Month: October 2012

Goldwater to Ryan to what?

by digby

Elias Isquith has written a piece on Barry Goldwater and Paul Ryan that’s filled with interesting insights. And he brings up something important which I don’t think most people realize:

The treatise on what Ryan calls the “moral consequences” of the welfare state recalls nothing so much Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative. In the surprise bestseller, he warned, “The effect of Welfarism on freedom will be felt later on — after its beneficiaries have become its victims, after dependence on government has turned into bondage and it is too late to unlock the jail.” Ryan’s rhetoric is never quite so apocalyptic, but his frequent warnings that his country approaches a threshold “beyond which the Nation will be unable to change course … [with] disastrous fiscal consequences, and an erosion of economic prosperity and the American character itself” come close.

The Republican Party’s antipathy toward the welfare state is well known. Less appreciated is the fact that what really defined Goldwater in the public’s eye was his comfort with, or even celebration of, the violence of the state.

Isquith goes on to discuss this in the context of Goldwater’s anti-communism and points out that Ryan mouths all the same BS about “exceptionalism” and “not apologizing” on foreign policy and I think he’s more than likely to be as bloodthristy as all right wingers when it comes to national security. But I also think Ryan believes in state violence domestically. He has never deviated from the standard authoritarian POV of the conservative mainstream, whether in terms of civil liberties of crime and punishment issues. Goldwater was anxious to kill off communism, but I never got the sense that he thought police violence and incarcerating large numbers of America citizens should be standard operating procedure. (There’s not a lot of moral difference there, I grant you, but it does show a difference in scale.)

Isquith goes on to note the most glaring difference between the two avatars of economic freedom: the religious right. Goldwater didn’t have any use for them while Ryan goes out of his way to ensure that his Randroid extremism can fit in with their worldview. And increasingly, it does. We’ve got plenty of Christian right leaders extolling the virtues of low taxes and agitating to end the welfare state these days.

I’m sure Old Barry would still have disliked their incessant desire to meddle in people’s personal lives, but Ryan doesn’t seem to mind at all. After all, to Goldwater, even the commies were still human beings. Does Ryan think that individual liberty applies to parasites?

In any case, read the whole piece. Let’s just say these wingnuts aren’t getting any saner with time.

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“Fox News will help you”

by digby

The Republican party of Florida says this call was “off script” but it sure sounds like it was on message to me:

Well think really heard, you all sound like senior citizens, no? …. Yea, you don’t want Obama, you don’t want Obama because he’ll get rid of your Medicare. You might as well say goodbye to it. … Yea, and I don’t know if you have done any research on Obama or not, but he is a Muslim. He has got a socialistic view on the government, economy, the whole nine yards. If he had his way, we would be a socialistic country. …. Pay attention to Fox News. If you can get out and watch that movie 2016, do so, it has a lot of really good information. Just really read the newspapers and Fox News will help you.

This is what Fox news and talk radio say all day long. Even the Muslim stuff is easily tolerated on the network and the rest is by the book Fox commentary. Rush, Hannity and the rest as well.

I would guess that there are many Romney volunteers who are saying this all over the country. They believe it.

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So much for the Year of the Woman

by digby

Chris Hayes and his panel today talked about the most mystifying omissions in the debate:

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Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I think Hayes is right and that the President didn’t prepare. Confidence is a necessary trait in a president, but I think his achilles heel is believing his own hype. And I think the hype was that he was good at debating and Romney isn’t. Unfortunately for us, losing a presidential debate to Mitt Romney is probably the least significant negative consequence of this particular character trait.

I personally don’t think this debate means as much as some people do. I get why the right is having a field day. If the Democrats were the underdogs, they’d be doing the same happy dance if their guy trounced the Republican in the first presidential debate. It’s natural. If the polls show a substantial shift over the next couple of weeks in Romney’s favor, then I suppose this will have been an important event. But, unless Obama screws the pooch in the rest of the debates I’d be surprised if it ends up being a big deal.

