This is Right and That Is Wrong

Former GOP Hill staffer Lofgren explains the modern Republican Party. His observations mostly strike me as correct. The implications are unbelievably negative if you think informed democracratic political processes are 'good.'

It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult...

The GOP has launched a decades long attack on the institutions of American Democracy. Greatest hits include Reagan's "The Government is the problem" speech, George W. Bush's push to privatize social security (a scheme that would have pushed the average American retiree to lose their entire income source from 2007-2009), and arguably Katrina. The sustained attacks on democratic institutions through political discourse and mass misinformation are wildly outside accepted modes of politics.

John P. Judis sums up the modern GOP this way:

"Over the last four decades, the Republican Party has transformed from a loyal opposition into an insurrectionary party that flouts the law when it is in the majority and threatens disorder when it is the minority. It is the party of Watergate and Iran-Contra, but also of the government shutdown in 1995 and the impeachment trial of 1999. If there is an earlier American precedent for today's Republican Party, it is the antebellum Southern Democrats of John Calhoun who threatened to nullify, or disregard, federal legislation they objected to and who later led the fight to secede from the union over slavery."

It seems like histrionics. It's hard to provide direct evidence that this is the goal of the modern Republican party. Unless, of course, you take their word for it:

A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.

Mitch McConnell named his number one priority of the last three years: making Barack Obama a one-term president. Not dealing with the debt, not putting an end to the recession, not putting Americans back to work or propping up sagging home prices. Not even pursuing an ideologicaly coherent (if massively unpopular) agenda. When John Boehner walks out of a manufactured crisis in which his party roiled global markets and almost forced a default on American fiscal obligations, he agrees that he "got 98% of what [he] wanted." It's not about deficit reduction or policy. He just wanted President Obama to be massively unpopular.

Are there any modern Republicans who are actually concerned in any meaningful sense with preserving demcoratic government and American political institutions? How can intelligent, informed Republicans abide by this. Are there any of you out there? What further evidence could possibly be needed to prove that your party has abandonned you, and that it is time to build from the ground up a partner with the American people, a new party that actually represents mainstream conservatism?

Talk About Socialized Medicine

The Republican legislature in Montana is attempting to replace the medical marijuana regime that was enacted by popular referrendum in 2004. Here's the key paragraph from the story:

Senators and representatives on the compromise committee indicated they would work off of the House's version of the overhaul, a model that entirely removes payment from the marijuana trade and reduces the ratio of patients to providers to one, in most cases.

So much for the myth of Montana conservatives as more libertarian than puritanical. The 'overhaul' bill is an effort by conservative Republicans a week after their wholesale repeal bill was vetoed by the Governor. The Governor's statement resoundingly emphasized the will of the people of Montana in establishing the medical marijuana law through referrendum. Abolishing it via legislative act is a constitutionally dubious practice in a representative democracy (although, of course, technically legitimate). Massive cuts in the law's ability to function should be held to the same standard, and democrats everywhere should be rooting for a second Schweitzer veto.

Republicans Fail MIddle School Civics

It appears that Repbulicans have forgotten how a bill becomes a law. Two hundred twenty Republican members of the House of Representatives voted through a bill which ignores the constitutinoal reality of how laws are made. A bill must be passed by both houses of Congress, a feat which usually requires that both houses pass versions of the bill then negotiate in a conference committee to find a solution that will pass both houses. The compromise bill, if voted for in both houses, goes to the President's desk for either a signature or a veto. Republicans have a different take on the matter:

Under the bill, the budget already passed by the House and rejected by the Senate becomes law if the Senate does not reverse course and approve it by April 6. The current budget that pays for the government runs out two days later, meaning that if no agreement is reached on spending for the remaining six months of this budget year, part of the government would shut down on April 9.

That's how democracy works. I put my idea forward- if you agree with it, my idea becomes law. If you disagree, then my idea still becomes law because I say so. That's how governing works in Iran, Libya, North Korea, Ivory Coast, and Syria, and if it's good enough for third-world plutocracies, it should be good enough for America.

The laughably unconstitutional bill has proved hard pill to swallow even for their traditional blogagandist cheerleaders, who can, afterall, read. The constitution is very clear on this matter:

All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.

Krauthammer Announces End of Democracy

Charles Krauthammer is a fascinating commentator. Usually he's at his best when he proclaims that nuclear war is just around the corner if American military hegemony isn't preserved. These paranoid parades of terribles are at least entertaining and at best offer high school debaters excellent human extinction impacts. His typical content is also why no one takes him seriously except for the neo-conservative class. His column today, "Rubicon is a river in Wisconsin" is a rare example of real insight on the politics of union-busting Republicans:

Led by famously progressive Wisconsin - Scott Walker at the state level and Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan at the congressional level - a new generation of Republicans has looked at the debt and is crossing the Rubicon. Recklessly principled, they are putting the question to the nation: Are we a serious people?

