Month: April 2016

Trump’s “plan” is just like Paul Ryan’s

by digby

When I read the New York Times’ breathless critique of Trump’s “health care plan” this morning I had exactly the same thought as Steve Benen: what are they talking about? It’s a standard issue GOP “health plan”, which is basically, “shop until you drop dead”:

It would be an exaggeration to say Donald Trump has an actual health care plan. He’s taken steps to get past his original vow to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act with “something terrific,” but it’s fair to say those steps have been quite modest.

As we discussed a few weeks ago, the Trump blueprint is a weak patchwork of predictable policies – tax breaks, buying across state lines, Medicaid block grants, and health-savings accounts – that (a) seem to be the staple of every underwhelming GOP plan; and (b) would leave millions of American families behind.

The New York Times reports today that Trump’s health care ideas have “bewildered” not just reform advocates, but also Republican experts in the field.

This whipsaw of ideas [in Trump’s plan] is exasperating Republican experts on health care, who call his proposals an incoherent mishmash that could jeopardize coverage for millions of newly insured people. […]

“If you repeal the Affordable Care Act, you’ve got to have a serious way to expand coverage to replace what you have taken away,” said Gail R. Wilensky, who was the administrator of Medicare and Medicaid under President George Bush from 1990 to 1992. “There’s nothing I see in Trump’s plan that would do anything more than cover a couple million people.”

Robert Laszewski, a former insurance executive and frequent critic of the health law, called Mr. Trump’s health care proposals “a jumbled hodgepodge of old Republican ideas, randomly selected, that don’t fit together.”

The Times’ article features a variety of related observations. An AEI economist said, for example, that Trump’s plan “resembles the efforts of a foreign student trying to learn health policy as a second language.”

Left unsaid was a nagging detail: as woeful as Trump’s blueprint is, it’s par for the course in Republican politics, and his “plan,” while ridiculous, isn’t any worse than what any other GOP official has put forward in recent years.

Benen excerpts this from the Times’ piece:

James C. Capretta, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative nonprofit group, said Mr. Trump underestimated how difficult it would be to uproot a law that was now embedded in the nation’s health care system.

“It took a herculean political effort to put in place the Affordable Care Act,” said Mr. Capretta, who worked at the White House Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004. “To move in a different direction, even incrementally, would take an equally herculean effort, with clear direction and a clear vision of what would come next. I just don’t see that in Trump’s vague plans to repeal the law and replace it with something beautiful and great.”

Perhaps he should send a note to Cruz, Kasich, Ryan, McConnell and every other Republican in the congress so they too can understand this. They don’t seem t have gotten the memo.

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You want calculating? I’ll give you calculating.

by digby

Ted Cruz is good. He’s very good. It’s dangerous to underestimate him. Matt Lewis shows why:

One of the things that has always comforted me about Ted Cruz, even when he was shutting down the government, was the notion that he was playing a game (you know I love the players. And you love the game!). On one hand, this suggests Cruz is cunning and calculating. On the other hand, this means he’s not crazy. And maybe we need someone who is crafty to defeat Hillary Clinton?

For this reason, I always thought that, at some point, Cruz would pivot. His first strategic step was to shore up the base—to make sure he owned the Right. The second step would be to soften his rhetoric to appeal to a broader audience—first center-right Republicans, and then, a General Election audience.

This week, we began to see the first hints of this. As Michael Warren noted, during his victory speech in Wisconsin, Cruz offered a rallying cry, “jobs, freedom, security,” designed for a national campaign. He touted the women in his life, like his wife Heidi and his mother Eleanor, whom Cruz said “smashed glass ceilings by becoming a pioneering computer programmer.” Perhaps in a bid to transcend partisanship, Cruz even quoted at length an icon of the rival party, John F. Kennedy.

I was also struck by something Cruz said in New York. He returned to stressing his Hispanic roots, to using inclusive language, when answering a question about his message for Latinos.

“In the Hispanic community, we have shared values in our community,” Cruz said. “The values that resonate in our community are faith, family, patriotism. A lot of people don’t know the rate of military enlistment among Hispanics is higher than any demographic in this country. And I think the most powerful value in the Hispanic community is the American Dream.” [Emphasis mine]

Actually, though, it turns out that this rhetoric was almost exactly the same language he used when he was running for the U.S. Senate. Here’s what Cruz told Fox News’ Chris Wallace in 2012:

The Hispanic community, the values that resonate in our community, are fundamentally conservative. They are faith, family, patriotism. Do you know the rate of military enlistment among Hispanics is higher than any demographic in this country? And they are also hard work and responsibility. [Emphasis mine]

It’s certainly possible Cruz has used similar language in the intervening four years, but I haven’t noticed it.

Still, isn’t it interesting that the quotes—four years later—are almost verbatim? This, I think, speaks to the message discipline of Cruz, who memorized and recited the Constitution as a teenager.

The larger point, of course, is that Cruz appears to be pivoting back to General Election mode. So what should we make of this uncanny ability to adapt to a changing environment? You can either admire or disdain this level of flexibility.

