specifically if the deal must be revenue for entitlements, he said: "Yes, and we call it mandatories."
Asked for a response to Reid's line in the sand, Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), told The Huffington Post, "If Democrats truly believe sequestration is bad for our economy, they shouldn’t hold a fix ‘hostage’ for another round of tax hikes.”
Obama has repeatedly offered to cut Social Security as part of a grand bargain, by changing the way benefits are calculated so as to reduce future payments.
Republicans, meanwhile, have been increasingly referring to sequestration as a win for the party, with anti-tax activist Grover Norquist calling its implementation the defining moment of the decade. But Reid questioned how unanimous that opinion is. He also pushed back against the notion that sequestration was a victory at all.
"Try to explain that to the programs that are being devastated. [National Institutes of Health], take that one. Would you call that a success?" he asked. "Let the Republicans try and defend what they've done to our country."
For all his strategizing, however, Reid acknowledged that he doesn't yet have a firm read on his opponents. Asked if this shutdown loss had broken the GOP's hostage-taking strategy for the foreseeable future, he demurred.
"I don't know," he said. "I don't like terms like [broken] because remember, we are not dealing with rational folks. But I do believe that they have been hurt irreparably."
Ultimately, Reid said, he doesn't hold out much hope for a big deal with Boehner, who has been unable to bring his troops together.
"I hope this budget process works. If it doesn't, that gives us 30 days before the Jan. 15 date. So if that doesn't work, we will do something during that period of time," he said. "The sad part about this is that John Boehner, I've heard him say so many times, 'I didn't get elected Speaker to do small things.' Well, we have tried to do big things with him and he can never, ever, ever pull the trigger. It is all, 'I can't do that, my caucus won't let me.'"
Reid advised his cross-cameral colleague to ditch the so-called Hastert rule, which holds that a bill should only come to the floor if a majority of the majority supports it.
"I would hope that if we have learned nothing else from this sorry episode that they've created, I would hope that America, and maybe even Republicans in the House, will look at what they've done. Last night they did the right thing," he said. "The House of Representatives voted on a piece of legislation. I served in the House. That's the way it always used to be. There was never this majority of the majority, how silly. You in effect wipe out the talents of half the Congress," he continued.
"So I would hope that if we've learned nothing else from this, that we will now get rid of the stupid Hastert Rule."
One leading target is Emmett W. Hanger Jr., a Republican state senator from the deeply conservative Shenandoah Valley, who prides himself on “going against the grain.” As chairman of a commission weighing one of the thorniest issues in Virginia politics, whether to expand Medicaid [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/medicaid/index.html ] under Mr. Obama’s Affordable Care Act, he is feeling heat from the Republican right.
His openness to expansion has aroused the ire of Americans for Prosperity, the conservative advocacy group backed by the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch. Dressed in emerald green T-shirts bearing the slogan “Economic Freedom in Action!” its members are waging what the senator calls “an attempt to intimidate me” in Richmond and at home.
They have phoned his constituents, distributed leaflets and knocked on 2,000 doors in his rural district. When the Republican town committee met Monday night in Mr. Hanger’s home county, Augusta, Americans for Prosperity was there.
In Richmond on Tuesday, hundreds of volunteers in green shirts turned out for a commission hearing, bused in by the advocacy group’s field organizers, who provided Subway sandwiches for lunch.
“This has been one of those trench warfare kind of efforts for a year now, and I think it is one of those hidden stories of the whole fight against Obamacare,” said Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity. “It’s not flashy; it’s just in a whole bunch of state capitals and in the districts of a whole lot of state legislators, but it’s such a crucial aspect of the overall long-term effort to roll back Obamacare.”
The state-by-state strategy represents a split from the course pursued by Heritage Action for America and its sister organization, Heritage Foundation, which drove the “defunding Obamacare” movement that led to the recent government shutdown. In an opinion article [ http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304410204579141690140598008 ] published Friday by The Wall Street Journal, Jim DeMint, the foundation president, made no apologies. “Obamacare will now be the issue for the next few years,” he wrote.
Expanding Medicaid, a joint federal-state program for the poor, is critical to the law’s goal of covering the nation’s 48 million uninsured. Hospitals and insurers were also counting on more Medicaid patients to make the economics of the law work. For states, the terms seemed attractive: The federal government would pay 100 percent of the cost of new enrollees for the first three years, 90 percent after that.
But in June 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that states could opt out of Medicaid expansion. The ruling opened the door for conservative opponents of the law. Americans for Prosperity, with paid staff members in 34 states, walked through it. So did another group, Tea Party Patriots, which recently gave $20,000 to organizers of a referendum drive to put the question of Medicaid expansion on the Arizona ballot.
Americans for Prosperity has spent millions in states around the country, including Arkansas, Florida, Ohio, Louisiana, Michigan and Pennsylvania, to run the kind of aggressive campaign that it is now waging here in Virginia, where much will depend on the governor’s race. The Democratic candidate, Terry McAuliffe, who leads in the polls, favors expansion. The Republican candidate, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, is opposed.
So far roughly half the states are moving forward with Medicaid expansion, and an increasing number of Republican governors are expressing interest. Michigan, where Gov. Rick Snyder recently signed Medicaid expansion legislation into law, was “a tough loss,” Mr. Phillips conceded. In Ohio, Gov. John R. Kasich wants to expand. So does Gov. Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania, even though the legislature has already rejected it.
“This is going to be an issue all through 2014 for us,” said Jennifer Stefano, a former television reporter who runs Americans for Prosperity’s Pennsylvania chapter. “I don’t believe this fight is in Washington or ever was. I think this is a street fight. It’s a man to man, so to speak, fight of going door to door.”
That, at least, is the way the battle is being waged here in Virginia, where Mr. Hanger, a 30-year veteran of state politics, is navigating politically treacherous waters.
His panel, formed after the State House and Senate could not agree, must evaluate whether the state Medicaid program has put in place certain changes to improve care and cut costs. It has five members from each chamber; the program can be expanded only if three from each chamber agree. So far, four House members are opposed.
Mr. Hanger said he had not made up his mind, but added, “It makes absolutely no sense to not utilize those federal dollars when we have this unmet need.”
But he will put off a vote until after the election for governor on Nov. 5. Referring to Mr. Cuccinelli, he said, “If he’s elected, we can talk about it,” adding, “If I can present enough evidence about reform and revenue flows, I think he can be convinced.”
Mr. Hanger is not the only target of Americans for Prosperity. Another Republican commission member, State Senator John C. Watkins, complains that the group, which is not required to disclose its donors, is sending misleading mailings to his constituents.
“They related Medicaid expansion to defeating Obamacare, and they ignore the fact that the Affordable Care Act is the law,” he said. “I think their tactics are very deceptive.”
Tuesday’s hearing offered a peek into the group’s organizing prowess. Many of the advocacy group’s organizers are young, like Miranda Robinson, 21, a regional field manager. She dislikes Mr. Obama: “We have different morals,” she said. But before working for Americans for Prosperity, she paid scant attention to his economic policies.
Ms. Robinson arrived at 7:30 a.m. for a session that did not begin until 1 p.m., and she spent the day herding people on and off buses and keeping volunteers fed. She brought along her youth pastor, Justin Dehart, who said his youth group recently knocked on doors for Americans for Prosperity, which donated money to the youth program.
As many as 400,000 of Virginia’s one million uninsured residents would be eligible for coverage under an expanded Medicaid program, although Katharine M. Webb, senior vice president of the trade association representing Virginia hospitals, estimates that only 250,000 would enroll.
Ms. Webb said Virginia has a decade of experience with managed care for mothers and children, experience that could be transferred to childless adults covered by Medicaid. She sees the state taking “a thoughtful, policy-driven approach,” and marvels that Virginia has not yet rejected expansion, as other states have.
“We’re still alive in Virginia,” Ms. Webb said, “and that’s a miracle.”
In making its case, Americans for Prosperity taps into deep unease its members feel with the size and scope of the federal government. It argues that the federal government will never make good on its obligation to pick up the cost. Citing a University of Virginia study that found worse surgical outcomes for Medicaid patients than for the uninsured, it contends that Medicaid coverage is worse than no coverage at all.
Critics say that interpretation is deeply flawed because the uninsured tend to be healthier than people on Medicaid. But leaders of Americans for Prosperity like Dave Schwartz, a seasoned political operative who is the group’s director in Virginia, cite the study often.
“The folks that need the most help will get hurt the most if you expand Medicaid,” Mr. Schwartz told the panel on Tuesday.
The hearing lasted six hours; about 125 people testified, with about twice as many favoring Medicaid expansion as against. Consumer advocates and members of the AARP also turned out, wearing bright blue “Everyone Needs Coverage” T-shirts.
One of Mr. Hanger’s constituents, Georgia Long, a nurse and member of Americans for Prosperity, was there in a green shirt, sounding exasperated. Mr. Hanger, who is not up for re-election until 2015, has already survived one Republican primary challenge, and Ms. Long would like to see him face another.
“Emmett Hanger is hardheaded,” she said. “I would like to pressure him into being more fiscally conservative.”
Mr. Hanger, who once landed on a “Virginia’s Least Wanted” poster put out by the Washington anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist, seems unconcerned, though he says it irks him that “outside groups” are trying to influence Virginia politics. “I’m somewhat frustrated with them on that,” he said, “so perhaps I am hardheaded.”
Idaho tea party candidate Collett skewered for having 10 children on Medicaid Greg Collett October 17, 2013 [...] “Let me set the record straight. Yes, I participate in government programs of which I adamantly oppose. Many of them, actually. Am I a hypocrite for participating in programs that I oppose? If it was that simple, and if participation demonstrated support, then of course. But, my reason for participation in government programs often is not directly related to that issue in and of itself, and it certainly does not demonstrate support. For instance, I participate in government programs in order to stay out of the courts, or jail, so that I can take care of my family; other things I do to avoid fines or for other financial reasons; and some are simply because it is the only practical choice. With each situation, I have to evaluate the consequences of participating or not participating. “By way of example, here are a few government programs and policies that I oppose because they do not conform to the proper role of government, yet I participate in them: I am against marriage licenses, but I still got one to get married; I am against the foster care program, but I became a foster parent; I am against property taxes, but I own property and pay the tax; I am against federal ownership of land by the Forest Service and BLM, but I use the land for hiking, backpacking, camping, and fishing; I am against national parks, but I visit them; I am against driver’s licenses, vehicle registration, license plates, and mandated liability insurance, but I comply with all of them to drive; I am against public funding of transportation systems, but I still use them; I am against building permits, fees, and inspections, but I get them as needed; I am against public libraries, but my family uses them; I am against public schools, but I occasionally use their facilities; I am against occupational licensing, but I use the services of individuals and companies that comply with those requirements; I am against USDA inspections, but I still use products that carry their label; I am against the Uniform Commercial Code and designated legal business entities such as corporations, but I use the services of such entities and have set up several of them for myself; I am against the current structure of our judicial system and courts, but I still use them; I am against the 17th Amendment, but I still cast my vote for Senators; and the list could go on and on.” http://blogs.idahostatesman.com/idaho-tea-party-candidate-collett-skewered-having-10-children-on-medicaid/ [with comments]
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Idaho tea party candidate has 10 kids on Medicaid but hates government
By DAN POPKEY Published: October 18, 2013
Greg Collett happily calls his political views "extreme." But he wasn't prepared for condemnation from his allies after word that all his home-schooled children are on Medicaid became an Internet sensation.
Collett, twice a candidate for the Idaho Legislature in Canyon County, isn't surprised he's been excoriated on left-wing websites including Gawker, BuzzFlash, Daily Kos and Americans Against the Tea Party.
But he's also heard criticism from those who share his anti-government views for having taxpayers foot medical bills for eight adopted and two biological children, ages 4 to 17.
In contrast, Collett and his wife, Kelly, say they will pay the fine rather than buy insurance for themselves under the Affordable Care Act.
"I attracted all the attention of all the people who hate Republicans and the tea party," said Collett, a 41-year-old freelance software developer and University of Idaho alum. "I've also attracted the attention of a lot of people in the liberty movement that don't want to see anybody on welfare."
Things got so bad, Collett said, he had to clean up his Facebook account and remove contact information from his campaign website. "The level of hatred is just absolutely incredible," he said. "Messages on my website, emails, I've even had phone calls. It's been pretty intense."
Online comments have labeled Collett a hypocrite, moron, mentally unstable, immoral and unethical, along with frequently profane epithets. "He should have been sterilized years ago," said one.
2,900-WORD DEFENSE
Actually, fertility plays a role in the Colletts' story. For five years, they were foster parents. Both underwent fertility treatments. In the same year they adopted five children, they had their first biological child. Three more adoptions followed, then their youngest was born four years ago.
"In our case, we wanted a large family to make us complete," Kelly Collett told the Statesman in 2009. Seven of the eight adopted children were in foster care: four from a Midwestern state, three from a Southern state. The eighth was a private adoption through LDS Family Services. Three of the eight are Hispanic and some are siblings. The Colletts are white.
Ronalee Linsenmann, of Caldwell, knows Collett from the 2012 campaign, when both were challenging incumbents and the Collett kids were helping their dad.
