Poll Confirms: Tea Party Movement a Greater Threat to Republicans Than to Democrats

New Demographic Survey Finds Tea Party Movement Is Essentially the GOP's Voter Base: Affluent, Overwhelmingly White, Predominantly Male, Mostly Middle-Aged and Older, Fiercely Conservative -- and, At Only 18 Percent of the Electorate, More Likely to Wreak Havoc in the Spring Republican Primaries Than in the November General Election



Tea Party protesters march through Washington, D.C. last September. Strong anecdotal evidence, based on attendance at its rallies across the country, that the Tea Party movement does not represent a broad demographic cross-section of the American electorate were confirmed last week by a new survey of the movement by The New York Times and CBS News that found that Tea Party supporters are overwhelmingly white, predominantly male, middle-aged and older, fiercely conservative and heavily Republican -- essentially the GOP's electoral base. The survey also found that the Tea Party movement, which comprises less than a fifth of the total nationwide electorate (18 percent), is economically more affluent than the general U.S. population. (Photo: Aaron Wiener/The Washington Independent)


(Posted 5:00 a.m. EDT Tuesday, April 20, 2010)

By SKEETER SANDERS

Who's afraid of the big, bad Tea Party movement?

If you guessed the Democrats, you'd be dead wrong. On the contrary, it's the Republicans who need to be worried.

A new demographic survey of the Tea Party movement released last week by The New York Times and CBS News confirms what many observers of Tea Party rallies have said anecdotally about the movement: That it does not represent a broad cross-section of the American electorate, let alone a majority.

To the contrary, the movement more closely resembles the electoral base of today's Republican Party: Overwhelmingly white (89 percent), predominantly male (59 percent), mostly middle-aged and older (75 percent) and fiercely conservative (73 percent).

And while a separate poll by the Pew Center for the People and the Press released Monday shows that 80 percent of Americans overall are highly critical of government, a clear partisan divide exists over whether the public considers the government to be a threat to them.

More Republicans (30 percent) than Democrats (nine percent) and independents (25 percent) are angry with government, the Pew survey found, with 43 percent of Republicans, 18 percent of Democrats and 33 percent of independents believe the government is a threat to them.

Significantly, the Pew study found, independents who lean Republican are far more hostile toward government (37 percent angry, 50 percent feeling threatened) than independents who lean Democratic (15 percent angry, 21 percent feeling threatened).

Tea Party supporters are by far the most angry and hostile toward government, with 43 percent of Tea Party supporters angry and a stunning 57 percent of them feeling threatened.

REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS FARING WORSE THAN DEMOCRATS -- BUT NOT BY MUCH

Chief reasons for the ill feelings are economic fears wrought by the recession and high unemployment and frustration with the partisan gridlock in Washington -- the latter of which has resulted in record-high negative ratings for Congress.

Only 40 percent of Democrats have faith in their elected representatives in Congress, the lowest positive rating by the majority party in the history of the Pew survey. But the GOP fares worse, with only 37 percent of Republicans expressing faith in their congressional representatives.

This is bad news for the GOP, for it means that the Tea Party movement, rather than pose a threat to Democrats in next fall's midterm elections, is more likely to wreak havoc in the upcoming Republican primaries this spring -- most of which are closed to independent voters.

The likely result is a Republican Party going into the November election saddled with hard-line right-wing nominees sure, particularly in Senate races, to turn off moderate voters -- whose support is absolutely vital in order for the minority party to win back control of Congress.

Already, two GOP stalwarts -- Florida Governor Charlie Crist and Arizona Senator John McCain -- are in serious danger of suffering humiliating primary defeats at the hands of Tea Party-backed insurgents.

Crist has fallen behind conservative Florida House speaker Marco Rubio in the GOP primary and is reported to be seriously considering running as an independent in November. McCain -- the 2008 GOP presidential nominee -- is fighting for his political life against right-wing radio talk-show host J.D. Hayworth, with a new Rasmussen Poll showing McCain leading Hayworth by only five points, 47-42 percent, down from a 48-41 percent lead in March.

SCORES OF TEA PARTIERS MOUNTING STIFF PRIMARY CHALLENGES TO GOP REGULARS

Crist and McCain are far from alone. Scores of other GOP incumbents and party establishment-backed Republican candidates in open races are also confronting right-wing Tea Party-backed primary challengers.