The comparison to Julius Caesar is striking. When General Caesar decided to take his army into the fields outside of Rome, he was breaking a long tradition of democratic (if oligarchic) rule. The threat of force against his political opponents was clear and disturbing. No other general had ever passed south of the Rubicon with an army under his control. Julius Caesar's move effectively ended democracy in Rome, establishing the Roman empire.

I personally would not have made the argument that taking away bargaining rights for workers would be such a cathartic break from American democracy. Yet this is exactly the hope that Krauthammer espouses.

Fatah Calls for Elections

President Abbas has called for elections in the near term. Palestinians will have a chance at a democratically controlled future again, if Hamas lets them. The PLO controls the West Bank while Hamas retains power in the Gaza Strip.

Of course, Hamas faces the Sadrite conundrum in the upcoming balloting: if you boycott the election, you lose. Hamas did pretty well in the local elections of 2006, giving them a legitimate power base from which to seize Gaza and delve the territories into a civil war. Hamas, if it performs public polling (unlikely), might have discovered it has something to fear in upcoming elections. More simply, elections introduce the possibility of a loss for Hamas, and why take the risk when no other force can dislodge them from leadership of Palestine's most densely populated territory?

By attempting to capture the democratic spirit and place Hamas on the authoritarian side of the ledger, Abbas is showing a modicum of shrewdness. On the other hand, the recent embarrassing disclosures about negotiations with Israel (i.e. the PLO is attempting to negotiate even as Israel isn't doing much to reciprocate) could make Fatah unpopular. I haven't seen much reporting about Palestinian politics recently; no youth movement seems to be springing up, so the cast of characters remains the not-Hamas Fatah vs Hamas to any unversed American observer. So far, there have merely been reports that Palestinians in the West Bank cheered the victory of the Egyptian Tahrir movement. That is a far cry from developing the mobilizing capability required to dislodge the autocratic players.

Dictator Worship

No news on Superbowl Sunday in America, including the much-heralded but little-viewed O'Reilly interview with President Obama.

On the other hand, we get this tidbit of vaguely unhinged Palin worship, admiringly declaring "This is what an iron fist in a velvet glove looks like." It's a weird moment. Iron fists are the last things that leaders should possess in a democracy. Democratic leaders neither rely on the threat nor exercise of force in order to create change. Politics is the alternative to force, instead using persuasion to forge consensus around national policy and setting a majoritarian direction.

If this is what Palin-worshipers see in their Tsarina, perhaps it's why only 3 out of every ten Americans approve of Sarah Palin. Americans do not need a leader to singlehandedly return them to greatness because American greatness has always been the story of small successes in the aggregate, fueling national progress. America does not need a dictator, so why would a mainstream Conservative blog pine for one?

A Grave Mistake

The Utah state house has approved a bill designating the M1911 sidearm as Utah's official gun. Utah would be the first state in the union to select a state firearm. The M1911 would join the California gull (state bird), Sego Lily (tate flower), and the Blue Spruce (state tree) in Utah's symbolism pantheon. This isn't particularly objectionable. I think that Utahans would prefer if their state legislature focused on restoring the economy, but that's really their responsibility for electing the clowns.

What I do have a problem with is this statement, made by a state legislator in support of the state gun proposal:

“It’s an implement of freedom that has defended America for 100 years. … This firearm is Utah.”

A gun is not an instrument of freedom. It is an instrument of violence. Violence is antithetical to any civil society, much less one based on the free exchange of ideas. Weapons are coercive instruments which force citizens to fear the police and government. The Egyptian protestors remarkably are not wielding guns in their struggle for freedom from oppression; it is the police and army who have the firearms. The courage of the protestors is in overcoming the threat of force. This courage is the center of democratic society.

How's that Revolution Going?

World news coverage has shifted sharply to the mass demonstrations in Egypt, but let's not forget that Tunisia's new government is just weeks old. The departure of Ben Ali from power and into exile has empowered Tunisia's protestors. To recap, the Tunisian protests sparked after the self-immolation of a college-educated young street vendor who was frustrated by police harassment which stifled his economic prospects.