"His children were the most respectful, well-behaved children you could ever be around," she said. "They obviously have a very, very loving family."
Collett, who is preparing to run for the Legislature again, wound up in the news because he was one of 1,503 people who answered a Kaiser/NBC poll in September about attitudes about the Affordable Care Act. He told the surveyor he'd be willing to talk to a reporter.
He was the first person quoted in an Oct. 4 NBC story, "Health care holdouts: uninsured but resisting." Collett acknowledged the controversial nature of his views. "There are a lot of people out there that'll cry foul," he said.
The story was republished on many websites. The next day, Collett posted a 2,900-word response on his campaign site.
"For those of you who insist that I take the kids off of Medicaid, please feel free to get them off by terminating the entire program," he wrote.
Gawker revived the story on Wednesday. The online community Reddit picked up a Statesman story Thursday, helping drive more than 24,000 hits. Between Tuesday and Thursday, Collett said, 6,000 people clicked on his essay.
'I WOULDN'T HAVE A LIFE'
Collett says he understands those who call him a hypocrite, but says he can't easily escape what he calls an "evil government" and a "shadow oligarchy masquerading as a democracy."
Public schools are "the granddaddy of all welfare programs" but still, he says, he uses their facilities. He also recreates on public lands and uses public transportation and libraries. Though he opposes them, he carries a driver's license, registration and mandatory auto insurance.
"If I couldn't participate in anything that I didn't agree with that the government was involved in, then I couldn't be married, I wouldn't have kids, I wouldn't own property," Collett told the Statesman. "Basically, I wouldn't have a life."
If it makes "financial sense" for him to buy insurance under the Your Health Idaho exchange, Collett says he'll do so.
As for enrolling the kids in Medicaid — the federal-state low-income health insurance program that many of his friends call welfare — he said, "I'm OK taking whatever I can from the government that's available to me. I'm not going to lie and scam the system, but I'm OK with redirecting that money away from morally reprehensible things and direct it towards me."
Collett cited the "murder" in funding abortion and "unjust" wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as examples of things he finds objectionable.
He said none of the children have had major illnesses. "I qualify for it. Seven of them came with Medicaid cards from foster care. To a large degree it's a matter of practicality."
As for his political aspirations, Collett said he's considering a rematch with Rep. Gayle Batt, R-Wilder, who beat him 65 percent to 35 percent in last year's GOP primary.
But he's also eyeing Sen. Patti Anne Lodge of Huston and Rep. Christy Perry of Nampa.
"I'd be happy to go up against any of them," he said.
He said the flap over health care "could certainly affect the race."
"Some people have vowed to "do everything they can to support my opponent, whoever it is," he said.
But Collett sees a silver lining: "At least my message is getting out there."
Jim Bob Duggar Compares US To Nazi Germany During The Holocaust
Submitted by Brian Tashman on Saturday, 10/12/2013 2:05 pm
Reality TV star Jim Bob Duggar spent most of his speech at the Values Voter Summit imploring attendees to run for office, just like he did, in order to advance social conservative causes like an “army.”
Duggar ended the address by retelling a story about a time when Mike Huckabee and his daughter visited a concentration camp, which he used to compare the current state of the US to Nazi Germany.
“As they were walking out of that concentration camp, he said little Sarah looked up at him and she said, ‘Daddy why didn’t somebody do something?’ You know what, that’s where we are at in our nation,” Duggar said. “Do we want our children, when we’re going to tell them about how great America was, they’re going to look at you and say, ‘Why didn’t somebody do something?’”
Rising Stars Panel Rep. Steve Montenegro, Arizona State Legislature Rep. Scott Turner, Texas State Legislature Rep. Matt Krause, Texas State Legislature
Obamacare Is Winning in Kentucky, Thanks to Steve Beshear
Getty
Kentucky, a bastion of anti-government ire, is the top state for Obamacare enrollment. Jonathan Miller on the governor responsible for the unlikely red-state enthusiasm.
by Jonathan Miller Oct 17, 2013 5:45 AM EDT
Politics in my old Kentucky home has, for centuries, been awash in irreconcilable contradictions.
We stuck with the Union in favor of our favorite son, Lincoln, but then joined in common cause [ http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20110213/COLUMNISTS12/302130052/Al-Cross-Reflections-how-Civil-War-shaped-Kentucky ] with the Confederacy after the Civil War had ended. A century later, we boasted some of the nation’s most progressive civil rights laws; yet, to this date, we still feature many of America’s most segregated societies. And while Kentucky’s been one of the largest beneficiaries of the New Deal/Great Society welfare state, the dominant strain in our politics remains a fierce anti-government, anti-tax worldview.
Kentucky’s perplexing and hypocritical aversion to big government has been exploited brilliantly by our senior senator Mitch McConnell, who’s capitalized on our cultural resentment of elite interference to transform the Bluegrass State into a deep-red citadel in federal elections. More recently, our junior senator Rand Paul catapulted McConnell’s vision much further than Mitch intended, placing Kentucky in the crosshairs of the Tea Party revolution. But while these two political icons and their surrogates clash over the depth of government slashing, they’ve been steadfastly united behind one common vision: the defeat, and, more recently, the repeal of the Affordable Care Act.
It’s no coincidence then that Obamacare is beginning to expose the political fault line that divides the two Kentuckys. The GOP’s effective—and quite misleading—messaging plays into the anti-establishment populace’s greatest fears about out-of-control outside interference: the myth of a government-run-health-care system, engineered by a President with socialist tendencies (and whose skin pigmentation and exotic name frankly heighten popular anxiety in some of the nation’s least educated counties). And yet, when you wade through the propaganda and understand the law’s true impact, Kentucky needs the Affordable Care Act…desperately. It’s a state consistently ranked near the bottom [ http://www.americashealthrankings.org/ ] of nearly every national health survey, where one out of every six [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/27/opinion/my-state-needs-obamacare-now.html ] citizens remains uninsured.
With our long-standing tradition of timid politicians fearful of incurring the wrath of the anti-government mobs, it wouldn’t have been surprising to see Kentucky join much of Red America and reject both Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion to the working poor, as well as its option of establishing a state-run health benefit exchange to provide affordable health care to the remaining uninsured.
But in a delicious irony, Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul’s home state may ultimately serve as the proving ground of Obamacare’s success. That’s due to the political chutzpah of one man: Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear.
It would be hyperbolic to crown Steve Beshear as a profile in courage. The Governor’s second and final term expires in two years, and he’s made clear that this is his last political hurrah. However, Beshear is keenly interested in the political prospects of his son Andy—the betting favorite in the 2015 race for Attorney General—and he understands that even a tangential connection to the unpopular Obama carries a heavy political burden. Furthermore, the Governor isn’t quietly going about the business of administering the new law: Beshear has been gleefully poking the eye of the Tea Party beast — and its subservient U.S. Senators—and channeling Harry Truman in the national media circuit: In a recent New York Times op-ed [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/27/opinion/my-state-needs-obamacare-now.html ], Beshear crowed: “[T]o those more worried about political power than Kentucky’s families, I say, ‘Get over it’…and get out of the way so I can help my people. Here in Kentucky, we cannot afford to waste another day or another life.”
The issue indeed is quite personal to the Governor. As he explained to me this week, “[These] are not political decisions. They are moral decisions…Taking these steps will mean that, for the first time, every single Kentuckian will have access to affordable health care. Over the next generation, this will change the course of Kentucky’s history.”
Some full disclosure: I ran against Beshear in the 2007 gubernatorial primary, dropped out and endorsed him; and then he punished me by appointing me as his Finance Secretary during the worst global financial calamity of our lifetime. But it was in the midst of that crisis that I was able to take true measure of the man. The Great Recession denied Beshear’s dream of enacting resource-intensive, transformative educational programs to lift the Commonwealth out of its competitive ditch, while his proposals to create new revenue were thwarted until very recently by the spread of MHV (the McConnell Hyperpartisanship Virus) from Washington to Frankfort.
So now, a Governor who has thus far failed to pass his signature policy initiative—to expand gaming at Kentucky race tracks in order to fund educational progress—has gone all-in on Obamacare. Bringing affordable health care to hundreds of thousands of Kentuckians could prove to be Beshear’s enduring legacy for the Bluegrass State.
But they are buying Obamacare. Literally. And many, many more will, as uninsured Kentuckians learn more about their benefits during the program’s grassroots educational rollout, and as popular disgust [ http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/10/20903624-nbcwsj-poll-shutdown-debate-damages-gop ] grows with the shutdown and default tactics of Obamacare’s most vocal critics. So by the time of next November’s general election, McConnell’s most potent rhetorical weapon—an assault on Obamacare—may have lost much of its firepower.
Even more significantly, Beshear’s example could potentially shake up national politics, by paving a new, economically populist path for more red state politicians—particularly those who represent economically disadvantaged areas where the federal safety net serves as an integral thread in society’s fabric. Social wedge issues will always present a problem for progressives in places like Kentucky. But Steve Beshear’s healthy recipe might prove the elixir for the hype-fueled Tea Party brew that’s convinced many poor, rural Americans to vote against their own economic interests.
So in the end, the GOP’s successful messaging efforts to rebrand the Affordable Care Act as “Obamacare”—and stand unanimously for its defeat and then repeal—could provide an opening for Democrats to win elections in areas that have been solidly red for decades. And with Steve Beshear’s help, the monster that Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul helped to create might ultimately turn on its masters.
LEXINGTON, Ky. -- LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) — Kentucky authorities say they have cited U.S. Sen. Rand Paul's 20-year-old son on alcohol possession by a minor at a Kentucky racetrack.
Kentucky Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control spokesman Dick Brown says agents cited William Hilton Paul on Friday during a "targeted enforcement detail" at Keeneland in Lexington.
Joseph DiBenedetto: 'I'm Not Saying She Deserved To Be Raped, But...' 10/18/2013 A Fox News guest said that a Missouri teen who says she was raped by a classmate was asking for it by going out late at night. He also accused her of lying. “What did she expect to happen at one in the morning after sneaking out?” attorney Joseph DiBenedetto said on Shephard Smith Reports. “I’m not saying — assuming that these facts are accurate and this did happen — I’m not saying she deserved to be raped, but knowing the facts as we do here including what the prosecutor has set forth, this case is going nowhere and it's going nowhere quick.” [...] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/17/joseph-dibenedetto-rape-missouri-teen_n_4118899.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Daisy Coleman On The Night She Says She Was Raped: 'If God Were Real, Why Would He Do This?'
My mother told me she found me outside, left for dead, and when she heard me trying to get to the door, she thought it was a dog scratching. I was weak and could have died in the below freezing temperatures.
Next thing I knew, I was in the ER getting blood drawn and having various tests done. We all knew what had happened, we just wanted someone else to say it for us. The doctors examined the rape kit and verified that our nightmares were real. This nightmare, though, didn't end. It continued on for many long months. It was only later I learned that my best friend, a year younger than me, had been raped, too.
In the blog, Daisy admits that she quit praying, because "if God were real, why would he do this?" She says that she began cutting and burning herself all over her body, twice attempting to take her own life.
"My scars only come to the surface when I'm tan or cold now," Daisy writes. "It's as if over time my body learned to heal some of the ugly, but it will always be a part of me."
“The whole issue of a class action lawsuit, you and I have talked about this a little bit,” Scarborough told LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth about Homosexuality, in a conversation at a Tea Party Unity gathering Thursday. People For the American Way’s Right Wing Watch [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/ ], a progressive advocacy group that monitors and reports on conservative political organizations, posted a partial transcript and audio recording [ https://soundcloud.com/rightwingwatch/scarborough-class-action ] of the discussion.
Scarborough said he believes homosexuality and tobacco companies should be equally vulnerable to class action lawsuits.
"Obviously, statistically now even the Centers for Disease Control verifies that homosexuality much more likely leads to AIDS than smoking leads to cancer. And yet the entire nation has rejected smoking, billions of dollars are put into a trust fund to help cancer victims and the tobacco industry was held accountable for that," Scarborough said.
But LaBarbera agreed [ http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/10/18/tea-party-leader-proposes-class-action-lawsuit-against-homosexuality/ ] with Scarborough, Raw Story reported, and added, “We need to work on our conservative, alternate media and say, ‘look, don’t do the pro-gay thing, why don’t you rather step out and support these ex-gays?’ We should encourage Fox News to tell these stories ... these wonderful stories of happy men and women who have left the homosexual lifestyle.”
Speaking at the Midwest Republican Leadership Conference last month, Rick Santorum made some dramatic claims about the future of our country if same-sex marriage comes to be legalized. But first, the former Republican presidential candidate gave us all a history lesson in the trajectory of normalization regarding same-sex attraction:
"When it came to the issues of changing the definition of marriage, there was no change -- none! Zero! For 30 years," Santorum said. "And then a television show came on the air called 'Will and Grace' -- and look at it from that point on!"
Santorum goes on to claim that Christians are now afraid to speak out against gay marriage because they'll be branded as bigots and haters. "We have hate crimes in this country," Santorum states in the above clip [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGT4ZMv_OMc (above, as embedded)]. "For hate speech. It's coming."