In Kentucky, Tea Party-backed candidate Rand Paul, the 47-year-old son of Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas), is favored to win the state's May 18 GOP Senate primary against GOP establishment candidate Trey Grayson, the Kentucky secretary of state. "There's a Tea Party tidal wave coming, and when it comes, it's going to sweep a lot of people out," Grayson told the McClatchy Newspapers.

In the Democratic primary, state Attorney General Jack Conway is battling Lieutenant Governor Daniel Mongiardo. Recent polls show Conway and Mongiardo running neck and neck, while Paul holds a commanding 15-point lead over Grayson.

State Republican leaders fear that a primary victory by Paul -- who's considerably to the right of Grayson -- could lead to a loss of the Senate seat now held by the retiring Jim Bunning to the Democratic nominee in the fall election. Bunning has endorsed Paul. Grayson was endorsed by former Vice President Dick Cheney as "the real conservative" in the race.

Even Fox News -- now embroiled in a conflict-of-interest scandal involving talk-show host Sean Hannity's open promotion of a Tea Party event he planned to participate in, only to pull out at the last minute on the orders of Fox News executives -- has, ironically, taken note of the growing Tea Party threat to the Republicans.

Appearing on Glenn Beck's program in March, former Bush political guru Karl Rove said that "The Republican Party, like any party that doesn't control the White House, will not have a single voice or a single leader until the 2012 presidential election, and frankly, I don't want one person [in that position] now."

Beck expressed his fear that the Tea Party movement could ultimately coalesce into a third major political party in its own right -- at the GOP's expense. Noting that independents now outnumber both Democrats and Republicans, "I think that having a third party -- it could be a nightmare [for the Republicans]," he said. "There are so many conservatives who are saying 'Please, Republicans, get your stuff together!'"

SURVEY FINDS NEAR-TOTAL LACK OF DIVERSITY IN TEA PARTY MOVEMENT

Only one percent of Tea Party members are African-American, Times/CBS News survey found -- a figure much lower than the four percent of blacks who identify as Republicans. Ditto for Asian-Americans. The survey did not specifically identify Latinos in the movement, instead listing six percent of Tea Party members as "other."

Given the incendiary anti-Latino and anti-immigrant rhetoric by former Representative Tom Tancredo (R-Colorado) at the recent Tea Party convention in Nashville (Not to mention a fiercely personal attack by Tancredo on President Obama at a Tea Party rally in South Carolina that's been roundly condemned as racist) -- as well as extremely inflammatory rhetoric and signs at other Tea Party protests in recent months -- it's easy to see why blacks and Latinos are, for the most part, shunning the movement like the plague.

More than a third of Tea Party members hail from the Deep South -- where support for the GOP and opposition to Obama is strongest. Not surprisingly, Tea Partiers are far more hostile toward the president than the electorate as a whole. Only seven percent of Tea Party supporters approve of the president's job performance (compared to 50 percent of voters overall), while a whopping 88 percent of Tea Partiers disapprove (compared to 40 percent of voters overall).

SURVEY REVEALS SHARP CLASS DIVIDE BETWEEN TEA PARTIERS, VOTERS IN GENERAL

Significantly, the survey found that Tea Party members are more affluent economically than the nation as a whole, with more than half earning more than $50,000 a year and a fifth earning more than $100,000 a year. Twelve percent of Tea Party supporters earn more than $250,000 a year -- precisely the income brackets whose taxes are going up, while everyone earning less than that are seeing their taxes go down.

In sharp contrast, the survey found, voters in general were considerably less affluent than Tea Party supporters. While 35 percent of Tea Partiers earned less than $50,000 a year, nearly half of voters in general (48 percent) fall into that category. Only 25 percent of voters in general earn more than $100,000 a year compared to the 32 percent of Tea Partiers in that category.

The Times/CBS News survey found several telltale signs of class bias: While 54 percent of voters in general said that raising taxes on those earning more than $250,000 a year was a good idea, a whopping 80 percent of Tea Party supporters said it was a bad idea.

And while voters in general were evenly divided on whether the Obama administration favors the poor or treats all classes equally (27 percent each), Tea Party supporters were quite adamant (56 percent) in their belief that the administration favored the poor. Only nine percent of Tea Party supporters felt the administration was treating all classes equally.