The young Bouazizi became a symbol of frustration with the political and economic stagnation that had set in during the reign of Ben Ali. The protest coalition quickly attracted middle class support and simultaneous demonstrations across the country from the coast to the South. After nights of street protests, rioting, and unrest, Ben Ali fled the country, handing power off to a transitional government, a collaboration between the opposition and Ben Ali's allies. The revolution emboldened protestors across the Middle East, most remarkably in Egypt. So how is the revolution going in Tunisia?
Protests continue, displaying increasing fragmentation along secular/Islamist lines. The army has come off the sidelines in favor of protecting the transitional government. The January's revolution was successful in deposing Ben Ali largely because the military remained neutral. Police violence continues despite top-down orders to liberalize treatment of protestors.
Protests of the unity government continues, though it is unclear that the opposition maintains widespread support. The reported purging of Ben Ali's party from political, journalistic, and business institutions suggests that opposition is organizing capability to exercise power beyond mass mobilization. The linked article attempts to place the revolution in a revolutionary tradition extending from the 1917 Russian revolution, however the parallels are fairly thin. First of all, the tripartite Russian demands of "Peace, land, bread" are more far reaching, demanding a much more active role of government. The Romanov regime largely neglected the development of the country, including the urban economy. The Tsar had thrust Russia into the First World War, while European affairs were a concern unique to the highest echelons of Russian society, deepening a sense that the Russian government was not acting in the citizens' interests. Indeed, the conscript army provided much of the organization through which anti-Tsarist energy was funneled.

By contrast, the Tunisian revolution is much more focused on purging Ben Ali's party from political life. The party's lack of interest in developing the Tunisian economy certainly fueled discontent, but the catalytic event and symbol of the revolution was the suicide of Bouazizi. He particularly represented active repression and harassment by police. His economic desperation was identified with active coercion from the state apparatus. The political liberalization of the country is one demand of the mainstream protestors, but religious oppression is a parallel grievance advanced by the Islamist protestors. The "deepening of the Revolution" to borrow the Russian phrase is a result of escalating substantive economic and pacifist demands which the 1917 provisional government was not able to meet. The explicit demands of the Tunisian revolutionaries have thus far remained political. The frantic, accelerating revolution which created the Soviet state are not likely to be reproduced. Most importantly, the soviets were organized around radical participatory democracy. Tunisian revolutionary organizers do not appear to be intent on creating grassroots democratic institutions that created the Russian run-away radicalization. Islamists oppose democratic forms and will not persuade secular Tunisians to join them. The Islamist party might gain control of an existing government via the ballot box, but the Islamists do not have the interest in creating the types of organizations that create escalating substantive demands and lead to a deepening revolution. If the revolution deepens, it will not do so in an Islamist direction.

Perhaps I've been overselling the moderation of the revolution. After all, the 1917 Russian Revolution also produced a moderate provisional government, which merged a traditional parliament with the soviet structure. The soviets progressively radicalized and the Bolsheviks seized power, preempting the election of a legitimate democratic national government. However, the tone of the revolutionaries seems largely moderate, willing to trust democratically elected elites so long as they serve the interests of the people of Tunisia.

Jared Lee Loughner- What Kind of Man?

In the wake of the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ 08), the question "what kind of man would do this?" must be answered. The man not only put a gun into the face of a woman and fired, but then injured 18 additional people, killing a reported 6. Police, the media, and political establishment are all having their say.

The most basic evaluation is: a mentally disturbed man. Internet sleuths have uncovered his facebook page which simultaneously lists Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto as favorite books without apparent irony. Mr. Loughner, while attending his local community college last year was often a disruption in class and in the library, coming to police attention as a nuisance in the school. His rambling youtube manifestos do not suggest coherence or an ability to present a cogent worldview.

At the same time, his writings certainly seem to be informed by a particular anti-government conspiracy theory revolving around a secret currency. A little internet digging reveals that this 'secret currency' stuff is stock and trade for anti-semitic fringe 'experts' who suggest investing in gold coins. You know, that old goldline scam that Glenn Beck has been milking via sponsorship money. It seems that Jared Lee Loughner, while mentally unstable, was dipping his intellectual quill near Glenn Beck waters, which may be purely coincidental. In any event, his time spent on the internet (and possibly in front of the tv) seems to have been spent absorbing conspiracy theories relating to the big bad federal government.

Jared Lee Loughner also seems to be quite the student of philosophy. His belief that the government practices "mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar," seems odd, certainly, but not outside the (loosely defined) bounds of critical postmodernism. His videos are obsessed with control over language, economy, and social interaction. He expreses a desire to splinter away from the English speaking community, the dollar, and reality. This certainly fits into the "mentally disturbed" storyline, though as was the lesson from the Terry Shiavo case, it's probably a bad idea to diagnose patients via youtube videos.