Santorum's overarching conclusion to this tirade against same-sex unions? "For the Republican party to even contemplate going along with this is the destruction of our republic," he offers.
Speaking at a meeting of the New Jersey Second Amendment Society on October 7, Atlantic County Sheriff Frank Balles criticized State Sen. Jim Whelan (D) for his stance on gun control, suggesting that the Democrat is being disingenuous by saying he does not want to take his constituents' gun rights away.
"When someone's been elected for 30 years and he comes knocking on your door and tells you, 'Listen, this is what I want to do to help you,' quickly close your door, go inside," Balles said of Whelan, who voted in favor of several firearms restrictions earlier this year.
"And get your gun!" added a member of the group.
"And get your gun," Balles said, laughing with the audience.
"Encouraging violence toward any elected official is bad enough, but when it comes from the head of a law enforcement agency it's absolutely reprehensible," committee executive director Justin Myers said in a statement. “Balles’ remark is totally unacceptable. We have seen how this type of irresponsible language can lead to actual violence, as was the case in the brutal attack on Congresswoman Gabby Gifford of Arizona. Not only does Frank Balles not belong in the legislature, he has disgraced his uniform and the Atlantic County Sheriff's Department and should hand in his badge immediately.”
Weekly Address: Working Together on Behalf of the American People
Published on Oct 19, 2013 by The White House
In this week's address, President Obama said that now that the Federal government is reopened and the threat of default is lifted from the economy, there are three places Washington can take action to serve the American people. First, it's time for a balanced, responsible approach to the budget that grows the economy and shrinks our long term deficits. Second, we must fix our broken immigration system. And finally, Congress should pass a farm bill to give rural communities the opportunity to grow. The President said it's time to put aside politics and work on behalf of the American people and the country we love.
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WEEKLY ADDRESS: Working Together on Behalf of the American People
Remarks of President Barack Obama Weekly Address The White House October 19, 2013
Hi everybody. This week, because Democrats and responsible Republicans came together, the government was reopened, and the threat of default was removed from our economy.
There’s been a lot of discussion lately of the politics of this shutdown. But the truth is, there were no winners in this. At a time when our economy needs more growth and more jobs, the manufactured crises of these last few weeks actually harmed jobs and growth. And it’s understandable that your frustration with what goes on in Washington has never been higher.
The way business is done in Washington has to change. Now that these clouds of crisis and uncertainty have lifted, we need to focus on what the majority of Americans sent us here to do – grow the economy, create good jobs, strengthen the middle class, lay the foundation for broad-based prosperity, and get our fiscal house in order for the long haul.
It won’t be easy. But we can make progress. Specifically, there are three places where I believe that Democrats and Republicans can work together right away.
First, we should sit down and pursue a balanced approach to a responsible budget, one that grows our economy faster and shrinks our long-term deficits further. There is no choice between growth and fiscal responsibility – we need both. So we’re making a serious mistake if a budget doesn’t focus on what you’re focused on: creating more good jobs that pay better wages. If we’re going to free up resources for the things that help us grow – education, infrastructure, research – we should cut what we don’t need, and close corporate tax loopholes that don’t help create jobs. This shouldn’t be as difficult as it has been in past years. Remember, our deficits are shrinking – not growing.
Second, we should finish the job of fixing our broken immigration system. There’s already a broad coalition across America that’s behind this effort, from business leaders to faith leaders to law enforcement. It would grow our economy. It would secure our borders. The Senate has already passed a bill with strong bipartisan support. Now the House should, too. The majority of Americans thinks this is the right thing to do. It can and should get done by the end of this year.
Third, we should pass a farm bill – one that America’s farmers and ranchers can depend on, one that protects vulnerable children and adults in times of need, and one that gives rural communities opportunities to grow and the longer-term certainty they deserve.
We won’t suddenly agree on everything now that the cloud of crisis has passed. But we shouldn’t hold back on places where we do agree, just because we don’t think it’s good politics, or just because the extremes in our parties don’t like compromise. I’ll look for willing partners from either party to get important work done. There’s no good reason why we can’t govern responsibly, without lurching from manufactured crisis to manufactured crisis. Because that isn’t governing – it’s just hurting the people we were sent here to serve.
Those of us who have the privilege to serve this country have an obligation to do our job the best we can. We come from different parties, but we’re Americans first. And our obligations to you must compel all of us, Democrats and Republicans, to cooperate, and compromise, and act in the best interests of this country we love.
Obama's Religion Is Out Of Spotlight But Christian Spirituality Serves During Tough Times
President Barack Obama bows his head in prayer before awarding the Medal of Honor posthumously to Chaplain (Captain) Emil J. Kapaun, U.S. Army, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday, April 11, 2013. Kapaun received the Medal of Honor posthumously for his extraordinary heroism while serving with the 3d Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division during combat operations against an armed enemy at Unsan, Korea and as a prisoner of war from November 1-2, 1950. (AP Photo)
By JOSH LEDERMAN 10/19/13 03:37 AM ET EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is not an overtly religious man. He and his family rarely attend church, and he almost never elaborates in public about his own relationship to his Christian faith.
But far away from the public eye, his longtime advisers say, the president has carefully nurtured a sense of spirituality that has served as a grounding mechanism during turbulent times, when the obstacles to governing a deeply divided nation seem nearly insurmountable.
Every year on Aug. 4, the president's birthday, Obama convenes a group of pastors by phone to receive their prayers for him for the year to come. During the most challenging of times, prayer circles are organized with prominent religious figures such as megachurch pastor Joel Hunter, Bishop Vashti McKenzie of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Rev. Joseph Lowery, a civil rights activist.
And each morning for the past five years, before most of his aides even arrive at the White House, Obama has read a devotional written for him and sent to his BlackBerry, weaving together biblical scripture with reflections from literary figures like Maya Angelou and C.S. Lewis.
"I've certainly seen the president's faith grow in his time in office," said Joshua DuBois, an informal spiritual adviser to Obama who writes the devotionals and ran Obama's faith-based office until earlier this year. "When you cultivate your faith, it grows."
Obama is particularly moved by theories that draw connections between biblical themes and the personal journeys of historical figures like Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr., DuBois said. He added that the president's spiritual strength is his belief that God will carry him through to see another day — even amid crises like the debt-and-spending debacle that's ensnared Washington for the last month.
"Because of these grounding aspects of his life, he doesn't let the day-to-day challenges really shake him," said DuBois, a former associate pastor at a Pentecostal church.
The image of Obama as someone who draws heavily on faith to guide his daily life contrasts with his public persona.
An intensely private person, Obama has shied away from all but the most general descriptions of his spiritual life. After all, Obama had to distance himself from his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, when his anti-American rantings threatened Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. And persistent, false claims that Obama is secretly a Muslim have followed him even into his second term.
"Sometimes I search scripture to determine how best to balance life as a president and as a husband and as a father," Obama said in February at the National Prayer Breakfast. "I often search for scripture to figure out how I can be a better man as well as a better president."
The best clues to which texts fortify Obama's spiritual consumption may come from the daily devotionals that DuBois started sending Obama, then a U.S. senator, in 2008. DuBois ran religious outreach for Obama's presidential campaign that year, and his digital benedictions for Obama have been compiled in a forthcoming book, "The President's Devotional."
"A snippet of scripture for me to reflect on," Obama has said. "And it has meant the world to me."
At pivotal moments in Obama's presidency, DuBois sometimes selects texts that offer lessons apropos of the challenges at hand. Before one State of the Union address, it was the words of Isaiah, in an appeal for clarity of speech: "So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth, it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose."
Others are intended as an oasis from the worldly conflicts Obama has to weather on any given day.
"We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed. Perplexed, but not in despair," reads a verse from 2 Corinthians that DuBois sent Obama one November, followed with his own meditation: "Dear God, give us a resilient spirit, a spirit that returns to face this day even in the shadow of yesterday's challenges. Help us, today, to bounce back."
In his final years in office, Obama plans to continue with the morning meditations, the birthday call with pastors and ad hoc prayer circles, said a senior administration official, who wasn't authorized to comment by name on Obama's spiritual life and requested anonymity.
Privately, Obama also speaks to staff of being mindful of his own spiritual responsibility to the nation, the official said. In times of crisis, from devastating hurricanes to tragic school shootings, many Americans look to their president as a source of strength and comfort.
"This office tends to make a person pray more," Obama said last year in an interview with Cathedral Age magazine. "And as President Lincoln once said, 'I have been driven to my knees many times by the overwhelming conviction that I had no place else to go.'"
Why won't America ratify the UN convention on children's rights?
Oct 6th 2013, 23:50 by S.C. | NEW YORK
LAST week at its New York headquarters the United Nations held its annual Treaty Event, which encourages country leaders to sign up to any of the organisation’s 550-plus conventions. This year the spotlight was on the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which has been adopted by every country apart from Somalia, South Sudan and America. Somalia is anarchic and South Sudan became a country only two years ago. What is stopping America from ratifying the treaty?
The treaty was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1989 and became one of the most rapidly and widely adopted human-rights pacts. It sets standards for education, health care, social services and penal laws, and establishes the right of children to have a say in decisions that affect them. America signed it in 1995 but never ratified it. (By signing a treaty a country endorses its principles; ratification means committing to be legally bound by it.) The bar for treaty ratification is set high in America: the president must send treaties to the Senate, where they require approval by a two-thirds majority, the same standard required to amend the Constitution. The child-rights convention has never made it to a vote. Although Presidents Clinton and Obama have supported ratification, opposition by Republicans in the Senate has made it clear that the treaty would not pass.
Opponents of the treaty say it would usurp American sovereignty, a long-standing fear about the UN among some conservative Republicans. There is a fear that the social and economic rights established by the treaty could provoke lawsuits demanding that the government pay for these things. To address such concerns, America generally ratifies human-rights pacts with the condition that they will not overrule existing laws. Parent-rights groups claim the treaty would undermine parents’ authority, particularly over religious and sex education. Michael Farris, head of one such group, ParentalRights.org, sees the treaty’s principle that governments’ decisions should be in the best interest of the child as a blanket permit for the authorities to override any parental decision that a government worker—such as a school official or social worker—disagrees with. Jonathan Todres, a law professor at Georgia State University, disagrees: he notes that the treaty promotes the family as the best environment for children and points out that 19 of the treaty’s provisions acknowledge the role of parents.
Most American laws are already consistent with the pact, but not all. A notable exception is that in America under-18s can be jailed for life without parole (until 2005, they could be sentenced to death). The treaty prohibits cruel and degrading punishment, so ratification might curb smacking. Although America has laws against child abuse, a third of states allow corporal punishment in schools and none bans it at home. America’s adoption of other human-rights treaties has helped to fill gaps in American law. Participation in the UN treaty on child soldiers, for instance, prompted America to abolish the deployment of under-18s in military operations. Ratifying the child-rights treaty could also improve America’s reputation as a champion of child wellbeing, according to Jo Becker of Human Rights Watch, a New York-based advocacy group: “It is awkward when the US tries to promote child rights in other countries—they all remind us that they’ve joined the treaty and we have not.”
On the eve of a new Supreme Court session, the firebrand justice discusses gay rights and media echo chambers, Seinfeld and the Devil, and how much he cares about his intellectual legacy (“I don’t”).
By Jennifer Senior Published Oct 6, 2013
On September 26—a day that just happened to be the 27th anniversary of his swearing-in as associate justice—Antonin Scalia entered the Supreme Court’s enormous East Conference Room so casually that one might easily have missed him. He is smaller than his king-size persona suggests, and his manner more puckish than formal. Washingtonians may know Scalia as charming and disarming, but most outsiders tend to regard him as either a demigod on stilts or a menace to democracy, depending on which side of the aisle they sit. A singularity on the Court and an icon on the right, Scalia is perhaps more responsible than any American alive for the mainstreaming of conservative ideas about -jurisprudence—in particular the principles of originalism ¬(interpreting the Constitution as the framers intended it rather than as an evolving document) and textualism (that statutes must be ¬interpreted based on their words alone). And he has got to be the only justice to ever use the phrase “argle-bargle” in a dissent.
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You came to Washington as a lawyer during the Nixon administration, just before Watergate. What on Earth was that like?
It was a sad time. It was very depressing. Every day, the Washington Post would come out with something new—it trickled out bit by bit. Originally, you thought, It couldn’t be, but it obviously was. As a young man, you’re dazzled by the power of the White House and all that. But power tends to corrupt.
Then you served in the Ford administration. That must have been an awfully lonely time to be a young conservative.
It was a terrible time, not for the Republican Party, but for the presidency. It was such a wounded and enfeebled presidency, and Congress was just eating us alive. I mean, we had a president who had never been elected to anything except … what? A district in Michigan? Everything was in chaos.
It was a time when people were talking about “the imperial presidency.” I knew very well that the 900-pound gorilla in Washington is not the presidency. It’s Congress. If Congress can get its act together, it can roll over the president. That’s what the framers thought. They said you have to enlist your jealousy against the legislature in a ¬democracy—that will be the source of tyranny.
But weren’t you just saying that you learned from Watergate that presidents aren’t incorruptible?