I would normally think this is a bit premature since he’s a long way from locking up the nomination. But he’s engaged in a different battle right now. He’s hunting delegates and he needs to attract some of those party stalwarts in the state delegations who might have heard that he’s so far right he can’t win. So, he’s signaling that he has the ability to soften the edges enough to win the election.

It’s hard to believe and unctuous creep like Cruz could ever win a general election. But then it was hard to believe an unctuous creep like Richard Nixon could either. He won two, and came very, very close in a third. It’s not always about flamboyance and charisma. Sometimes it’s about brains and doggedness. He’s got that.

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The war on Christians

by digby

The right wing’s gearing up. Here’s something that landed in my emails this morning:

I cannot overstate the importance of the 2016 Elections.

The next President of the United States, for example will likely have three new Supreme Court appointments . . . and will set the direction of the Supreme Court for generations.

If the next three Supreme Court appointments are radical Leftists, every last remaining trace of Christian influence (including all Christian symbols, crosses, the Ten Commandments, and quotes from the Bible) will be erased.

Christmas will be eliminated as a national holiday-replaced by “Winter Festival.”

Ending taxpayer funding for the evil Planned Parenthood organization won’t even be an option.

You will continue to be required to pay for health insurance that covers abortion under the ObamaCare mandate.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg of what’s at stake in the 2016 Elections.

My name is Brian Burch. I am President of CatholicVote. With more than 600,000 members and supporters, CatholicVote is America’s largest pro-life, pro-family lay Christian organization.

What we do is educate and mobilize America’s conservative Christians for effective political and civic action. This year specifically, we are focused on registering, educating, and turning out pro-life, pro-family voters in record-smashing numbers for the 2016 Presidential and Congressional Elections.

In fact, CatholicVote is the only sizeable Catholic organization mobilizing conservative, pro-life, pro-family Christians for the 2016 Election.

The very survival of America as the “land of the free” and “One Nation Under God” depends on what happens in the 2016 Elections.

As you’ve seen, we have a Supreme Court that just does what it wants to do, regardless of what the Constitution or the written law says. The Supreme Court makes up its own laws out of thin air.

In 1973, the Supreme Court found a “right to an abortion” in the Constitution (where no such right exists) and instantly struck down anti-abortion laws in all 50 states-even though the “right to life” is in the Constitution.

In 2015, the Supreme Court invented the right to same-sex “marriage”.

Can you imagine how the writers of the Constitution would react to that news? Now imagine if Hillary Clinton gets to appoint two or three more radicals to the Supreme Court!

It’s already becoming a “Hate Crime” in America to believe in basic Christian moral teachings.
The Christian owners of Sweet Cakes bakery in Portland, Oregon, were ordered to pay $135,000 in damages to a gay couple for declining to participate in their same-sex wedding.

The state of Texas ordered Jeannette Golden to take down her six-foot by twelve-foot sign of the Ten Commandments even though it was posted on her own property;

Two men were arrested simply for reading the Bible outside the Department of Motor Vehicles office in Helmet, California;

Rather than face additional “civil rights” and “hate crimes” lawsuits from federal, state, and local governments, the Boy Scouts will now allow openly gay Scout Masters;

The San Francisco, California, Board of Supervisors threatened legal action against San Francisco Cardinal Salvatore Cordileone, if he did not remove the requirement that teachers in Christian schools under his jurisdiction uphold Christian moral teachings; and

The Mayor of Houston, Texas, as part of her campaign of intimidation against Christians, issued subpoenas to Houston pastors demanding they turn over copies of their sermons to see if they were opposing gay marriage or saying homosexual conduct is sinful.

America’s religious and moral foundations are quickly being erased.

And Hillary Clinton promises to use the power of government to force people to reject Christian moral teachings. Here’s what she told the Women’s World Summit in April of 2015:

“Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will. And deep-seated religious beliefs have to be changed.”

Now that’s truly frightening. This is just one reason the 2016 Election is probably the most important Election of our lifetime. The America you love is on the brink of being over.

Our Battle Plan for the 2016 Elections

The key to saving America in 2016 is to maximize turnout in the elections by pro-family, pro-life Christian voters.

Remember, Barack Obama won re-election in 2012 because 14,000,000 eligible pro-family, pro-life Christian voters failed to vote in 2012. Obama won re-election by just 4.9 million votes.

CatholicVote was able to turn this around in the 2014 mid-term Congressional Elections by generating a record-breaking turnout among pro-life, pro-family Christians. The result was sweeping pro-life, pro-family conservative victories in the 2014 mid-term Elections-with conservatives now in solid control of both the U.S. House and Senate.

CatholicVote was a major factor in the huge victories we saw in the 2014 mid-term Elections.

In total, CatholicVote was able to make more than 5,000,000 contacts with pro-life, pro-family Christian voters in the key battleground states and districts.

As a result, faithful Christians turned out in record numbers for the mid-term Congressional Elections and voted for pro-life, pro-family candidates. And the pro-life, pro-family candidate won in every battleground Senate and House race in 2014 where CatholicVote was actively engaged.

Now, with your help and support, we at CatholicVote aim to build on these 2014 mid-term Election victories in 2016. We have put into place the following FOUR-PART Battle Plan for 2016:

Goal #1: Register 2,000,000 brand new pro-life, pro-family Christians in the key battleground states for 2016. 