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A proposal to change the structure of debates

by digby

Considering the fact that the Republicans have openly admitted that they lie in presidential debates and don’t care if they are fact-checked, perhaps something needs to be done to change them. Michael Froomkin has an interesting proposal:

Can something be done to prevent lying in Presidential debates? I have a simple suggestion that will greatly reduce the opportunity for lies, admitting that nothing can eradicate them completely: The moderator’s key questions on the issues should be released to the candidates and the public 48 hours in advance of the debates.

It is silly to think that the element of surprise adds value to these events. Allow the candidates to do scripted talks and then have the surprises be the back and forth as they interact and ask each other followups. Allow followups from the moderator if you trust him or her to be less milquetoast than the hapless Jim Lehrer. But if you must have surprise as to the basic questions, reduce it to a fraction of the event.

Releasing at least a substantial fraction of the questions in advance will unleash the fact-checkers on all sides. It will promote debate. It will allow campaigns to set up web sites in which they give backup for their claims. In a more perfect world than we actually have, we could aim for a week in advance, and hope that a consensus dataset would evolve in real rather than nominal dollars, but I know that is just an academic pipe dream. It won’t happen, and a week is a long time in politics anyway.

Of course, the two campaigns control the debate formats and they’ll never agree. But it’s just possible that if for some reason the media had a collective epiphany and decided to do their jobs, they could insist which would mean the candidates would have to choose between cancelling the debates (no great loss to the public considering what mendacious kabuki pageants they currently are) or adhering to these new rules. Scroll down to the post below to see why I am very pessimistic about that possibility.

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The Villagers circle the wagons

by digby

It’s one thing for each side in the political divide to accuse the other of lying. But when someone suggests that the press is partly responsible for the fact that Americans are being misinformed, just watch the fur fly. Here’s the entire This Week panel attacking Paul Krugman for suggesting the press fell down on the job in reporting Romney’s epic lie fest in the debate:

This was on and on and on, with Matalin sneeringly referring to Krugman as “doctor professsssser” as if that was synonymous with child molester. I especially love walking cliche Jonathan Karl jumping in with the “he said/she said.” If you wrote him as a character in The Newsroom, we’d consider him a cartoon — even by that show’s standards.

Here’s an example of Matalin the arbiter of truth:

MATALIN: You have mischaracterized and you have lied about every position and every particular of the Ryan plan on Medicare, from the efficiency of Medicare administration, to calling it a voucher plan, so you’re hardly credible on calling somebody else a liar.

Think Progress:

But this is exactly what the Ryan proposal is — turning Medicare from a “defined benefit” into a “defined contribution” plan. Seniors would get a voucher from the federal government that they could use to help pay for a selection of private plans.

Although the Romney/Ryan campaign has shied away from this phrase in favor of the euphemistic “premium support,” Ryan himself has specifically referred to his proposal as a “voucher” program in the past.

The woman has chutzpah.

I also enjoyed Carville saying the good news is that the Republican base is fully embracing Romney and so will not be able to disavow him if he loses. Shortly thereafter, Peggy Noonan lugubriously declared that the Romney who showed up at the debate was the grown-up, reasonable moderate Governor of Massachusetts. Does anyone believe that those two comments compute?

All in all, this show made me miss Ann Coulter. I don’t think I need to explain just how bad that makes this particular show.

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Drowning in a dwindling sea of white

by David Atkins

L.A. Times photographer Maeve Reston was at the Romney rally in Florida yesterday, and took this photo, which copyright restrictions don’t allow me to paste.

So go look at it..

What do you see? Or, more precisely, what do you not see?

Mitt Romney may or may not squeak out this election against a vulnerable president. Probably not. But one thing is certain: this will be the last time anyone tries to do this. Many of those in that photograph won’t be around to vote four years from now. And many more progressive voters will be in the ranks.

They’ll try to paper it over with different looking candidates, but it will still be a losing proposition for them.