What, and Congress is? I mean, they’re all human beings. Power tends to corrupt. But the power in Washington resides in Congress, if it wants to use it. It can do anything—it can stop the Vietnam War, it can make its will felt, if it can ever get its act together to do anything.
Had you already arrived at originalism as a philosophy?
I don’t know when I came to that view. I’ve always had it, as far as I know. Words have meaning. And their meaning doesn’t change. I mean, the notion that the Constitution should simply, by decree of the Court, mean something that it didn’t mean when the people voted for it—frankly, you should ask the other side the question! How did they ever get there?
But as law students, they were taught that the Constitution evolved, right? You got that same message consistently in class, yet you had other ideas.
I am something of a contrarian, I suppose. I feel less comfortable when everybody agrees with me. I say, “I better reexamine my position!” I probably believe that the worst opinions in my court have been unanimous. Because there’s nobody on the other side pointing out all the flaws.
Really? So if you had the chance to have eight other justices just like you, would you not want them to be your colleagues?
No. Just six.
That was a serious question!
What I do wish is that we were in agreement on the basic question of what we think we’re doing when we interpret the Constitution. I mean, that’s sort of rudimentary. It’s sort of an embarrassment, really, that we’re not. But some people think our job is to keep it up to date, give new meaning to whatever phrases it has. And others think it’s to give it the meaning the people ratified when they adopted it. Those are quite different views.
You’ve described yourself as a fainthearted originalist. But really, how fainthearted?
I described myself as that a long time ago. I repudiate that.
So you’re a stouthearted one.
I try to be. I try to be an honest originalist! I will take the bitter with the sweet! What I used “fainthearted” in reference to was—
Flogging, right?
Flogging. And what I would say now is, yes, if a state enacted a law permitting flogging, it is immensely stupid, but it is not unconstitutional. A lot of stuff that’s stupid is not unconstitutional. I gave a talk once where I said they ought to pass out to all federal judges a stamp, and the stamp says—Whack! [Pounds his fist.]—STUPID BUT ¬CONSTITUTIONAL. Whack! [Pounds again.] STUPID BUT ¬CONSTITUTIONAL! Whack! ¬STUPID BUT ¬CONSTITUTIONAL … [Laughs.] And then somebody sent me one.
(Photo: Platon)
So are there things in the Constitution you find stupid? I remember Judge Bork saying that there were few people who understood what the Ninth Amendment meant, as if it was ¬partially covered by an inkblot.
You know, in the early years, the Bill of Rights referred to the first eight amendments. They didn’t even count the ninth. The Court didn’t use it for 200 years. If I’d been required to identify the Ninth Amendment when I was in law school or in the early years of my practice, and if my life depended on it, I couldn’t tell you what the Ninth Amendment was.
Do you think there are flaws in the Constitution?
The one provision that I would amend is the amendment provision. And that was not originally a flaw. But the country has changed so much. With the divergence in size between California and Rhode Island—I figured it out once, I think if you picked the smallest number necessary for a majority in the least ¬populous states, something like less than 2 percent of the population can prevent a constitutional amendment. But other than that, some things have not worked out the way the framers anticipated. But that’s been the fault of the courts, not the fault of the draftsmen.
What about sex discrimination? Do you think the Fourteenth Amendment covers it?
Of course it covers it! No, you can’t treat women differently, give them higher criminal sentences. Of course not.
A couple of years ago, I think you told California Lawyer something different.
What I was referring to is: The issue is not whether it prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex. Of course it does. The issue is, “What is discrimination?”
If there’s a reasonable basis for not ¬letting women do something—like going into combat or whatnot ...
Let’s put it this way: Do you think the same level of scrutiny that applies to race should apply to sex?
I am not a fan of different levels of scrutiny. Strict scrutiny, intermediate scrutiny, blah blah blah blah. That’s just a thumb on the scales.
But there are some intelligent reasons to treat women differently. I don’t think anybody would deny that. And there really is no, virtually no, intelligent reason to treat people differently on the basis of their skin.
What’s your media diet? Where do you get your news?
Well, we get newspapers in the morning.
“We” meaning the justices?
No! Maureen and I.
Oh, you and your wife …
I usually skim them. We just get The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times. We used to get the Washington Post, but it just … went too far for me. I couldn’t handle it anymore.
What tipped you over the edge?
It was the treatment of almost any conservative issue. It was slanted and often nasty. And, you know, why should I get upset every morning? I don’t think I’m the only one. I think they lost subscriptions partly because they became so shrilly, shrilly liberal.
So no New York Times, either?
No New York Times, no Post.
And do you look at anything online?
I get most of my news, probably, driving back and forth to work, on the radio.
Not NPR?
Sometimes NPR. But not usually.
Talk guys?
Talk guys, usually.
Do you have a favorite?
You know who my favorite is? My good friend Bill Bennett. He’s off the air by the time I’m driving in, but I listen to him sometimes when I’m shaving. He has a wonderful talk show. It’s very thoughtful. He has good callers. I think they keep off stupid people.
That’s what producers get paid for.
That’s what’s wrong with those talk shows.
Let’s talk about the state of our politics for a moment. I know you haven’t been to a State of the Union address for a while, and I wanted to know why.
It’s childish.
When was the last time you went to one?
Oh, my goodness, I expect fifteen years. But I’m not the only one who didn’t go. John Paul Stevens never went, Bill Rehnquist never went during his later years. Because it is a childish spectacle. And we are trucked in just to give some dignity to the occasion. I mean, there are all these punch lines, and one side jumps up—¬Hooray! And they all cheer, and then another punch line, and the others stand up, Hooray! It is juvenile! And we have to sit there like bumps on a log. We can clap if somebody says, “The United States is the greatest country in the world.” Yay! But anything else, we have to look to the chief justice. Gee, is the chief gonna clap? It didn’t used to be that bad.
When?
The Gipper may have been the one who started it. He’s the one who brought in people he would recognize in the audience, and things of that sort—made it a television spectacle. And once it becomes a television spectacle, it’s nothing serious.
Of course, the press has the whole thing, and they’re up in the gallery—you can hear them turning pages as the president is speaking. Why doesn’t he just print it out and send it over?
It’s like the Haggadah.
In the years when I went, we used to take bets on how long the speech would be. Rehnquist loved to have betting pools—on football games, baseball games.
Did you ever win?
I never won.
It was recently reported that the justices don’t communicate with one another by e-mail. Do you go online at all?
Yeah. Sure, I use the Internet.
You’ve got grandkids. Do you feel like the Internet has coarsened our culture at all?
I’m nervous about our civic culture. I’m not sure the Internet is largely the cause of it. It’s certainly the cause of careless writing. People who get used to blurbing things on the Internet are never going to be good writers. And some things I don’t understand about it. For example, I don’t know why anyone would like to be “friended” on the network. I mean, what kind of a narcissistic society is it that ¬people want to put out there, This is my life, and this is what I did yesterday? I mean … good grief. Doesn’t that strike you as strange? I think it’s strange.
I’ve gotten used to it.
Well, I am glad that I am not raising kids today. And I’m rather pessimistic that my grandchildren will enjoy the great society that I’ve enjoyed in my lifetime. I really think it’s coarsened. It’s coarsened in so many ways.
Like what?
One of the things that upsets me about modern society is the coarseness of manners. You can’t go to a movie—or watch a television show for that matter—without hearing the constant use of the F-word—including, you know, ladies using it. People that I know don’t talk like that! But if you portray it a lot, the society’s going to become that way. It’s very sad.
And you can’t have a movie or a television show without a nude sex scene, very often having no relation to the plot. I don’t mind it when it is essential to the plot, as it sometimes is. But, my goodness! The society that watches that becomes a coarse society.
What do you make of the new pope?
He’s the Vicar of Christ. He’s the chief. I don’t run down the pope.
I’m not inviting you to run down the pope. But what do you think of his recent comments, that the church ought to focus less on divisive issues and more on helping the poor?
I think he’s absolutely right. I think the church ought to be more evangelistic.
But he also wanted to steer its emphasis away from homosexuality and abortion.
Yeah. But he hasn’t backed off the view of the church on those issues. He’s just saying, “Don’t spend all our time talking about that stuff. Talk about Jesus Christ and evangelize.” I think there’s no indication whatever that he’s changing doctrinally.
I spent my junior year in Switzerland. On the way back home, I spent some time in England, and I remember going to Hyde Park Corner. And there was a Roman Catholic priest in his collar, standing on a soapbox, preaching the Catholic faith and being heckled by a group. And I thought, My goodness. I thought that was admirable. I have often bemoaned the fact that the Catholic church has sort of lost that evangelistic spirit. And if this pope brings it back, all the better.
The one thing I did think, as he said those somewhat welcoming things to gay men and women, is, Huh, this really does show how much our world has changed. I was wondering what kind of personal exposure you might have had to this sea change.
I have friends that I know, or very much suspect, are homosexual. Everybody does.
Have any of them come out to you?
No. No. Not that I know of.
Has your personal attitude softened some?
Toward what?
Homosexuality.
I don’t think I’ve softened. I don’t know what you mean by softened.
If you talk to your grandchildren, they have different opinions from you about this, right?
I don’t know about my grandchildren. I know about my children. I don’t think they and I differ very much. But I’m not a hater of homosexuals at all.
I still think it’s Catholic teaching that it’s wrong. Okay? But I don’t hate the people that engage in it. In my legal opinions, all I’ve said is that I don’t think the Constitution requires the people to adopt one view or the other.
There was something different about your DOMA opinion, I thought. It was really pungent, yes, but you seemed more focused on your colleagues’ jurisprudence. You didn’t talk about a gay lobby, or about the fact that people have the right to determine what they consider moral. In Lawrence v. Texas, you said Americans were within their rights in “protecting themselves and their families from a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive.”
I would write that again. But that’s not saying that I personally think it’s destructive. Americans have a right to feel that way. They have a democratic right to do that, and if it is to change, it should change democratically, and not at the ukase of a Supreme Court.
The what?
U-K-A-S-E. Yeah. I think that’s how you say it. It’s a mandate. A decree.
Whatever you think of the opinion, Justice ¬Kennedy is now the Thurgood Marshall of gay rights.
[Nods.]
I don’t know how, by your lights, that’s going to be regarded in 50 years.
I don’t know either. And, frankly, I don’t care. Maybe the world is spinning toward a wider acceptance of homosexual rights, and here’s Scalia, standing athwart it. At least standing athwart it as a constitutional entitlement. But I have never been custodian of my legacy. When I’m dead and gone, I’ll either be sublimely happy or terribly unhappy.
You believe in heaven and hell?
Oh, of course I do. Don’t you believe in heaven and hell?
No.
Oh, my.
Does that mean I’m not going?
[Laughing.] Unfortunately not!
Wait, to heaven or hell?
It doesn’t mean you’re not going to hell, just because you don’t believe in it. That’s Catholic doctrine! Everyone is going one place or the other.
But you don’t have to be a Catholic to get into heaven? Or believe in it?
Of course not!
Oh. So you don’t know where I’m going. Thank God.
I don’t know where you’re going. I don’t even know whether Judas Iscariot is in hell. I mean, that’s what the pope meant when he said, “Who am I to judge?” He may have recanted and had severe penance just before he died. Who knows?
Can we talk about your drafting process—
[Leans in, stage-whispers.] I even believe in the Devil.
You do?
Of course! Yeah, he’s a real person. Hey, c’mon, that’s standard Catholic doctrine! Every Catholic believes that.
Every Catholic believes this? There’s a wide variety of Catholics out there …
If you are faithful to Catholic dogma, that is certainly a large part of it.
Have you seen evidence of the Devil lately?
You know, it is curious. In the Gospels, the Devil is doing all sorts of things. He’s making pigs run off cliffs, he’s possessing people and whatnot. And that doesn’t happen very much anymore.
No.
It’s because he’s smart.
So what’s he doing now?
What he’s doing now is getting people not to believe in him or in God. He’s much more successful that way.
That has really painful implications for atheists. Are you sure that’s the ¬Devil’s work?
I didn’t say atheists are the Devil’s work.
Well, you’re saying the Devil is ¬persuading people to not believe in God. Couldn’t there be other reasons to not believe?
Well, there certainly can be other reasons. But it certainly favors the Devil’s desires. I mean, c’mon, that’s the explanation for why there’s not demonic possession all over the place. That always puzzled me. What happened to the Devil, you know? He used to be all over the place. He used to be all over the New Testament.
Right.
What happened to him?
He just got wilier.
He got wilier.
Isn’t it terribly frightening to believe in the Devil?
You’re looking at me as though I’m weird. My God! Are you so out of touch with most of America, most of which believes in the Devil? I mean, Jesus Christ believed in the Devil! It’s in the Gospels! You travel in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the Devil! Most of mankind has believed in the Devil, for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have believed in the Devil.
I hope you weren’t sensing contempt from me. It wasn’t your belief that surprised me so much as how boldly you expressed it.
I was offended by that. I really was.
I’m sorry to have offended you!
Have you read The Screwtape Letters?
Yes, I have.
So, there you are. That’s a great book. It really is, just as a study of human nature.
Can I ask about your engagement with regular pop culture?
I’m pretty bad on regular pop culture.
I know you watched the show 24. Do you also watch Homeland?