OTHER SHARP DIFFERENCES BETWEEN TEA PARTIERS, GENERAL ELECTORATE

The figures stand in sharp contrast to voters in general in the Times/CBS News poll, 77 percent of whom identify as white, 12 percent black, three percent Asian and seven percent "other" (presumably Latino).

Fifty-one percent of voters in general are women, while 49 percent are men. In terms of age, the general electorate is evenly split, 50-50, between those under 45 and those over 45.

While 73 percent of Tea Party supporters identify as conservative, only 34 percent of voters in general do. Thirty-eight percent of voters in general identify themselves as moderate (compared to only 20 percent of Tea Party supporters) and 20 percent of voters in general identify as liberal (compared to only four percent of Tea Party supporters).

At Tea Party rallies across the country, activists have boldly asserted that their movement represents "the majority of the American people." But the Times/CBS News survey shows that only 18 percent of Americans identify with the Tea Party movement.

And with Tea Party supporters coming largely from the ranks of Republicans -- who themselves constitute only 23 percent of the electorate -- it's difficult to see how this movement can pose a threat to the Democrats in November, especially if, for the rest of this year, the economy picks up and joblessness goes down.

# # #

Volume V, Number 18
Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

Let The Sun Shine In......

The Brutal Clarity of the "L" Word

Keep telling low-information people that they are in hell, they will vote for the devil, himself, to get out.....of course, they will find themselves in the deeper recesses of the pit.

Last week, NY Times economics correspondent Floyd Norris noted a major development that, as major developments go, is elsewhere observed with peculiar infrequency: "The American economy," began Norris' lede, "appears to be in a cyclical recovery that is gaining strength.

"Firms have begun to hire," he continued -- indeed, in the first quarter alone the economy added more than a million jobs, "the best performance since the spring of 2005" -- and of perhaps even better news for the long-term outlook, that prime mover of the economic machine, consumer spending, "seems to be accelerating."

Additionally, the stock market has rallied more than 3,000 points since President Obama took office, and that's enormously good news for many an individual's retirement plans.
So all in all, the economic legacy of the previous administration's blinding misrule, mismanagement and miscalculation is happily turning from present reality to good-riddance history.

Yet, although we're hardly out of the woods, which even the White House is randy to remind us at every podium and press-release opportunity, "it is surprising," wrote Norris, "that many commentators ... seem to doubt that such a thing could possibly be happening."

Worse, in this layman's opinion, is that their complicating "doubt" is often converted to simple dismissal, which, in J.M. Keynes' famous metaphorical terms, only suppresses the economy's "animal spirits" -- a collective kind of spooky financial zeitgeist that plagued FDR's New Dealers to a palsied frustration; they soon found themselves boxing dark and elusive shadows rather than toasting the economy's somewhat optimistic tangibles. It's a pathology that feeds on itself.

In Norris' answer to Why all the doubt (and dismissal)? he offered several explanations "for the glum outlook that are unrelated to the actual economic data," including empirical evidence of traditionally slow recoveries; economic gurus' mortification at having blown past predictions, so now there exists their "understandable hesitation to appear foolishly optimistic again"; those plucky Republicans who "are loath to give President Obama credit for anything"; and, counterintuitively, Congressional Democrats who "would love to give the president credit" but also want "another stimulus bill ... [and] chances for that are not enhanced by the perception the economy is getting better."

Given the shortest shrift in Norris' piece, however, is possibly the most conspicuous reason for the nation's sustained gloom: the GOP's cranky, relentlessly depressing doomsday machine (see above; the Great Depression's psychological factors).

I'm certainly not saying that 24/7 Republican gloom and doom is the principal contributor to the economy's structural troubles -- of which there are many, most notably vast inequalities in wealth and the redistributive shortfalls that maintain and exacerbate those undeserved inequalities -- but in the way of unremitting drags on indispensible optimism, you'll find no better source than the Grand Old Party.

To hear Republicans tell it, we are, in fact, doomed. The economy may have added hundreds of thousands of jobs, the markets may be bubbling upwards, and consumer spending and business investment may indeed be on the wary uptick, but we're doomed, they'll tell you: doomed, Doomed, DOOMED!