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Saturday Night At The Movies Will it go round in circles? By Dennis Hartley

My dinner with me: Willis and Gordon-Levitt in Looper

Romneybot the lying regulator

by digby

Chris Hayes featured a lively discussion this morning about Mitt Romney the born again regulator and scourge of Wall Street:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I’ll just repeat this from from Michael Moore a couple of days ago:

“‘You can say anything you want during a debate and 80 million people hear it,’observed Peter Teeley, press secretary to Vice President Bush. If reporters then document that a candidate spoke untruthfully, ‘so what? Maybe 200 people read it or 2,000 or 20,000.'”

– New York Times, November 1, 1984

It would likely be many more these days. But unless it can break through the din of a thousand other stories I think the rule still applies.

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The people in charge

by digby

Someone sent this around the other day and I can’t recall what it was in regard to. But it doesn’t matter. Just watch.

Keep in mind that this is one of your leaders, folks. Makes you proud to be an American, doesn’t it?

Well, at least we know we’re free.

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Movement politics and electoral politics are continually intertwined

by digby

A smart observation from Frances Fox Piven and Lorraine C Minnite:

The familiar question of whether we work on electoral politics or on movement politics is fraught with emotion and argument about whether movement or electoral politics is more effective for the left. We think it is the wrong question. Both are needed, and without both, neither is effective.

In historical fact, movement politics and electoral politics are continuously intertwined. The fundamental dynamic is triggered when politicians have to deal with voter blocs composed of the same people to whom movements direct their appeals. We can see this dynamic on both the right and the left. The Tea Party picked up steam when Republicans eager for re-election began to repeat its slogans. So did the labor movement of the 1930s gain momentum from Franklin Roosevelt’s rhetorical appeals to the “common man,” just as the civil rights movement was energized by Lyndon Johnson’s echo of the movement refrain “We shall overcome.” When politicians echo a movement’s demands, they signal a degree of vulnerability to its constituency, and the movement gains traction.

It’s also worth remembering that when politicians are dependent on electoral blocs that are also movement constituencies, they will often hesitate to use the full arsenal of the state’s repressive capacities against movement actions and may even make uncertain efforts to protect movements—as when Robert Kennedy, as attorney general, grudgingly tried to protect the Freedom Riders.

And a movement can have a division of labor on this while remaining allies with shared goals. This is why Howie, John and I support progressive candidates with Blue America and try to help them even when they are engaged in long shot races. You have to cross pollinate movement with electoral politics and electoral politics with the movement if you hope to have any effect. Changing the discourse, applying outside pressure, electing allies are all part of it.

But I always go back to what longtime activist and congressional candidate, Norman Solomon said:

Norman Solomon: We need to occupy – literally and figuratively – Congressional seats for the 99 percent. Social movements need a healthy ecology, which means a wide array of activities and manifestations of grassroots power. That includes progressives in Congress. I say on the campaign trail that we need our feet on the ground and our eyes on the stars of our ideals.

It’s not good enough to have one or the other. State power matters – we’ve seen that from county and state offices to Washington, D.C. And, as somebody who has written literally thousands of articles, 12 books, gone to hundreds of demonstrations and probably organized hundreds of demonstrations, I believe we always have to be protesting; we always have to be in the streets. It’s not either-or. I want our feet on the ground to include change for government policies. Laws matter. Whether or how they are enforced matters.

I think people sometimes confuse their own individual preferences, talents, strengths and interests with the totality of what an effective movement needs to do. In Latin America, we have seen the tremendous power of combining social movements that permeate the grassroots with the ballot box. Whatever their shortcomings, if you look at what’s happened in Brazil in terms of hunger and in other countries in the southern cone and elsewhere that not more than a couple decades ago were ruled by vicious dictators, they have been implementing genuinely progressive policies. We have an opportunity here to get beyond dualistic thinking and start thinking of synergy rather than this counterposing of our options, which creates a false either-or scenario.

Right now there is a tremendous awakening in this country about income inequality. People are fed up with war, and so many people are seeing that the status quo is a prescription for more suffering. We have to see this time as not for being dogmatic about one tactic or another, but seeing that in the context of non-violent, small-d democratic action here. Another way to put it: it is a historic mistake for progressives to leave the electoral arena to corporate Democrats and Republicans.

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