I don’t watch Homeland. I don’t even know what Homeland is. I watched one episode of—what is it? Duck Dynasty?
What?
I don’t watch it regularly, but I’m a hunter. I use duck calls …
Did you just stumble on it by accident?
No! So many people said “Oh, it’s a great show” that I thought I’d better look at it. Have you looked at it?
No. But there are three books on the New York Times’ best-seller list about Duck Dynasty.
Is that right?
Yes. Three. Did you watch The ¬Sopranos? Mad Men?
I watched The Sopranos, I saw a couple of episodes of Mad Men. I loved Seinfeld. In fact, I got some CDs of Seinfeld. ¬Seinfeld was hilarious. Oh, boy. The Nazi soup kitchen? No soup for you!
Speaking of Duck Dynasty, how does a nice boy from Queens become a hunter?
You know, it may be genetic. My grandfather—my namesake, his name is Antonino—he was an avid hunter. He used to disappear for a week—his family would be very upset—because he’d be off in the hills of Sicily, hunting. My last memories of him were—we had a bungalow, which he had built out on Long Island, back in the days when Long Island was really the country. I went in the woods hunting rabbits with him—there’s a photo of me holding a rabbit and his twelve-gauge shotgun. Then he got too old to go in the woods, but my uncle Frank had a large vegetable garden, and my grandfather would sit on the back porch of this bungalow, holding his twelve-gauge shotgun, and would wait for the rabbits to come to him in the vegetable garden. Boom! He would shoot them there.
There isn’t much sport in that.
Well, they’re hard to hit.
If you’re waiting for them to come to your garden?
Listen, when you’re 85 …
Fair enough.
And I inherited his gun. It was an L.C. Smith, which was a very expensive shotgun from the time. It’s corroded about six inches down from the end of the barrel, because that’s where he held it while he was waiting for the rabbits, and the salts from your hand corrode the barrel.
My grandfather is partly the answer. But I also got into it because my eldest son married a girl from Louisiana, whose father was an avid hunter. He got me into deer hunting up in Mississippi. There, I fell in with some Cajuns—including Louis Prejean, the brother of Sister Prejean. He’s as conservative as she is liberal.
I was going to ask.
I got in with them, and I got into goose hunting, duck hunting, redfish fishing—it has been a great addition to my later years. It gets me outside the Beltway with people of the sort I had never known before. They could live in the woods. Give ’em a gun, they could survive in the woods on their own. It’s nice to get in with a different crowd. None of them are lawyers. Or very few.
Here’s another thing I find unexpected about you: that you play poker. Do not take this the wrong way, but you strike me as the kind of person who would be a horrible poker player.
Shame on you! I’m a damn good poker player.
But aren’t you the kind of guy who always puts all of his cards on the table? I feel like you would be the worst bluffer ever.
You can talk to the people in my poker set.
Do you have a tell?
What?
A tell.
What’s a tell?
What’s a tell? Are you joking?
No.
A tic or behavior that betrays you’re bluffing.
Oh! That’s called a tell? No. I never … do you play poker?
Badly. But I feel like Washington has been playing a pretty high-stakes game lately. You’ve seen more Congresses than I have, and you’ve seen this nation go through more turbulent events than I have. But now seems an especially ¬acerbic moment.
It’s a nasty time. It’s a nasty time. When I was first in Washington, and even in my early years on this Court, I used to go to a lot of dinner parties at which there were people from both sides. Democrats, Republicans. Katharine Graham used to have dinner parties that really were quite representative of Washington. It doesn’t happen anymore.
True, though earlier you expressed your preference for conservative media, which itself can be isolating in its own way.
Oh, c’mon, c’mon, c’mon! [Laughs.] Social intercourse is quite different from those intellectual outlets I respect and those that I don’t respect. I read newspapers that I think are good newspapers, or if they’re not good, at least they don’t make me angry, okay? That has nothing to do with social intercourse. That has to do with “selection of intellectual fodder,” if you will.
When was the last party you went to that had a nice healthy dose of both liberals and conservatives?
Geez, I can’t even remember. It’s been a long time.
Is that true on the Court as well? Are things tenser in this building? Were there ever more harmonious groupings of justices than others?
No. Everybody I’ve served with on the Court I’ve regarded as a friend. Some were closer than others, but I didn’t consider myself an enemy of any of them. Now, that hasn’t always been the case. Frankfurter and Douglas, the Harvard Law professor and the Yale Law professor, hated each other. They wouldn’t talk to each other. Imagine being on a committee of nine people where two of them won’t talk to each other! But it’s never been the case since I’ve been on the Court.
You were asked this summer about the most wrenching case you’ve decided, and you ¬answered, “Is Obamacare too recent?”
[Laughs.]
Is that true?
No. Probably the most wrenching was Morrison v. Olson, which involved the independent counsel. To take away the power to prosecute from the president and give it to somebody who’s not under his control is a terrible erosion of presidential power. And it was wrenching not only because it came out wrong—I was the sole dissenter—but because the opinion was written by Rehnquist, who had been head of the Office of Legal Counsel, before me, and who I thought would realize the importance of that power of the president to prosecute. And he not only wrote the opinion; he wrote it in a manner that was more extreme than I think Bill Brennan would have written it. That was wrenching.
That sheds new light on your famous odd-couple friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Do you think it’s easier to be close to a colleague who is so ¬ideologically different?
There may be something to that. If you have low expectations, you’re not disappointed. When it’s somebody who you think is basically on your side on these ideological controversies, and then that person goes over to the dark side, it does make you feel bad.
Who was or is your favorite sparring partner on the bench? The person who makes or made your ideas and opinions better?
Probably John Paul Stevens. There are some justices who adopt a magisterial approach to a dissent. Rehnquist used to do it. [He turns his nose up theatrically, flutters his hand in dismissal.] Just, Don’t even respond to the dissent. This is the opinion of the Court, and the hell with you. I am not like that. I think you should give the dissenter the respect to respond to the points that he makes. And so did John Stevens. So he and I used to go back and forth almost endlessly.
Are there any lawyers who you also consider really formidable?
That’s one of the biggest changes on the Court since I’ve been here. When I arrived, there really was not what you could call a Supreme Court bar—people who appear regularly. But now we have people who appear four, five times a term. What has happened is the big law firms have adopted Supreme Court practices. I’m not sure they make money on it, but they get prestige from it. So we get very good lawyers. Many of them ex–solicitor generals.
How does that change your job?
It makes my job easier. We are ¬dependent upon these people who have lived with the case for months—in many cases years—to clarify the facts and to clarify the law. I come to the thing maybe a month beforehand. These lawyers—the reason to listen to them is that they presumably know more about the subject than you do.
Another change is that many of the states have adopted a new office of solicitor general, so that the people who come to argue from the states are people who know how to conduct appellate argument. In the old days, it would be the attorney general—usually an elected attorney general. And if he gets a case into the Supreme Court [pumps his fist], he’s going to argue it himself! Get the press and whatnot. Some of them were just disasters. They were throwing away important points of law, not just for their state, but for the other 49.
Let’s talk about your opinions for a second. Do you draft them yourself? What’s your process?
I almost never do the first draft.
How do your clerks know your voice so well?
Oh, I edit it considerably between the first and the last.
How do you choose your clerks?
Very carefully. What I’m looking for is really smart people who don’t necessarily have to share my judicial philosophy, but they cannot be hostile to it. And can let me be me when they draft opinions, can write opinions that will follow my judicial philosophy rather than their own. And I’ve said often in the past that other things being equal, which they usually are not, I like to have one of the four clerks whose predispositions are quite the opposite of mine—who are social liberals rather than social conservatives. That kind of clerk will always be looking for the chinks in my armor, for the mistakes I’ve made in my opinion. That’s what clerks are for—to make sure I don’t make mistakes. The trouble is, I have found it hard to get liberals like that, who pay attention to text and are not playing in a policy sandbox all the time.
How picky are you about which law schools they come from?
Well, some law schools are better than others. You think they’re all the same?
Now, other things being equal, which they usually are not, I would like to select somebody from a lesser law school. And I have done that, but really only when I have former clerks on the faculty, whose recommendations I can be utterly confident of. Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Chicago, they’re sort of spoiled. It’s nice to get a kid who went to a lesser law school. He’s still got something to prove. But you can’t make a mistake. I mean, one dud will ruin your year.
While your opinions are delectable to read, I’m wondering: Do you ever regret their tone? Specifically, that your tone might have cost you a majority?
No. It never cost me a majority. And you ought to be reluctant to think that any justice of the Supreme Court would make a case come out the other way just to spite Scalia. Nobody would do that. You’re dealing with significant national issues. You’re dealing with real litigants—no. My tone is sometimes sharp. But I think sharpness is sometimes needed to demonstrate how much of a departure I believe the thing is. Especially in my dissents. Who do you think I write my dissents for?
Law students.
Exactly. And they will read dissents that are breezy and have some thrust to them. That’s who I write for.
Is your favorite one-liner still the ¬sausage one? “This case, involving legal requirements for the content and ¬labeling of meat products such as ¬frankfurters, affords a rare opportunity to explore simultaneously both parts of Bismarck’s aphorism that ‘No man should see how laws or sausages are made.’ ”
It’s the best opening line of an opinion.
It was a really good opinion.
Isn’t that good? I was on the Court of Appeals, that wasn’t even up here. But my favorite one-liner is from Morrison v. Olson: “But this wolf comes as a wolf.” You know the one I’m talking about?
Yes.
That’s a great one. You gotta read the whole paragraph. Boom. [Punches the air.] But I often worry when I go back and read one of my early opinions like ¬Morrison v. Olson. I say, “God, that’s a good opinion. I’m not sure I could write as good an opinion today.” You always wonder whether you’re losing your grip and whether your current opinions are not as good as your old ones.
Wasn’t it Stevens who said to Souter, “Tell me when I’m losing it and need to retire?”
No, it wasn’t Stevens. I think it was Holmes who asked Brandeis.
Oh, so I got it completely wrong.
[Smiles.] Completely wrong.
But how will you know when it’s time to go? It doesn’t seem like you have anything to worry about at the moment, but it’s interesting to hear you even flick at that.
Oh, I’ll know when I’m not hitting on all eight cylinders.
Are you sure? All these people in ¬public life—athletes in particular—never have a clue.
No, I’ll know.
What will the telltale sign be?
One will be that I won’t enjoy it as much as I do. I think that’s the beginning of the end. I was worried lately about the fact that the job seems easier. That I really don’t have to put in the excessively long hours that I used to. I still work hard. But it does seem easier than it used to. And that worried me. You know: Maybe I’m getting lazy. You know, I’m not doing it as thoroughly, or whatever. But after due reflection, I’ve decided the reason it’s getting easier is because so many of the cases that come before us present the issue of whether we should extend one of the opinions from the previous 27 years that I’ve been here, which I dissented from in the first place!
Yet today, you’re a conservative icon, and federalist societies abound on ¬university campuses, and originalism and textualism are no longer marginal. Do you feel like you’re winning or losing the battle for constitutional interpretation?
I don’t know how much progress I’ve made on originalism. That’s to be seen. I do think originalism is more respectable than it was. But there’s still only two justices up here who are thoroughgoing originalists. I do think things are better than they were. For example, I truly thought I’d never see an originalist on the faculty of Harvard Law School. You know, everybody copies Harvard—that’s the big ship. There are now three originalists on the faculty, and I think I heard that they’ve just hired, or are considering hiring, a fourth. I mean, that’s amazing to me. Elena Kagan did that, and the reason she did it is that you want to have on your faculty representatives of all responsible points of view. What it means is that at least originalism is now regarded as a respectable approach to constitutional interpretation. And it really wasn’t twenty years ago, it was not even worth talking about in serious academic circles.
An area where I think I have made more progress is textualism. I think the current Court pays much more attention to the words of a statute than the Court did in the eighties. And uses much less legislative history. If you read some of our opinions from the eighties, my God, two thirds of the opinions were discussing committee reports and floor statements and all that garbage. We don’t do much of that anymore. And I think I have assisted in that transition.
Fifty years from now, which decisions in your tenure do you think will be heroic?
Heroic?
Heroic.
Oh, my goodness. I have no idea. You know, for all I know, 50 years from now I may be the Justice Sutherland of the late-twentieth and early-21st century, who’s regarded as: “He was on the losing side of everything, an old fogey, the old view.” And I don’t care.
Do you think you’re headed in that direction?
I have no idea. There are those who think I am, I’m sure. I can see that happening, just as some of the justices in the early years of the New Deal are now painted as old fogies. It can happen.
Wow, it’s amazing your mind even went there. I ask about a triumph, and you give me another answer entirely, about the possibility of failure. I was expecting you to end on a high note. Do you want to try another stab at a heroic decision?
Heroic is probably the wrong word. I mean the most heroic opinion—maybe the only heroic opinion I ever issued— was my statement refusing to recuse.
From the case involving Vice-¬President Cheney, with whom you’d gone hunting?
I thought that took some guts. Most of my opinions don’t take guts. They take smarts. But not courage. And I was proud of that. I did the right thing and it let me in for a lot of criticism and it was the right thing to do and I was proud of that. So that’s the only heroic thing I’ve done.