The videos' tropes of superiority compared to the rest of the American population (e.g. "The majority of the American population has never read the American population... You're literate, listener?") certainly hit the same scale as Glenn Beck's rants (e.g. "You can live the E4 system... or you can live in ignorance and anger" Glenn Beck Program 1/07/2011 3:09:00), and the repetition of rhetorical questions ending in "... listener," implies a familiarity with talk radio, though I don't know of any particular radio host who insists on being quite that annoying. We're left with the impression of a socially isolated man who received most of his information from talk radio and the internet. One thing we do know about Loughner's frame of mind: he was focused particularly on his Congressional district, mentioning the "illiteracy" of citizens of the 8th District in one of his videos. This certainly suggests that he processed the world around him through a political lens, lining up with the circumstantial links between his videos and right-wing rhetoric. His unstable mind acted like a prism, refracting and focusing conspiracy theories into an assassination plot on his Congresswoman.

Except that turns out not be entirely right. Police are searching for a second suspect, a middle age male who transported Jared Lee Loughner to the Safeway parking lot to assassinate the Honorable Gabrielle Giffords. The nature of the man's relationship to the shooter is still murky, as is whether the driver knew of Loughner's plot beforehand.

What we do know is that Loughner has been keeping silent while in custody, steadfastly claiming Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. This is not the trademark of the mentally disturbed post-rampage suspect, who often is either prepared to face the consequences or is not inhibited from forfeiting testimony. Perhaps the silence is designed to protect his accomplice and is part and parcel of a larger conspiracy. The New York Times briefly reported that a suspicious package was found in Gifford's Tucson office today, though the scene was eventually cleared after the bomb squad detonated the package in a controlled blast. Either Loughner was connected to the bomb and possibly a larger conspiracy, used as a pawn by an ideologically driven cell, or he was simply one part of a continuing violent milieu supported and egged-on by internet groups, radio talk show hosts, and Fox News. I hope the answer is the conspiracy explanation because honestly, that's a lot less troubling.

Just as a note, as I was tagging this blog post, I was shocked by how many tags are applicable from previous blog posts. This incident has been long in the making with years of inciting, enabling speech coming from a multitude of sources. This attack is certainly an outcome of the violence-tinged political culture that Fox News, talk radio, and the far right have fostered. Sheriff Dupnik said it best:

"When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government," he said. "The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on this country is getting to be outrageous and unfortunately Arizona has become sort of the capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry."

Mr. Dupnik said it is time for the country to "do a little soul searching."

He added: "The vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business ... This has not become the nice United States that most of us grew up in."

Later, he said: "It's not unusual for all public officials to get threats constantly, myself included. That's the sad thing about what's going on in America: pretty soon we're not going to be able to find reasonable decent people willing to subject themselves to serve in public office."

More All Power to the States

Steve Bennen over at the Washington Monthly takes Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell's plan to continue obstruction in the next Congress for a stroll. The minority leader has dedicated his caucus to refusing to compromise in the least part with Democrats in congress. So far, Republicans have voted no on Republican ideas so they could reap the benefits of a depressed economy, high joblessness, and a housing crisis by blaming the majority. McConnell in a National Journal interview has doubled down on the strategy of the last two years, promising to do the same for the next two.

"[W]e need to treat this election as the first step in retaking the government. We need to say to everyone on Election Day, 'Those of you who helped make this a good day, you need to go out and help us finish the job.' [...]

The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.... Our single biggest political goal is to give our nominee for president the maximum opportunity to be successful."

Apparently "successful" means to have as few policy overlaps as possible with President Obama. That means that the Republican leadership will be attempting to hold together solid "No" blocks on every single major policy put forth in the next two years at the federal level. If McConnell gets his way, and he might, there will be very little that gets done in the 112th Congress. Some Republicans have already started foreshadowing a 1994 redux government shutdown While Benen implicitly is making the 'that's why you elect Democrats--or at least less partisan Republicans' argument, I think McConnell may be playing a deeper game here.

Seizing Speech

Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller's privately security detail apparently handcuffed a journalist for attempting to interview Mr. Miller. This happened over the weekend, and I was writing a post about the incident bemoaning the lack of respect for agents of the people who are attempting to pull back the curtain and familiarize the people with political elites. This would have been a pretty boring rant, so I shelved it. Following the golden rule that any story left unwritten gets better, it turns out that the private guards were actually active duty military personnel moonlighting as security guards.

I had originally shelved the post because there was no legal issue. Private citizens basically assaulted someone, but there was no constitutional question, as the first amendment only binds the federal government and (through 14th amendment incorporation) the states. Now that officers of the federal government are involved, there is a larger problem here.

Glenn Greenwald notes that military personnel are banned from partisan political activity by DoD directive. Every governmental agency that I know prohibits its agents from engaging in partisan politics on its time. Military personnel, like police officers, are cloaked more encompassingly cloaked with the authority of the state than desk clerks. If the state trains a person to use force as its agent, it has separated it from the general populace. The investment of legitimate force on an individual abrogates that individual's political rights.