Sure, that's politics; that's the way it goes, and no one should expect those tirelessly patriotic hypesters of the indomitable American Spirit and the American Way and the American Dream to say anything different (wait, is there a rhetorical flaw somewhere in that?). There are, after all, only 535 jobs + 1 that Republicans are interested in -- and the invincible gloom of "Anything is better than this" is always a splendid entry in the "Objectives" section of any political resumé.

No, what irks me -- and quite possibly irks Floyd Norris -- is that Democrats are so repeatedly hesitant to rebuff the Republicans' gloom: Isn't it becoming a trifle close to reelection time to be downplaying economic improvement, notwithstanding the Democratic desire for an additional stimulus package?

But what irks even more is Democratic resistance to the simple yet devastatingly accurate use of the "L" word: Republicans, despite alpine mountains of economic data which prove otherwise, are simply lying to the American people when they hammer away at the invented ineffectiveness of last year's stimulus package -- hundreds of billions spent and "Not one job created," they cry.

There's no better word for it. They're lying. Republicans aren't just distorting, they're not merely twisting, and they're far exceeding any tasteful boundaries of political spin. They're lying. They know it and Democrats know it; problem is, millions of low-information, American would-be consumers -- those prime movers -- don't know it.

On the whole, the news that first filters down and registers among habitually inattentive voters is the Big Bad Lie of altogether negative information. And the only way to effectively combat and conquer the Lie is to pointedly, ruthlessly call it what it is: that makes the news -- pound, pound, pound, Democrats Call Republicans Liars, pound, pound, pound -- and that then registers in the woefully part-time civic mind.

Little lightbulbs ensue.

Some might object that calling a lie a lie -- traditionally, to be sure, a political no-no -- would only add hostility to our already overhostile and polarized environment. No doubt, it would. The counter-objection, however, is that calling a lie a lie adds perhaps brutal but necessary clarity.

Please respond to P.M.'s commentary by leaving comments below and sharing them with the BuzzFlash community. For personal questions or comments you can contact him at fifthcolumnistmail@gmail.com

THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter

Let The Sun Shine In......

Congress: GET IT RIGHT ON FINANCIAL REORM....

.....or else. 

We mean it! 

We are tired of corporate types getting, literally, away with murder. Just remember where the votes are and don't think for a minute that you can get away with what you once did. We are watching you and informing our friends.

by Meg White

Like most political writers, I like studies. Sometimes the data give me semi-factual fodder for my opinions and other times a reason to reexamine my preconceptions.

Thing is, there are so many studies that people often only read the ones that have conclusions with which they already agree. In the worst cases, the request for a study to be undertaken in the first place is not an attempt to gain further knowledge, but a delay tactic.

And I'm afraid such is the case with the proposed government studies folded into the financial reform legislation working its way through Congress.

The New York Times writes today that those studies (roughly 38 in the House bill and 24 in the Senate) will "effectively delay for up to two years the possibility of addressing" the problems that led up to the financial crisis in the first place, and may prevent new regulations from being implemented until then. Reading between the lines of the piece, it's clear that the studies are less about information-gathering and more about mollifying the banking industry (emphasis mine):

Overly optimistic credit ratings and investors’ dependence on the credit rating agencies, for example, were shown to have contributed to the subprime mortgage mess. But the Senate and House bills call for four to six separate studies of up to 30 months’ duration of how credit ratings agencies work, how they are compensated and what can be done to make their ratings more relevant to investors.

Regulators have been investigating some of these same matters, and issuing new directives about them, since at least the early 1990s.

Several of the studies focus on proposals that are vigorously opposed by banking industry groups or Wall Street firms, like a change that would make stock brokers subject to the same fiduciary standards as financial advisers — that is, to act in the best interest of their customers. 

The Senate bill calls for a new study even though the Securities and Exchange Commission commissioned a similar report in 2008. At the same time, the new bill leaves the S.E.C. with no power to act on the subject of either review.

Opponents of new regulations say that the prescribed studies are warranted because they can help derail overly burdensome rules that can strangle growth, particularly for small companies, which often lack the resources required to meet the demands of regulators. 

...Some of the proposals for studies are so specific that they raise questions about whose interests are being watched over.

Any time the banking industry is clamoring for something these days, questions should be raised. The fact that The New York Times is (sort of) raising them should in turn raise eyebrows among progressives.