As to which is the most impressive opinion: I still think Morrison v. Olson. But look, we have different standards, I suppose, for what’s a great opinion. I care about the reasoning. And the reasoning in Morrison, I thought, was devastating—devastating of the majority. If you ask me which of my opinions will have the most impact in the future, it probably won’t be that dissent; it’ll be some majority opinion. But it’ll have impact in the future not because it’s so beautifully reasoned and so well written. It’ll have impact in the future because it’s authoritative. That’s all that matters, unfortunately.
*
This interview was condensed and edited from two conversations, one in Washington, D.C., and one over the phone, on September 26 and October 3.
Minnesota Archbishop John Nienstedt Claims Satan Behind Gay Marriage, Condoms And Porn
Published on Sep 10, 2013 by NapaInstitute1 [ http://www.youtube.com/user/NapaInstitute1 ] Since the beginning of man's life on earth, the family has served as the cornerstone of society. The integrity of the family set the standard for society from the beginning of time as the underpinning of our civilization, reflecting the beneficial differences between men and women and the complementarity of their hearts, minds, and bodies. Aristotle argued that the natural progression of human beings flowed from the family via small communities out to the polis. The role of family in today's culture is threatened by many forces, not the least of which is the confrontation between the conjugal view and a revisionist's view of marriage. Contraception, cohabitation and confusion over the influence of gender in the rearing of children contribute to this negative state of affairs. The loss of a Catholic culture supporting marriage and family must be confronted and efforts made to build the culture anew. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvH7NBAK89g [as embedded (without the detail)]
By Meredith Bennett-Smith Posted: 09/15/2013 7:53 am EDT | Updated: 09/17/2013 8:13 am EDT
Fornicators beware: sodomy, condoms and pornography are the work of the devil.
"Today, many evil forces have set their sights on the dissolution of marriage and the debasing of family life," Nienstedt said. "Sodomy, abortion, contraception, pornography, the redefinition of marriage, and the denial of objective truth are just some of the forces threatening the stability of our civilization. The source of these machinations is none other than the Father of Lies. Satan knows all too well the value that the family contributes to the fabric of a good solid society, as well as the future of God’s work on earth."
In October of 2012, Nienstedt found himself at the center of a similar controversy when a letter he wrote surfaced in which he tells the mother a young gay man that she must reject her son or go to hell herself.
"I write to inform you that the teaching of the Catholic Church on homosexuality, as described in paragraphs 2357 and 2358 and 2359 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church is rooted in Scripture and based on the Natural Moral Law," Nienstedt wrote, according to ThinkProgress [ http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2012/10/09/976841/minnesota-archbishop-told-mother-to-reject-her-gay-son-or-go-to-hell/ ]. "Catholics are bound in conscience to believe this teaching. Those who do not cannot consider themselves to be Catholic and ought not to participate in the sacramental life of the Church... Your eternal salvation may well depend upon a conversation of heart on this topic."
The Catholic Church is making health care decisions for more and more Americans—whether they know it or not.
By Stephanie Mencimer November/December 2013 Issue
One morning in November 2010, an ambulance brought a woman who was 15 weeks pregnant to the emergency room at Sierra Vista Regional Health Center, 70 miles outside Tucson, Arizona. She had been carrying twins and had miscarried one at home in the bathtub. The chances of the second fetus making it were "minuscule," Dr. Robert Holder, the OB-GYN on call that day, later recalled in an affidavit [ http://www.motherjones.com/documents/798242-dr-robert-holder-affidavit ]. He told the woman and her husband that trying to continue the pregnancy would put her at risk of severe bleeding and infection. In short, she needed an emergency abortion.
But there was a problem: Sierra Vista was in the midst of a trial merger with a Catholic hospital company, Carondelet Health Network, which required its doctors to abide by the church's ethical and religious directives. Hospital administrators told Holder that because the surviving fetus still had a heartbeat, he could not perform an abortion. Holder had to send the patient to a hospital in Tucson—a three-hour delay that he believed put her at risk for life-threatening complications.
The doctors at Sierra Vista aren't the only ones to struggle with submitting their medical decisions to a higher authority. A growing number of patients are finding their health care options governed by the church's guidelines as Catholic hospitals, long major players in the health care market, have been on a merger streak, acquiring everything from local hospital systems to medical practices, nursing homes, and health insurance plans.
Between 2001 and 2011, the number of American hospitals affiliated with the Catholic Church grew 16 percent, even as the number of public hospitals and secular nonprofit hospitals dropped 31 percent and 12 percent, respectively, according to an upcoming report by the American Civil Liberties Union and MergerWatch [ http://www.mergerwatch.org/ ], a nonprofit that tracks religious health care mergers. In 2012, Catholic hospitals and health care systems were involved in 24 mergers or acquisitions, according to Irving Levin Associates, a market research firm. Ten of the 25 largest nonprofit hospital systems [ http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/lists/25-largest-non-profit-hospital-systems.html ] in the country are Catholic, and Catholic hospitals care for 1 in 6 [ http://www.chausa.org/docs/default-source/general-files/mini_profile-pdf.pdf?sfvrsn=0 ] American patients. In at least eight states, 30 percent or more of patient admissions are at Catholic facilities.
"When you go into a hospital or an ER, you do not think that there's a bishop between you and your doctor," says Linda McCarthy, CEO of a Planned Parenthood branch in western Washington. In 2010, Peter Sartain, a prominent bishop recently enlisted by the church to crack down on nuns deemed too liberal, was appointed to the Seattle diocese. Not long afterward, he told the Catholic hospital in McCarthy's area to stop performing lab work for Planned Parenthood that the hospital had handled for at least a decade, including tests unrelated to abortion, such as cholesterol screenings. McCarthy publicized the demand and the hospital backed off, for the time being.
"The Catholic bishops are seizing an opportunity to control the health care we all pay for, and they're being wildly successful," says Monica Harrington, the co-chair of Washington Women for Choice. A spate of proposed deals could leave Catholic facilities accounting for 50 percent of the state's hospital admissions. "We could very well end up with three conservative bishops overseeing health care for 6 million people," McCarthy says.
Abortion services are always quick to go when a Catholic hospital takes over, but the changes go much further. In many cases, doctors are prohibited from prescribing birth control, and hospital pharmacies won't sell it. Doctors may even be told not to counsel patients about it. Catholic hospitals have been reluctant to offer emergency contraception to rape victims, and when they do, they first require a pregnancy test to ensure the woman was not pregnant before the assault. The bishops' guidelines forbid tubal ligations and vasectomies. They also extend to end-of-life care: Catholic hospitals may ignore patients' requests to be removed from feeding tubes or life support, even if those wishes are expressed in living wills. And many states [ https://www.aclu.org/maps/non-discrimination-laws-state-state-information-map ] allow religious hospitals to discriminate [ http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/who-would-jesus-fire/Content?oid=16348670 ] against gays and lesbians, both as employees and as patients.
Dr. Bruce Silva, an OB-GYN at Sierra Vista, remembers that during his hospital's trial merger, church officials told doctors they could give chemotherapy to a pregnant woman with breast cancer, "even though you know it will kill the baby—but you can't give her a termination before, because that would kill the baby directly." Sierra Vista ultimately rejected the merger.
Catholic hospitals' treatment of miscarriage often diverges from the generally accepted standards of care followed in secular hospitals, according to Lori Freedman, an assistant professor of obstetrics at the University of California-San Francisco who published a study [ http://www.ansirh.org/_documents/library/freedman_ajob2013.pdf ] on the subject in 2012. Doctors told her about being forced to wait to intervene until a woman was at life-threatening risk. "We often tell patients that we can't do anything in the hospital but watch you get infected," one said.
The church also won't allow doctors to terminate ectopic pregnancies [ http://www.aafp.org/afp/2000/0215/p1080.html ] until a woman is in mortal danger. In these pregnancies, the embryo implants outside of the uterus, most often in a fallopian tube, where it grows and can rupture the tube, potentially causing fatal bleeding. The bishops consider ending these unviable pregnancies a "direct abortion" unless a woman's life is immediately at risk. A doctor quoted in a recent study commissioned by the National Women's Law Center (NWLC) reported seeing several near-fatal tubal ruptures at her Catholic-affiliated hospital.
Despite the dangers such policies pose to patients, Catholic hospitals often do not explain them to patients, and hospitals have fought efforts to require disclosure. The NWLC has accused Catholic hospitals [ http://www.nwlc.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/nwlc_cms_complaint_jan_2011.pdf ] of ignoring "their legal obligations to disclose all treatment options" under Medicare and Medicaid. As a result, "women don't always know what has happened," says Kelli Garcia, senior counsel at the NWLC. "So if their tube ruptures, they don't necessarily know that they could have had different treatment—because what happens within the Catholic hospitals, not only are they not providing treatment, they also aren't providing information about the treatment." The conference of bishops and the Catholic Health Association, which represents more than 600 hospitals, did not respond to requests for comment.
Even doctors who help women get pregnant are affected by the bishops' guidelines, which ban any infertility treatment that "separates procreation from the marital act." That includes in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, or the use of donor eggs or sperm. Dr. Michael Thomas, a reproductive endocrinologist, had to close his practice in Kentucky and move across the river to the University of Cincinnati after the hospital he was affiliated with merged with [ http://www.stelizabeth.com/history.aspx ] a Catholic institution. Thomas says many people didn't realize the merger would affect not just abortion, but "a couple's ability to get pregnant in the state of Kentucky."
What happens if hospitals refuse to follow the bishops' directives? In 2009, doctors at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix performed a life-saving abortion [ http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126985072 ] for a seriously ill mother of four. Afterward, the city's bishop excommunicated a nun on the ethics committee who had approved the procedure. He then demanded that the hospital sign an agreement [ https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/EMTALA-_ACLU_CMS_Follow_Up_Letter-St__Joseph-_12-22-2010_FINAL.pdf ] promising to never again provide emergency abortion care, even when a woman's life was at risk. Hospital administrators believed the agreement violated a federal law requiring hospitals to provide emergency treatment and refused to sign, so the bishop stripped the facility of its Catholic affiliation. The following year, a bishop revoked the Catholic status of a hospital in Bend, Oregon [ http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/tip_of_the_iceberg_for_church-backed_hospitals/ ], that refused to stop performing tubal ligations.
In the end, hospital mergers have allowed the bishops to accomplish in practice what they haven't been able to achieve through the political process: making abortion and contraception harder to access. In Wisconsin, for example, where nearly 30 percent of hospitals are Catholic, the Legislature passed a law [ http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/81__opinion__order.pdf ] requiring doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. Because Catholic hospitals haven't granted those privileges on religious grounds, many of the state's abortion providers will not be able to meet the new requirements.
These types of conflicts will only grow as the merger trend continues. "Pretty soon, people may find that the only hospitals in their area are Catholic. And, regardless of their own religious beliefs, they will be unable to get the care they need," says the NWLC's Garcia. "It is going to be a real wake-up call."
Christian Couple’s Tip For ‘Excellent’ Waiter: ‘Queers Do Not Share In The Wealth Of GOD’ October 25, 2013 [...] “Thank you for your service, it was excellent. That being said, we cannot in good conscience tip you, for your homosexual lifestyle is an affront to GOD. Queers do not share in the wealth of GOD, and you will not share in ours. We hope you will see the tip your fag choices made you lose out on, and plan accordingly. It is never too late for GOD’S love, but none shall be spared for fags. May GOD have mercy on you.” [...] http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/christian-couples-tip-for-excellent-waiter-queers-do-not-share-in-the-wealth-of-god/discrimination/2013/10/25/77413 [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Justice Scalia Is More Conservative Than You Think, And Further To The Right Than He’s Ever Been
By Ian Millhiser October 7, 2013 at 11:58 am
A lot of headlines can be found in Jennifer Senior’s remarkable interview with Justice Antonin Scalia [ http://nymag.com/news/features/antonin-scalia-2013-10/ (first item this post)] — the fact that Scalia almost exclusively reads conservative media, his belief in the Devil, his squeamishness about the fact that Hollywood depicts “ladies” saying the “F-word.” The interview paints Scalia as an anachronism even among anachronisms. He’s Archie Bunker in a less comfy chair.
Indeed, the justice provides so much candy for headline writers eager to drive up their website’s traffic, that it is easy to miss what is probably the most significant part of the interview — he repudiates his own moderation from a quarter a century ago.
Two years after joining the Supreme Court, Scalia delivered a lecture entitled “Originalism: The Lesser Evil” where he laid out much of his philosophy of how judges should decide cases. Words have meaning, Scalia correctly asserted, and the words of the Constitution must be read as they would have been understood at the time they were enacted. This way, Scalia assured, unelected judges will not overstep their proper role in a democracy. Even if the Constitution were intended to allow the law to evolve with society’s values, Scalia saw “no basis for believing that supervision of the evolution would have been committed to the courts.” Scalia’s textualism, and his belief that a text’s meaning is fixed in time, were both grounded in notions of judicial restraint. If judges can change the meaning of the Constitution, their power is truly limitless.