If we succeed at this, we’ll go a long way toward locking in a permanent pro-life, pro-family majority in national elections.

Goal #2: Turnout a total of 10,000,000 eligible pro-life, pro-family Christian voters in 2016 who failed to vote in 2012. 

By our count, 14,000,000 Christians failed to vote in 2012. Again, Barack Obama won re-election in 2012 by just 4.9 million votes.

If we can inspire and motivate just half of these 14,000,000 eligible pro-life, pro-family Christian voters to vote, politicians hostile to faith and family would never win another national election.

Goal #3: Continue Building and Improving CatholicVote’s Technology Operations.

They key to CatholicVote’s pro-life, pro-family Christian voter education, registration, and mobilization operations is the massive Christian voter database we’ve been building for the past four years to include data on 55 MILLION Christian voters.

It’s the technology that powers all of our voter education, registration, and mobilization operations.

Goal #4: Ensure that every pro-life, pro-family Christian voter casts an informed vote in 2016. 

A major part of what CatholicVote does is educate pro-life, pro-family Christian voters about where the candidates actually stand on the issues. We analyze every politician’s voting behavior in Congress, plus their public statements and actions on issues of most concern to Christian voters.

We then distribute Christian VOTER GUIDES to tens of millions of Christian voters.

Oh, and they need money for this. Lots of it.

They should vote for Trump. When he become Fuhrer, he promises to force every business to say Merry Christmas. Not kidding:

“When they don’t want to say ‘merry Christmas’ in department stores anymore. I won’t shop at places that don’t say ‘merry Christmas.’ Guess what? I don’t too much shopping. No, no, it’s true. When I see these stores, and they have a red wall and they have nothing on it. They don’t want to say ‘merry Christmas’ anymore. I say, ‘Why don’t you say merry Christmas?'” 

“I’ll tell you one thing: I get elected president, we’re going to be saying ‘merry Christmas’ again. Just remember that. And by the way, Christianity will have power, without having to form. Because if I’m there, you’re going to have plenty of power. You don’t need anybody else. You’re going to have somebody representing you very, very well. Remember that.”

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Those corrupt delegates
by Tom Sullivan

Did the 37 states that entered the union after it ratified its constitution become part of a corrupt system?

I ask because two of the biggest brands in the current race for president offer different versions of “purity.” Both offer themselves as outsiders untainted by party corruption. Both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders sell themselves as immune from being bought by big-money interests. Trump because he has billions of his own and Sanders because, you know, $27 and no super PAC. Both offer themselves as political outsiders, although Trump has the better claim to that. Sanders, the independent who has been in Congress since 1991, offers himself as an alternative to party Democrats.

But a recent story about Trump illustrates the downside of that outsider status when mounting a revolt against the status quo. Trump was flummoxed upon learning that despite beating Ted Cruz in Louisiana, Cruz might come out with more delegates.

Just to show you how unfair Republican primary politics can be, I won the State of Louisiana and get less delegates than Cruz-Lawsuit coming— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 27, 2016

Here’s the crux of it:

Kay Kellogg Katz, a former Louisiana state legislator and Trump supporter who has attended every GOP convention since 1984, told the Wall Street Journal that Cruz’s team out-organized Trump’s. Katz lost her delegate position on a key Republican National Committee Convention panel in a 22-5 vote to political new comer and Cruz supporter Kim Fralick…

Five of the state’s delegates, who were formerly supporting Sen. Marco Rubio are now likely to support Cruz, Louisiana Republicans believe. Additionally, a GOP official told WSJ that the state’s five unbound delegates — who are free to back the candidates of their choice — are likely to back Cruz over Trump.

Following the Louisiana primary, delegates met at a March 12 meeting to decide who would represent the state committee on three key convention committees — rules, credentials and the party platform. The majority of the delegates elected two members to each panel that day. Cruz delegates managed to fill up five of the six available posts.

While Trump was out boasting about winning votes, Team Cruz was lining up delegates. “I’m almost amused when Donald doesn’t know what to do and threatens a lawsuit,” Cruz said.

“It’s very unfair,” says Trump, leading in a process he doesn’t understand. Sanders is behind in a process many of his supporters don’t understand. Both are crying foul. To those attracted to purity, not understanding how the system works is proof the system is corrupt and that dark forces are allied against them:

While Trump cries foul, Cruz is racking up support from prospective delegates across the country, even in states where Trump dominated the primary. From Louisiana to Georgia to South Carolina — all Trump victories — delegates and delegate candidates are lining up to back Cruz, who’s romped among the Republican activist class that tends to control this part of the process. South Dakota’s delegates and early contests in Iowa also appear to favor Cruz.

“I’ve been telling the Trump campaign for eight months now that they’re making a mistake by not reaching out to [Republican National Committee] members to establish relationships,” said one South Carolina Republican participating in the state’s delegate selection process. “He hasn’t done any of that. … That’s usually the kind of thing that presidential candidates do.”

None of this matters much if Trump grabs the 1,237 pledged delegates he’d likely need to win a majority vote on the convention’s first ballot. But if he doesn’t, the convention could go to further rounds of voting where many delegates are free to vote for a candidate of their choosing — and that’s where Trump could run into trouble.

After visiting Washington, D.C. to take Delegate 101 with Reince Priebus, Trump finally hired an experienced delegate manager. Trump knows how to win, remember.

There is a piece from Counterpunch circulating that alleges Hillary Clinton is “buying” Super Delegates who are “defying democracy with their insistent refusal to change their votes to Sanders in spite of a handful of overwhelming Clinton primary losses in their own states.” The fact that Clinton is involved in her fourth national campaign (two with her husband and now her second) and her team knows the delegate process inside out proves to some Sanders supporters who (like Trump) don’t understand the rules that rules are being broken and that the process is hopelessly corrupt.

Which brings us to Martin Longman’s piece at Washington Monthly about the “disconnect between the system as it exists and the people’s expectations for how things ought to be in a sensible and fair world.” In “Want a Revolution? Join a Party,” he writes:

But delegates are really just like our elected representatives in Congress. Our senators and congressmen are elected by us, but we don’t control their votes once they get to Washington DC. They might promise to vote against a free trade agreement and then be persuaded to support it once they have the opportunity to sit in hearings, question witnesses, introduce and pass amendments that satisfy their concerns, or just get corrupted by big money and lobbyists. We vote for people to represent us, and if we don’t like how we’re represented, we get to vote against them when they stand for reelection. That’s our system.

Delegates to the party conventions are also our representatives, and in states like Pennsylvania, we elect them directly. They may be pledged to vote for Trump or they may not be pledged to anyone. When they get to the convention, some of them will be designated by the whole state delegation to serve on committees where they will craft the platform and set forth the rules that will govern the nomination. We’re electing these people to do these jobs for us, and there’s nothing wrong with that. At least in theory, the only people voting for these delegates will be members of either the Republican or the Democratic Party, and they have a right to expect that members of their party will craft the platform, not independents who have no commitment or skin in the game.

But that’s exactly what once-every-four-years voters object to once a candidate comes along that makes them sit up and take notice. Suddenly they want to re-write the rules for organizations they otherwise have no use for. And it’s like sitting down at a chess board for the first time in years facing someone who knows the game inside out. Your lack of skill is not proof of their cheating or that the game is rigged. It just seems that way when they hand you your ass.

Longman remarks that the way the press covers these races doesn’t help. Eugene Robinson (IIRC) said as much during MSNBC’s coverage of Wisconsin’s primary. People don’t understand that parties in each state run their selection processes differently, and the press is too focused on who is ahead in the horse race to explain the Racing Rules and Regulations:

Think about what it means that Trump can win every delegate in Florida by getting one more vote than the guy in second place, but can get fewer delegates than Cruz in Louisiana despite getting more votes. Why did they split votes proprotionately[sic] in one state, give a big bonus for winning in another, make another winner-take-all, and have another bind only 14 of the 71 available delegates? There absolutely no sense of one-person one-vote in that. But people think their vote should be treated that way.

Longman concludes:

In a general election, the principle of one-person one-vote is vitally important, but that principle doesn’t apply to parties picking their nominees, nor should it. If you want to be an independent, you really shouldn’t complain about what some party you don’t even belong to wants to do. If you want to have a real say, you should do the things that will give you some say, not just sit around bitching that people win nominations in a way that displeases you.

It’s not corrupt that committed party members tend to be the people who run to be delegates, nor that committed party members have a preference for candidates who support their party, work to make it stronger, and generally share its priorities and goals.

If you want a revolution, you have to do it on the ground within the party system, and you have to know how it works.

Or start a real revolution or yet another third party. To experienced hands who understand this stuff, this is obvious. To novices, it’s ominous.

Getting back to the original question: Did the 37 states that entered the union after it ratified its constitution become part of a corrupt system?

Sen. Bernie Sanders is from Vermont which gets one U.S. Senator for every 300,000 people. I live in North Carolina where we get one U.S. Senator for every 5,000,000 people. Is that unfair? Perhaps. Is it corrupt?

McCarthy to Cohn to Trump

by digby

This is a must-read of the day about Trump’s relationship to his mentor, the notorious right wing legal hatchet man, Roy Cohn:

The reporter from the Washington Post didn’t ask Donald Trump about nuclear weapons, but he wanted to talk about them anyway. “Some people have an ability to negotiate,” Trump said, of facing the Soviet Union. “You either have it or you don’t.”

He wasn’t daunted by the complexity of the topic: “It would take an hour and a half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles,” he said.

It was the fall of 1984, Trump Tower was new, and this was unusual territory for the 38-year-old real estate developer. He was three years away from his first semi-serious dalliance with presidential politics, more than 30 years before the beginning of his current campaign—but he had gotten the idea to bring this up, he said, from his attorney, his good friend and his closest adviser, Roy Cohn.

That Roy Cohn.

Roy Cohn, the lurking legal hit man for red-baiting Sen. Joe McCarthy, whose reign of televised intimidation in the 1950s has become synonymous with demagoguery, fear-mongering and character assassination. In the formative years of Donald Trump’s career, when he went from a rich kid working for his real estate-developing father to a top-line dealmaker in his own right, Cohn was one of the most powerful influences and helpful contacts in Trump’s life.