Moreover, as Scalia conceded in his 1988 lecture, it is not always easy to determine what the framing generation though a particular constitutional provision meant. And even when it is possible to read the minds of the founding generation, such cross-generational telepathy often reveals that the framers didn’t know the answer either. James Madison and Alexander Hamilton were very much at odds over the scope of federal power under the Constitution [ http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/civil-liberties/report/2011/05/27/9610/the-fake-james-madison/ ], even though they both men were present while the document was being drafted. Justice Scalia’s pro-gun opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller relies heavily on constitutional history [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZO.html ] to expand the scope of the Second Amendment, but so does Justice Stevens’ dissent [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZD.html ]. It’s easy to read Scalia’s Heller opinion (and, to be fair, the Stevens dissent) and conclude that its author started with the result he wanted, and then trolled through uncertain historical sources in order to find the ones that supported his view.
So, while the younger Scalia presented reliance on the Constitution’s original history as a cure to judges imposing their views on the American people, that’s not how Scalia’s originalism has actually worked in practice. In practice, he’s been more than capable of selecting the history he likes best — and even ignoring constitutional history that goes against his preferred result.
Yet, while Scalia’s desire to shape the law often exceed his principles, his “Lesser Evil” lecture did offer one sop to liberals afraid that he would comb through early American history, uncover abhorrent practices and then stamp the Court’s blessing upon them. Labeling himself a “faint-hearted originalist,” Scalia confesses that “I cannot imagine myself, any more than any other federal judge, upholding a statute that imposes the punishment of flogging.” There are some injustices that the younger Scalia would intervene to prevent, even if those injustices existed at the framing.
This is the part of the “Lesser Evil” lecture that Scalia abandons in his interview with Ms. Senior. When asked “how fainthearted” he truly is, Scalia responds “I described myself as that a long time ago. I repudiate that.” And lest there be any doubt, that means he would permit flogging — “what I would say now is, yes, if a state enacted a law permitting flogging, it is immensely stupid, but it is not unconstitutional.”
When the lawsuits challenging the Affordable Care Act had just been filed, many legal observers mocked them as unlikely to prevail because Scalia authored an opinion in 2005 that left little doubt that the law was constitutional [ http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/civil-liberties/news/2012/03/07/11260/not-even-close/ ]. If even Scalia’s opinions supported a progressive law, how could any judge — or at least, any judge acting in good faith — deem the law unconstitutional? Scalia’s repudiation of his 1988 statement may reveal why so many attorneys were wrong to look to his past opinions and expect them to guide him in the future. In the winter of his years on the Court, Scalia looks back upon his past moderation and regrets it. It follows that his own more moderate opinions are no longer reliable predictors of Scalia’s current views.
This lurch to the right should scare liberals even more than Scalia already does. And it is not yet clear if anything remains of Scalia’s prior claims to judicial restraint. Indeed, during oral arguments on the Voting Rights Act case, Scalia not only labeled the landmark law a “perpetuation of racial entitlement,” he claimed for himself a sweeping power to correct what he viewed as a failure of the democratic process. The Scalia who once spoke eloquently about the limited role of a judge in a democracy is dead, replaced by a more activist Scalia who is far more willing to question the will of the people than his younger self.
Submitted by Brian Tashman on Thursday, 10/24/2013 4:15 pm
Rick Santorum is asking you to do your part to free movie theatres from the Devil’s clutches by purchasing tickets to his upcoming movie, The Christmas Candle. He appeared on the Trinity Broadcasting Network last week to plug the new movie of his film company EchoLight Studios, which apparently is in a state of internal strife [ http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2013/10/theres_a_civil_war_at_rick_san.php ] after his arrival as CEO.
While speaking on a network where televangelists on a daily basis tell viewers that God will reward them financially if they send in contributions, the former senator and presidential candidate spent most of the time criticizing movies for being too materialistic.
“This is a tough business, this is something that we’re stepping out,” Santorum said, “and the Devil for a long, long time has had this, these screens, for his playground and he isn’t going to give it up easily.”
Rick Santorum Becomes CEO of Faith-Based Film Studio The former GOP presidential hopeful has raised millions of dollars to make faith-based, uplifting movies in the mode of "Soul Surfer," except that they won't "water down the truth." 6/24/2013 [...] Santorum said Monday he has become CEO of EchoLight Studios, and the Texas-based firm is weeks away from closing a $20 million film fund that it will use to finance, produce and distribute faith-based and family-friendly movies. [...] The former senator from Pennsylvania says most of the investors in EchoLight and its film slate – which will consist of up to four movies annually – are wealthy Texans who are novices in film but are supportive of the message-movies EchoLight intends to make. “Here’s what I think of Hollywood,” Santorum told The Hollywood Reporter. “We’re looking for talented people who want to make quality films, even though we won’t be spending tens of millions of dollars on each of them. We want good writers, actors and producers who want to make honest, uplifting content.” EchoLight’s first film, due this year, is The Redemption of Henry Myers, a western about a left-for-dead bank robber who is nursed back to health by a widow and her young children (a trailer [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igTO-GYHc-M ] is [next] below).
Also in the pipeline is a modern-day telling of the Biblical story of Joseph and his coat of many colors. It's a dramatic take, as opposed to the popular Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. [...] http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/rick-santorum-becomes-ceo-faith-574199 [with comments]
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Rick Santorum Claims Recently Fired Executives Tried to 'Sabotage' the Film Studio He Runs EchoLight Studios, where the former GOP presidential candidate is CEO, is suing company "co-founders" Bobby Downes and Christopher Morrow. 10/2/2013 Rick Santorum has had a rocky first three months on the job as CEO of EchoLight Studios, a faith-based movie studio the former senator was tapped to run in June. Insiders tell The Hollywood Reporter that Santorum butted heads with Bobby Downes and Christopher Morrow, who have identified themselves as co-founders of the studio, so severely that he fired them both about a week ago. Then on Tuesday, EchoLight sued the two former executives claiming they were orchestrating "a campaign of sabotage." The lawsuit even claims that Morrow threatened to "malign" Santorum in "an upcoming Hollywood Reporter article," according to Courthouse News Service [ http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/10/01/61640.htm ]. The Hollywood Reporter is unaware of the alleged effort from Morrow. "Bobby Downes and Christopher Morrow have been terminated from EchoLight due to both cause and nonperformance," a spokeswoman for the studio confirmed on Tuesday. Morrow was chief global strategist before his termination at EchoLight and Downes was president, and they both reported to Santorum, a former Republican presidential candidate who was helping to raise $20 million in investment capital for EchoLight when the studio hired him as CEO. Insiders said the fundraising process was touch and go for a while, with some prospective investors pulling out and others replacing them, but EchoLight said Tuesday it had gathered the funds it set out to raise, though the spokeswoman declined to specify an exact amount of money. [...] http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/rick-santorum-claims-fired-executives-640252 [with comments]
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Santorum: Satan is Systematically Destroying America
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Thursday, 2/16/2012 5:12 pm
But Santorum began his remarks by explaining to the students in attendance how every institution in America has been destroyed by Satan; from academia to politics with even the church having fallen under His sway - not the Catholic church, of course, but "mainline Protestantism" which is in such "shambles" that it is not even Christian any longer [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4jopm7hYFk (next below, as embedded)]:
This is not a political war at all. This is not a cultural war. This is a spiritual war. And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country - the United States of America. If you were Satan, who would you attack in this day and age. There is no one else to go after other than the United States and that has been the case now for almost two hundred years, once America's preeminence was sown by our great Founding Fathers.
He didn't have much success in the early days. Our foundation was very strong, in fact, is very strong. But over time, that great, acidic quality of time corrodes even the strongest foundations. And Satan has done so by attacking the great institutions of America, using those great vices of pride, vanity, and sensuality as the root to attack all of the strong plants that has so deeply rooted in the American tradition.
He was successful. He attacks all of us and he attacks all of our institutions. The place where he was, in my mind, the most successful and first successful was in academia. He understood pride of smart people. He attacked them at their weakest, that they were, in fact, smarter than everybody else and could come up with something new and different. Pursue new truths, deny the existence of truth, play with it because they're smart. And so academia, a long time ago, fell.
And you say "what could be the impact of academia falling?" Well, I would have the argument that the other structures that I'm going to talk about here had root of their destruction because of academia. Because what academia does is educate the elites in our society, educates the leaders in our society, particularly at the college level. And they were the first to fall.
And so what we saw this domino effect, once the colleges fell and those who were being education in our institutions, the next was the church. Now you’d say, ‘wait, the Catholic Church’? No. We all know that this country was founded on a Judeo-Christian ethic but the Judeo-Christian ethic was a Protestant Judeo-Christian ethic, sure the Catholics had some influence, but this was a Protestant country and the Protestant ethic, mainstream, mainline Protestantism, and of course we look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country and it is in shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it. So they attacked mainline Protestantism, they attacked the Church, and what better way to go after smart people who also believe they’re pious to use both vanity and pride to also go after the Church.
After that, you start destroying the Church and you start destroying academia, the culture is where their next success was and I need not even go into the state of the popular culture today. Whether its sensuality of vanity of the famous in America, they are peacocks on display and they have taken their poor behavior and made it fashionable. The corruption of culture, the corruption of manners, the corruption of decency is now on display whether it’s the NBA or whether it’s a rock concert or whether it’s on a movie set.
The fourth, and this was harder, now I know you’re going to challenge me on this one, but politics and government was the next to fall. You say, ‘you would think they would be the first to fall, as fallible as we are in politics,’ but people in political life get elected by ordinary folks from lots of places all over the country where the foundations of this country are still strong. So while we may certainly have had examples, the body politic held up fairly well up until the last couple of decades, but it is falling too.
Rick Santorum spat a frothy mouthful [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R63yutg7cjo (above, as embedded)] on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, plugging his first foray into film production, The Christmas Candle [ http://www.thechristmascandlemovie.com/ ], due out this holiday season. The movie, from EchoLight Studio, is a period piece set in a Thomas Kinkade-esque village and tackles modernity vs (Christian) tradition as electricity and progressive thinking threaten the town’s visit from a Christmas angel. Now the CEO of EchoLight, Santorum said, seeming a little uncomfortable [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/santorum-satan-controls-film-industry (the first of these Santorum items above; this item also here cuz I like it)]:
This is a tough business, this is something that we’re stepping out, and the Devil for a long, long time has had this, these screens, for his playground and he isn’t going to give it up easily.
Shifty eyes much?
I’m not going to go into Santorum’s (il)logic about Satan controlling Hollywood which at some point will end up in a grand conspiracy, but ye gods and little fishes, if Satan controls the film business, why did the self-proclaimed White Witch of Los Angeles [ http://godismyboyfriend.com/ ] give a lecture [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMwcYPK4oWI (next below)]
about the film industry and how it controls the mind? Inconceivable!
I’m a huge movie buff. Love watching movies. So we’ll often go and watch a movie.
Cruz’s favorite movie? The Princess Bride which has a wizard bringing Westley back to life. Blasphemy!! Clearly Ted Cruz is thus a tool of Satan, which makes his opposition to the current administration a Satanic plot. But wait, conservatives think Obama is Satan, or at least the Anti-Christ…
Oh, my goodness. I have no idea. You know, for all I know, 50 years from now I may be the Justice Sutherland of the late-twentieth and early-21st century, who's regarded as: "He was on the losing side of everything, an old fogey, the old view." And I don't care.
A conservative justice who joins with his fellow travelers in a yeoman effort to stop a Democratic president from implementing vital new reforms? It's no wonder that Justice Scalia cited Sutherland, right? Right. Except that Justice Sutherland in practice was far less conservative than is Justice Scalia. And Justice Scalia's perception/prediction that he may be "on the losing side of everything" is belied (so far anyway) by the fact that he and his fellow Republicans on the Court have presided over a monumental restoration of conservative jurisprudence.
Let's take Justice Sutherland first. Like millions of other conservatives, he hated what the New Deal stood for and did what he could to stop it. But he was not a hard-edged warrior. For example, it was Justice Sutherland, in 1932, who wrote the opinion in Powell v. Alabama [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0287_0045_ZS.html ], a decision that stills stands for the proposition that a criminal defendant cannot get a fair trial without assistance of counsel. It was Powell the Court cited in 1963 in Gideon v. Wainwright [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0372_0335_ZS.html ], the right to counsel case that has helped millions of Americans in the past 50 years get something resembling a fair shake in court.
Moreover, there is strong evidence that Justice Sutherland as an elected official before he reached the Court was remarkably progressive. From "The Secret Lives of the Four Horsemen [ http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1946929 ]," a 2011 law review article by Barry Cushman:
We discover that Sutherland's legislative career saw him support the eight-hour day, the Employers' Liability Act, the Pure Food and Drugs Act, the Hepburn Rate Bill, the Children's Bureau, the Seaman's Act of 1915, Postal Savings Banks, free coinage of silver, and the1896 presidential candidacy of the populist William Jennings Bryan. We even find Sutherland in the vanguard of the struggle for women's suffrage and a system of workmen's compensation for the employees of interstate carriers.