Over a 13-year-period, ending shortly before Cohn’s death in 1986, Cohn brought his say-anything, win-at-all-costs style to all of Trump’s most notable legal and business deals. Interviews with people who knew both men at the time say the relationship ran deeper than that—that Cohn’s philosophy shaped the real estate mogul’s worldview and the belligerent public persona visible in Trump’s presidential campaign.

“Something Cohn had, Donald liked,” Susan Bell, Cohn’s longtime secretary, said this week when I asked her about the relationship between her old boss and Trump.

By the 1970s, when Trump was looking to establish his reputation in Manhattan, the elder Cohn had long before remade himself as the ultimate New York power lawyer, whose clientele included politicians, financiers and mob bosses. Cohn engineered the combative response to the Department of Justice’s suit alleging racial discrimination at the Trumps’ many rental properties in Brooklyn and Queens. He brokered the gargantuan tax abatements and the mob-tied concrete work that made the Grand Hyatt hotel and Trump Tower projects. He wrote the cold-hearted prenuptial agreement before the first of his three marriages and filed the headline-generating antitrust suit against the National Football League. To all of these deals, Cohn brought his political connections, his public posturing and a simple credo: Always attack, never apologize.
[…]
It was a long, formidable list that included the executives of media empires, the Archbishop of New York and mafia kingpin Fat Tony Salerno, and there, too, near the top, was budding, grasping Donald John Trump.
[…]
“If you need someone to get vicious toward an opponent, you get Roy,” he told Newsweek in 1979.

A year later, pressed by a reporter from New York magazine to justify his association with Cohn, he was characteristically blunt: “All I can tell you is he’s been vicious to others in his protection of me.”

He elaborated in an interview in 2005. “Roy was brutal, but he was a very loyal guy,” Trump told author Tim O’Brien. “He brutalized for you.”

Trump, in the end, turned some of that cold calculation on his teacher, severing his professional ties to Cohn when he learned his lawyer was dying of AIDS.

More at the link. This guy … oy.


Current NY polling via 538:

Warren speaks for the reality based community


by digby

Elizabeth Warren has no illusions about what’s gone wrong in Washington. She wrote an op-ed today spelling it out:

SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM recently appeared on “The Daily Show’’ to endorse Ted Cruz for president. During the interview, host Trevor Noah ran an earlier clip in which Graham said that the choice between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz was like picking between getting shot or poisoned. Graham shrugged and said he’d decided to support Cruz because, well, Cruz is poison and maybe there is an antidote. What an endorsement!

The question that Graham and Noah didn’t discuss is how the Republicans painted themselves into this corner. The answer, at least in part, can be found in the Senate, where Republicans have spent years nurturing the extremism for which Trump and Cruz are merely the next logical step. In other words: Republican senators laid the foundation for their presidential front-runners.

Barack Obama won two consecutive elections and has been president for seven years. But since the first day of his presidency, Republican leaders have rejected his legitimacy and abused the rules of the Senate in an all-out effort to cripple the government under his leadership. They refused to try to make government better — opting instead to try to shut down government altogether rather than to accept a functioning government led by someone they didn’t like.

In 2013, as Obama began his second term, Republican leaders flatly rejected his authority to confirm any judges to fill any of three open seats on the second-highest court in the country, and Democrats had to change the filibuster rules in order to move those nominees forward. Once Republicans took over the Senate in 2015, judicial confirmations nearly ground to a halt.

And it wasn’t just judges. Senate Republicans tried to block the president’s nominees to serve on the National Labor Relations Board, the agency that resolves disputes between workers and their bosses. They held up the president’s nominee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency that defends consumers from shady practices in the financial sector. They held up the president’s nominees to fill top positions in the Environmental Protection Agency, the office that helps ensure that the air we breathe and the water we drink is safe. Republicans had few objections to specific nominees — they simply wanted to keep posts vacant and shut down as many parts of government as they could… 

For seven years, through artificial debt ceiling crises, deliberate government shutdowns, and intentional confirmation blockades, Senate Republicans have acted as though the election and reelection of Obama relieved them of any responsibility to do their jobs. Senate Republicans embraced the idea that government shouldn’t work at all unless it works only for themselves and their friends. The campaigns of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are the next logical outgrowth of the same attitude — if you can’t get what you want, just ignore the obligations of governing, then divert attention and responsibility by wallowing in a toxic stew of attacks on Muslims, women, Latinos, and each other. 

There’s more. Read on. She tells it like it is.

If you are worried about such gargantuan problems as climate change, income inequality, human rights then job one is to make sure that these people are not given the reins to the most powerful nation on earth at their moment of peak lunacy. It is simply unthinkable.

Here’s Ted Cruz on climate change talking all kinds of “populist” talk designed to lull people into thinking he cares about the working man. He’s one slick piece of work:

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

If climate change were a TV show, a hearing in Washington yesterday would be counterprogramming. Senator Ted Cruz held a hearing. He showcased witnesses who questioned the findings of climate science. On the same day, he came by to make his case to us.

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

The Republican presidential candidate raised this issue just as negotiators discuss climate change in Paris. Nearly 200 countries are working out commitments to fight it. None are questioning facts like those on a climate webpage published by NASA.

INSKEEP: NASA says carbon dioxide is at its highest level in 650,000 years. It says 9 of the 10 warmest years on record have come in this century, and Arctic ice has reached its lowest levels on record.

GREENE: For most scientists, debates over human-caused climate change center not on whether it’s happening but just how big it will be or how quickly it’s coming.

INSKEEP: But climate change remains a subject of fierce partisan debate in the United States. At his hearing yesterday, Senator Cruz heard from scientists as well as an activist who have questioned the science. And in our studios, he offered a reason why he believes vast numbers of scientists have bent their findings.

What do you think about what is seen as a broad scientific consensus that there is man-caused climate change?

TED CRUZ: Well, I believe that public policy should follow the science and follow the data. I am the son of two mathematicians and computer programmers and scientists. In the debate over global warming, far too often politicians in Washington – and for that matter, a number of scientists receiving large government grants – disregard the science and data and instead push political ideology. You and I are both old enough to remember 30, 40 years ago, when, at the time, we were being told by liberal politicians and some scientists that the problem was global cooling…

INSKEEP: There was a moment when some people said that.

CRUZ: That we were facing the threat of an incoming ice age. And their solution to this problem is that we needed massive government control of the economy, the energy sector and every aspect of our lives. But then, as you noted, the data didn’t back that up. So then, many of those same liberal politicians and a number of those same scientists switched their theory to global warming.

INSKEEP: This is a conspiracy, then, in your view.

CRUZ: No, this is liberal politicians who want government power over the economy, the energy sector and every aspect of our lives.

INSKEEP: And almost all the countries in the world have joined in to this approach?

CRUZ: So let me ask you a question, Steve. Is there global warming, yes or no?

INSKEEP: According to the scientists, absolutely.

CRUZ: I’m asking you.

INSKEEP: Sure.

CRUZ: OK, you are incorrect, actually. The scientific evidence doesn’t support global warming. For the last 18 years, the satellite data – we have satellites that monitor the atmosphere. The satellites that actually measure the temperature showed no significant warming whatsoever.

INSKEEP: I’ll just note that NASA analyzes that same data differently. But we can go on.

CRUZ: But no, they don’t. You can go and look at the data. And by the way, this hearing – we have a number of scientists who are testifying about the data. But here’s the key point. Climate change is the perfect pseudoscientific theory for a big government politician who wants more power. Why? Because it is a theory that can never be disproven.

INSKEEP: Do you question the science on other widely accepted issues – for example, evolution?

CRUZ: There is a fundamental difference, which is in the name of global warming, you have politicians trying to impose trillions of dollars of cost on the world. In the I-95 Corridor, among the Washington elite, global warming is very popular because it makes you feel good about caring for the world. But I’ll tell you, you know who I’m concerned about? I’m concerned about the single mom waiting tables right now, who for seven years of the Obama economy has been trapped in stagnation. Her wages have been stagnating. It’s harder and harder to make ends meet. And what the Washington elites are trying to do is double her energy bill.

INSKEEP: Do you question other science, like evolution?

CRUZ: Any good scientist questions all science. If you show me a scientist that stops questioning science, I’ll show you someone who isn’t a scientist. And I’ll tell you, Steve. And I’ll tell you why this has shifted. Look in the world of global warming. What is the language they use? They call anyone who questions the science – who even points to the satellite data – they call you a, quote, “denier.” Denier is not the language of science. Denier is the language of religion. It is heretic. You are a blasphemer. It’s treated as a theology. But it’s about power and money. At the end of the day, it’s not complicated. This is liberal politicians who want government power.

INSKEEP: You know that your critics would say that it’s about power and money on your side. Let’s not go there for the moment. But I want to ask about this. I want to ask about facts.

CRUZ: But hold on a second. Who’s power – but let’s stop. I mean, if you are going to…

INSKEEP: Energy industry, oil industry, Texas…

CRUZ: If you’re going to toss an ad hominem.

INSKEEP: OK, not meaning to be an ad hominem. But you know. You know there are economic interests on all sides of this.

CRUZ: If you’re going to toss an ad hominem, then let’s actually respond because there’s not a moral equivalency. You say it is about power and money. I’m trying to keep power with the American people. I’m trying to keep power with the single mom waiting tables not to drive up her energy bills. I’m trying to keep power with the teenage immigrant, like my dad was, washing dishes. Now, how is that about power and money other than keeping Washington out of their lives and making it easier for people to achieve the American dream? That’s who I’m fighting for.

And here’s Trump:

Ice storm rolls from Texas to Tennessee – I’m in Los Angeles and it’s freezing. Global warming is a total, and very expensive, hoax!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2013

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They’re going to the mattresses

by digby

I’ve written a bunch about Roger Stone and Trump, most recently just this week. And I mentioned Paul Manafort’s hiring. But this adds a whole new dimension to it.