Now, Justice Scalia never held elected office so we will never know whether he would have supported progressive causes like these as a legislator. My guess, which is as good as your guess, is that he would not. We can, each of us, make this guess because we have a quarter of a century of Court opinions to sift through, as well as Justice Scalia's record as a lower appellate judge and executive branch official, all of which tell us that the jurisprudence of Justice Scalia has rarely favored women, or workers, or laws like the Affordable Care Act that seek to help the poor.
Indeed, Justice Scalia has been largely responsible for one conservative victory after another since joining the Court in 1986. He has helped restrict voting rights. He has restricted the rights of workers and employees and unions. He has limited the ability of plaintiffs to seek redress in court. He has helped make it more difficult for criminal defendants to seek and gain justice. He has opened the floodgates for money to pour into political campaigns. He has endorsed grand executive branch power.
On and on the litany of conservative achievement goes--with no end in sight. So does the justice truly believe that "his side" is losing or that, within the next 50 years, it will lose the constitutional battles it now is winning? Does he truly believe that the advance of gay rights--arguably the most significant setback he has seen since coming to the Court--trumps all the other areas of the law in which conservatism is ascendant? Was he merely being self-deprecating in citing Sutherland? Does he feel the need for future vindication even though the present sure looks to be treating him right?
Jeff Shesol, the author and historian who wrote Supreme Power[ http://www.npr.org/2010/03/31/125321024/fdr-vs-the-court-an-epic-power-struggle-relived ], the definitive modern book about Roosevelt and the Court, told me Monday that Justice McReynolds may have gotten all the heat 75 years ago but that it was Justice Sutherland who was the "intellectual architect" of the conservative fight against the New Deal. Maybe that's what Justice Scalia has in mind. Maybe he wants history to remember him as the "intellectual architect" of the modern fight against progressivism. That history, like all history, will be written by the winners. And I'm genuinely surprised that Justice Scalia is bracing himself for the possibility that his side in the fight won't be writing it.
Herman Cain Has Found The Real Groper, And It Is ‘The Devil’
by Rebecca Schoenkopf 12:35 pm October 23, 2013
Herman Cain has spent the past two years trying to clear his name of wrongful accusations that he groped that lady, and the other lady, and that third chick, and we think two other ones as well it is hard to keep straight! That is, he has been working to clear his name for the past two years except for the part where he has done anything to try to clear his name. This is because when one is accused [ http://wonkette.com/477439/lady-who-sexed-herman-cain-for-13-years-types-about-that ] of sexxxxytime shenanigans and quid pro ew behaviors, it is important to stand and fight them in a timely manner, unless you don’t really have anything to back you up.
But Herman Cain does! He has “evidence [ http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/10/23/the_devil_and_herman_cain.htm ]”! And that “evidence” leads him to state unequivocally that he has found the real groper, and that groper is The Devil, squeezing and frottaging all up in those women’s brains until they all levitated from their beds and fingered Goody Cain (gross) for a witch! A sexxxxy witch! Let’s sexplore!
Cain said if he challenged the allegations at the time, “it would have been a huge distraction.” A presidential campaign “is like drinking from a fire hydrant” and so is a bad time to give a considered response scandalous allegations of that nature.
Yes, you definitely want to wait until a year after the campaign is over in which you are running for president to clear your name, because clearing your name in the middle of the campaign in which you are running for president would absolutely be a “distraction.” At least, it would be a “distraction” from the totally untrue allegations anyway.
The first charges that were reported, by a still-anonymous woman, “went to the [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] and were dismissed,” Cain said.
Celebrity attorney Gloria Allred held a press conference for her client, Sharon Bialek, who accused Cain of groping her over a decade ago. During that presser, Allred waved around alleged affidavits that she said corroborated her client’s story. Cain said that no one has even seen Allred’s affidavits.
That seemed a stretch — an attorney waiving affidavits around at a press conference and reporters not insisting on verifying those documents. But after some digging, nothing. A search for it on the Smoking Gun website reveals a big goose egg, for instance.
As for the third woman, Ginger White, who accused Cain of an affair, Cain said she was in court for libel at the same time he ended his campaign. “She ultimately was found guilty and was assessed a judgment,” he told me with a good helping of contempt for the media for under-reporting it.
Then he speculated as to who may have orchestrated the allegations: the Devil.
“It made me realize that there was a force bigger than right,” Cain said.
Well, we are convinced. Case closed, everybody! We look forward to Cain’s sexual harassment lawsuit, Herman Cain v. Beelzebub. Those depositions are going to be fuckin’ amazing.
Herman Cain Blames The Devil For His Sexual Harassment Charges!
Posted by: Barbara Friedland October 25, 2013
One time Godfather’s Pizza CEO and GOP candidate for President contends that the Devil was behind the sexual harassment charges that imploded his campaign. He also believes that those stories were the only impediment between him and the White House.
Where to begin?
Cain enjoyed being front-runner for a few weeks, as did every other crazy candidate vying for the Republican nomination. The GOP had to make it very clear to Mitt Romney that the majority neither liked nor trusted him so they made him work very very hard.
Also, if Cain believed he had any chance to be the Republican candidate then he clearly has not watched any interview he ever gave.
He basically had no idea about anything or just parroted 999.
(Maybe he was summoning Satan in code.)
But back the sexual harassment stories. Cain castigated the media for not doing their due diligence.
The egomaniacal belief that the devil would arise to prevent Cain from being elected President is beyond frightening.
He was a guy with a book, did some motivational speaking and wanted to juice up sales.
If he seriously wanted to be President, Cain would have actually studied the issues. Or a map.
Folks can laugh that the clownish Cain has made his sordid groping a matter of good versus the devil.
But he is right about one thing. The media did not vet him properly.
Or they would have written about his role as the head of the National Restaurant Association and his tireless efforts to keep the sub minimum wage in place for restaurant workers.
“It made me realize that there was a force bigger than right,” Cain said.
But that doesn’t mean Cain has given up. Nowadays, Cain fights against the Evil One from the pulpit. Cain has been a member of the same Baptist church in Atlanta — “a church in the hood” — since he was 10, where he now serves as an associate pastor.
Cain preaches that the Devil is “determined to destroy our culture” and that “the family is at the center of our culture and the center of the family is its religious beliefs.”
A recent sermon of his is entitled: “Don’t Give Up, Get Up!” He told the congregation that there are three ways to battle “give-up-itis. You get down on your knees and pray, you write down your blessings, and you turn down the noise in your life.” The noise in Cain’s life is considerably softer than it was two years ago, but he hasn’t called it in just yet.
This Friday is Persons Day in Canada, a special day on the country’s calendar that commemorates, of all things, a judicial decision. It was on Oct. 18, 1929, that the Privy Council, a court in London that served then as the highest appeals court for Canada, declared women to come within the definition of “persons” in Canada’s basic law, thus qualifying them for appointment to the national Senate. It was, Beverley McLachlin, the chief justice of Canada, said in a speech earlier this year, “the beginning of a rights revolution that would transform Canadian society.”
I’ve wanted to write about Persons Day and the intriguing Persons Case that it celebrates ever since I first heard about it years ago at a conference of Canadian lawyers. Every time Persons Day came around, however, something more pressing, or at least seemingly more directly relevant to the American legal scene, seemed to intervene. But this time, I’ll argue here, the Persons Case couldn’t be more germane to the current constitutional conversation on this side of the border. In fact, for reasons I’ll explain, if the Persons Case didn’t exist, those of us who believe in progressive constitutional interpretation might have to invent it.
First, a bit of history. The British North America Act, a law from 1867 that served as Canada’s constitution, provided for the appointment of “qualified persons” to the Senate. In the 1920s, with a growing feminist spirit abroad in the land, women had the temerity to assume that “qualified persons” might include them. When Emily Murphy, a leading feminist who was a judge in Alberta, sought an appointment, the prime minister turned her down on the ground that women were not “persons” within the meaning of the law.
Judge Murphy and four other Alberta women, who were to become known as the Famous Five, formally petitioned the federal government, which then put a question to the Supreme Court of Canada: “Does the word ‘Persons’ in Section 24 of the British North America Act include female persons?”
The Supreme Court said no, on grounds that would warm the heart of some current members of the United States Supreme Court. Whether it would be desirable for women to be eligible for senatorial appointment was beside the point, Chief Justice Frank Anglin wrote in his opinion. What mattered was what the drafters of the 1867 statute intended, and the words they wrote had to “bear today the same construction which the courts would, if then required to pass upon them, have given to them when they were first enacted.”
The five women then appealed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London, which as a vestige of empire served until 1949 as Canada’s court of last result. There the outcome was different. A newly appointed Lord Chancellor, John Sankey, rejected the originalist approach. It was wrong, he wrote in the 1929 decision, “to apply rigidly to Canada of today the decisions and the reasons therefor which commended themselves, probably rightly, to those who had to apply the law in different circumstances, in different centuries, to countries in different stages of development.” Driving the point home, Lord Sankey went on to say: “The British North America Act planted in Canada a living tree capable of growth and expansion within its natural limits.” Women, the court concluded, were indeed persons. Soon enough, they were senators as well.
The “living tree” metaphor languished, underappreciated, for years until 1982, when Canada adopted its modern constitution, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and Canadian judges needed an interpretive methodology. The living tree was there, waiting to be rediscovered and tended. Along the way, the Famous Five women came to be celebrated. Their larger-than-life statues adorn the grounds of Parliament in Ottawa, and for a few years early in the new century, their faces appeared on Canada’s $50 bill. Annual prizes are awarded in their names. As for the living tree, it’s simply taken for granted, part of Canada’s constitutional DNA. Although the original understanding of the 31-year-old Charter’s framers wouldn’t be hard to reconstruct, no one bothers. It’s beside the point.
I thought of the Persons Case the other day as I read Justice Antonin Scalia’s head-spinning interview [ http://nymag.com/news/features/antonin-scalia-2013-10/ (first item this post)] in New York magazine. No doubt many readers of this engrossing document, which printed out at 15 pages, couldn’t get beyond Justice Scalia’s comments about the wily ways of the Devil. I was equally struck by this colloquy between the justice and his interviewer, Jennifer Senior:
Question: You’ve described yourself as a fainthearted originalist. But really, how fainthearted?
Answer: I described myself as that a long time ago. I repudiate that.
Question: So you’re a stouthearted one.
Answer: I try to be. I try to be an honest originalist! I will take the bitter with the sweet! What I used “fainthearted” in reference to was –
Question: Flogging, right?
Answer: Flogging. And what I would say now is, yes, if a state enacted a law permitting flogging, it is immensely stupid, but it is not unconstitutional. A lot of stuff that’s stupid is not unconstitutional.
For years, Justice Scalia liked to amuse himself and startle listeners by proclaiming that his Constitution wasn’t living, but “dead.” I heard this myself on several occasions. Recently, he’s softened his tone a bit [ http://frontburner.dmagazine.com/2013/01/31/bryan-garner-is-not-happy-with-the-dallas-morning-news/ ] to explain that by “dead” he doesn’t mean expired but rather “enduring” as opposed to “morphing” or “changing.” No matter. If Justice Scalia’s Constitution was a tree, it would be part of a petrified forest.
Justice Scalia’s mantra is so tired by now that only Justice Anthony M. Kennedy seems willing to offer much in the way of an off-the-bench response. “You have to recognize that if the framers knew all the specifics of a just society, they would have written them down,” Justice Kennedy told Jess Bravin of The Wall Street Journal in an appearance earlier this month at the University of California’s Washington Center. The Constitution’s framers, the justice said, “used words that appeal over time to our sense of justice and our sense of freedom.”
On the bench, of course, the two clashed recently over the meaning of equality in the context of the Defense of Marriage Act. Justice Kennedy wrote the court’s majority opinion in United States v. Windsor [ http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-307_6j37.pdf ], declaring DOMA unconstitutional, while Justice Scalia wrote a stinging dissent. But a day earlier, the two were on the same side, voting with the 5-to-4 majority in Shelby County v. Holder [ http://cms.em.nytimes.com/content/edit/article/ ] to gut the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The two decisions make a fascinating pair when viewed through the lens of the originalism debate. The point is that neither was originalist. As for the DOMA decision, “it does not take a constitutional historian to appreciate that the specific original meaning of due process/liberty and equal protection in both 1791 and 1868 do not support constitutional protection against sexual orientation discrimination in marriage laws, state or federal,” Professor Dawn Johnsen of Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law wrote in an essay [ http://www.acslaw.org/sites/default/files/Johnsen_-_Demise_of_Originalism.pdf ] published this month by the American Constitution Society [ http://www.acslaw.org/about ; http://www.acslaw.org/ ] (of which she and I are both national board members). The dates refer to the adoption of the Fifth and 14th Amendments.
And the Voting Rights Act decision, as Professor Johnsen goes on to point out, was likewise the opposite of originalist, rejecting the court’s longstanding deference to the role of Congress in enforcing the 15th Amendment’s guarantee of the right to vote. The conjunction of these two decisions was enough to make Professor Johnsen wonder (happily, I should note) whether we might be seeing, as she suggests in her essay’s title, “The Demise of Originalism.”
Will Justice Scalia’s personal petrified forest ever come to life? Clearly, for him, the answer is no. But on Persons Day 2013, it’s worth celebrating the fact that the constitutional tree is still alive on this side of the border, at least for now.
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