The New York Times reported on April 7 that Trump is “reboot[ing]” his campaign by giving a “stepped-up role” to Manafort. Media outlets have reported that campaign manager Corey Lewandowski sees Manafort as a “threat” to his power. Stone, who left the Trump campaign last year after reportedly clashing with Lewandowski, has criticized Trump’s campaign manager in the media.

Manafort and Stone co-founded the lobbying and consulting firm Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly (BMS&K). The Washington Post noted that BMS&K “garnered considerable scrutiny for their tactics and clients”:

Manafort is the co-founder of two lobby and consulting firms, Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly (BMS&K) and, later, Davis Manafort. Even in the lobbying industry, where the buying and selling of influence can blur ethical lines, both businesses garnered considerable scrutiny for their tactics and clients. 

BMS&K, founded in 1980, was investigated by a congressional panel in 1989 for its role in obtaining millions of dollars in federal grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to rehabilitate a low-income housing complex in New Jersey. 

In exchange, Manafort and his partners received consulting fees from developers. During the investigation, Manafort acknowledged that the work he performed in return for consulting fees could be termed “influence peddling,” The Post reported in 1991. The firm was sold to public relations giant Burson-Marsteller in 1991 for an undisclosed price.
BMS&K also appears to be the early link that connected Manafort and Trump decades ago. The firm lobbied on behalf of the Trump Organization on gaming, taxes and other issues related to Trump’s hotels, at both the federal and state levels in New York and Florida, said lobbyist and GOP strategist Charlie Black, Manafort’s former business partner.

Stone has frequently talked up Manafort’s credentials in media appearances.

“[Manafort is] the single best vote counter and convention strategist in the Republican Party,” Stone said during a March 29 appearance on Fox Business.

“My partner Paul Manafort, partner of 15 years, a friend of mine of almost 50 years, someone I’ve known since childhood, is without any question the single best convention organizer and strategist in the country,” Stone said on an April 6 appearance on The Alex Jones Show. “Whether the Trump campaign gives him the authority and the resources he needs to score a win for Donald Trump remains to be seen.”

It appears Trump is doing it.

Trump’s loss will be so humiliating I’m going to guess he’ll do pretty much anything to avoid it:

Trump: The coalition building for me will be when I win. Vince Lombardi, I saw this. He was not a big man. And I was sitting in a place with some very, very tough football players. Big, strong football players. He came in — these are tough cookies — he came in, years ago — and I’ll never forget it, I was a young man. He came in, screaming, into this place. And screaming at one of these guys who was three times bigger than him, literally. And very physical, grabbing him by the shirt. Now, this guy could’ve whisked him away and thrown him out the window in two seconds. This guy — the player — was shaking. A friend of mine. There were four players, and Vince Lombardi walked in. He was angry. And he grabbed — I was a young guy — he grabbed him by the shirt, screaming at him, and the guy was literally. . . . And I said, wow. And I realized the only way Vince Lombardi got away with that was because he won. This was after he had won so much, okay? And when you have these coaches that are just as tough as him but they don’t win, there’s revolutions. Okay? Nobody. . . . But Vince Lombardi was able to win, and he got — I have never seen anything like it. It was such a vivid impression. You had this big powerful guy, and you had Vince Lombardi, and he grabbed him by the shirt and he was screaming at him, he was angry at him.

Nobody knows when this happened and someone should ask him the name of this football playing friend of his. It may have just been something he saw in a movie once. Be that as it may, it’s still an illustration of his philosophy: win at all costs and then you can do anything you want. I’m guessing he’s now convinced that he needs some hitmen to help him get that done. And his old friend Rog is happy to oblige.

Update: more on this at National Memo

by digby

Well, maybe not enthusiastic. But relieved anyway:

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., appears to have conceded that the Republican Party has alienated Hispanic voters and will have to rely increasingly on white voters to win in November. 

“An interesting phenomenon right now is the huge turnouts for the Republican primaries, low turnout for the Democrat primaries,” McCain said in a Sunday appearance on the Phoenix-based show Politics in the Yard. “Now if all those people would get behind the Republican candidate, I think we could win this election despite the alienation, frankly, of a lot of the Hispanic voters.”

That’s awesome! But I think he’s evading the real point. It’s because they’ve alienated Hispanic voters that hey have been getting this large turnout. Trump’s wall and the giddy prospect of rounding up Mexicans and deporting them has the white base of the GOP so excited they can’t wait to vote for it.

They’re finally getting what they want. And McCain’s happy about it. But he should rethink that a little bit. Those angry Trump and Cruz voters all hate him as much as they hate immigrants and Muslims. Any politician running for re-election in Arizona under those circumstances could probably use a few Latinos in his corner.

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A 12 year old’s sense of humor

by digby

This guy is a real pip:

O’Reilly sent his producer to Princeton to walk up to black students and say the word “ghetto” https://t.co/5xRHwxa9Oc

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) April 8, 2016

He’s so clever. At making himself look like a total, unreconstructed asshole…

The good news is that racism and sexism don’t exist so it’s all good.

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Ted’s makeover

by digby

TIME’s cover story is headlined, “Likable Enough?” with a fetching portrait of Cruz with a mischievous look on his face and a lovely ice blue tie. He looks exceedingly likable and once you read the stories within, you’ll have to conclude that the man who virtually everyone who’s ever known him finds repulsive is terribly misunderstood. Where you might have thought the man was a doctrinaire right winger, steeped in religious fanaticism and radical free market extremism, you will find out that he’s actually a good old boy, salt of the earth populist. (One hopes for his sake that nobody leaves a copy lying around on the yachts of some of the billionaires who’ve been writing ten million dollar checks on his behalf. It could get awkward.)

In an interview entitled “Ted Cruz Embraces Economic Populism” a very slick Cruz says:

[B]oth parties, career politicians in both parties get in bed with the lobbyist and special interest. And the fix is in. Where Washington’s policies benefit big business, benefit the rich and the powerful at the expense of the working men and women. 

Now the point that I often make, and just a couple of days ago in Wisconsin I was visiting with a young woman who said she was a Bernie Sanders supporter. And I mentioned to her that I agreed with Bernie on the problem. 

But I said if you think the problem is Washington is corrupt, why would you want Washington to have more power? I think the answer to that problem is for Washington to have less power, for government to have less power over our lives.

This has always been the American right wing’s clever little take on “populism.” Sure, sure, folks, those  rich guys and big business are bad, very bad. But it’s all because they’re bribing politicians to give them what they want. The best thing to do is slash taxes, reverse all regulations and get rid of consumer protections so they won’t need to bribe politicians because they’ll have everything they want! Then the power of the markets will be unleashed and you can be rich too!

Throughout the interview, this wily Ivy League educated lawyer presents himself as the champion of the working class, the guy whose only concerns lie with the single mom who works as a waitress and the dad who lost his job down to the plant and can’t get ahead.  But in reality his record on economics is one that only a Koch Brother could love. And even they can’t stand him.

Still he’s presented as some sort of iconoclast who defies the usual right wing classification because he opposes the Import-Export bank and ethanol subsidies, both of which are obscure little libertarian totems that will have exactly zero effect on the lives of those waitress moms and unemployed dads for whom he purports to care so much. Most of his economic agenda will actually devastate them and everyone they know.

For instance, he’s one of the few Republicans to actually believe that the US should return to the gold standard. This is a fringe position held by acolytes of Rand Paul and Glenn Beck which the Washington Post wonkblog noted is held by virtually no experts anywhere. It quotes University of Chicago professor Anil Kashyap  saying that “love of the gold standard implies macroeconomic illiteracy.” (And needless to say, calling a goldbug a populist is to take a hallucinogenic trip down the yellow brick road, if you know what I mean.)

He’s not just a run-of-the-mill deficit hawk — he is for a balanced budget amendment combined with monumental tax cuts (and the total abolition of the IRS) which would require disastrous cuts to thousands of vital programs. Everyone knows he favors repealing the Affordable Care Act. He led the quixotic right wing hostage taking effort to shut down the government and default on the debt in order to make that happen. It doesn’t take much to imagine the chaos and pain that would ensue as tens of millions of waitress moms and unemployed dads lose their insurance.

He plans to completely deregulate Wall Street and has been endorsed by the Club for Growth which describes its mission as “cutting taxes, controlling federal spending, personal accounts for Social Security, ending the death tax, eliminating the capital gains tax, fundamental tax reform, providing true school choice and minimizing government’s role in our daily lives.” Every one of those goals are designed to benefit the wealthy at the expense of the average citizen.

Those are just some of his economic policies, all of which are as conservative as it gets. For all we know, he may even believe his own hype — conservatives have been selling trickle down as a great boon to the middle and working class for decades. It’s possible that he just hasn’t noticed that all of this hocus pocus has been tried and has failed miserably to benefit anyone but the 1%. But Cruz is a very cunning politician and the smooth way he uses populist-style rhetoric to sell a plutocratic agenda makes it likely he knows exactly what he’s doing.

Ted Cruz saying he’s fighting the elites on behalf of the working man sounds very nice. But let’s just say that the big money boys won’t be disappointed if his agenda is enacted.  Indeed, they’ll be ecstatic. And surely the media must know this. Calling him a “populist” because he trash talks Washington and so does Bernie Sanders shows just how easily the press eagerly allows themselves to be gulled into a sexy story line. And this one looks distressingly like something we might see cooked up in Grover Norquist’s basement: the “everyman” populist Cruz, slayer of RINOs and DINOs vs the ancient establishment drudge Hillary Clinton, defender of the corrupt Washington cartel. And that’s ridiculous. Ted Cruz is so deeply wedded to laissez faire, free market ideology that he makes any Democrat, whether Clinton, Sanders or even Joe Lieberman look like William Jennings Bryan by comparison.

All presidential finalists get an opportunity to be looked at with fresh eyes by the press when it starts to look as if they have a serious chance. But it behooves the media not to get carried away into total fantasy in order to set up a preferred story line. Ted Cruz is a very smart guy and has been underrated throughout this campaign. But ultra conservative Republicans aren’t voting for him because of his winning personality or “populist” economics. They’re voting for him because he a far right fanatic just like they are. Just because he isn’t Donald Trump it doesn’t mean he isn’t also a demagogue.  He’s just a different kind.

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