In a statement today calling for more robust financial reforms than are in the Senate bill currently, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) specifically criticized (among other things) the fact that the GAO is authorized to study the actions of the Federal Reserve Bank, but is not allowed to spur action based on its findings:

The legislation proposed by the Senate Banking Committee chairman would allow the Government Accountability Office to audit the Fed's emergency lending programs, but bar GAO from naming loan recipients and detailing the terms. “As long as the Federal Reserve is allowed to keep secrets about its loans, we will never know the true financial condition of the banking system. The lack of transparency could lead to an even bigger crisis in the future,” Sanders said.

He added a sense of urgency toward the end of the press release:

“We cannot wait for the next crisis to solve this problem... We have got to take action now.”

If financial reform is going to proceed in the same manner as healthcare legislation has, however, progressive action will not amount to more than such press releases. Reading the Times piece, there's an indication that pragmatism might indeed rule the day in Congress:

Consumer advocates say they believe that too often studies are used to push an issue down the road, perhaps with the hope of never having to address it.

Representative Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said there was truth to that, but political realities often dictate that studies be included.

“If you shoot them down, the other side will say, ‘What, are you afraid of, the facts?’ ” Mr. Frank said. “Occasionally it is a legitimate thing, but mostly it is political folderol.”

But being realistic about future attacks from "the other side" is unlikely to win elections in this populist climate, at least when it comes to financial reform.

In her interview with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner yesterday, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow noted that this is one of the key pieces of legislation for Democrats facing reelection in the fall:

After health reform, a lot of Democrats in the Congress are looking forward to being able to run on Wall Street regulation, these new rules for Wall Street.  And with Republicans essentially signaling that they‘re mostly going to oppose them, it gives Democrats an opportunity to say we are running against Wall Street, which I think a lot of them are salivating at the chance to do that.

Later in the interview, Maddow noted that the slow downs and weaknesses in the bill may prevent that from being a believable election year argument. Geithner's following response struck me as evidence of him giving too much credit to the rationality of the voters during an election year. But he clearly does understand the need for quick action, as evidenced by the many times he referenced swiftness (emphasis mine):

MADDOW: ...If, though, people do not believe that this administration and the government in general is on their side against predation from big firms, Wall Street, the result of that is that there‘s going to be a lot of people elected in November who, if they don‘t show up with actual pitchforks, probably will have flaming torches. And we are going to get very, very, very populist very fast unless this administration takes a more populist tone and people start to believe in it because that is the mood of the country. 

GEITHNER:  I will say a different view.  I think people are going to judge me and then judge the president.  They‘re going to judge their elected representatives in Washington by what they do to make a difference in the lives of Americans. So we are overwhelmingly focused on trying to make sure that we are acting as quickly and as forcefully as we can to make things better here.  And we -- this president -- he moved with enormous speed and care and force doing incredibly important, difficult and, you know, these unpopular things because they were necessary to save the economy from collapse and make sure we had an economy that was growing again, creating jobs again. That is what people are going to measure us by.  If we don‘t focus on that every day, then, we are going to be in a position where, you know, we are going to leave the economy much weaker, Americans losing even more faith in their government. And that is what guides all the actions we are making.  We are trying to focus on what is going to make the biggest difference as quickly as possible and things that matter to, not just the basic lives of Americans, but their confidence in their government again.  Because again, this government, the government of the country, failed them terribly.

Now, I know what you're thinking. Calling on Congress (especially the Senate) to act quickly on anything is like selling 3-D glasses to a blind guy. But the truth of the matter is that Maddow is right about the optics here.

The financial reform issue is different from healthcare in a historic way. Show me anyone who tries to convince the American people that the financial system is neither broken nor in need of an immediate fix, and I will show you a 2010 loser.

We don't need a study to tell us that deregulation created a huge casino to develop where our country's financial bedrock used to be. We had an enormous case study to tell us that: It was called the financial collapse of 2008.

If we can't appeal to facts or a sense of basic decency in Congress, at least we should be able to appeal to lawmakers' desires to keep their jobs. Studies can happen any time, but we need financial reform now or we will face dire circumstances well beyond the losses the Democrats will suffer in November.

Let The Sun Shine In......

House Budget Committee approves reconciliation bill

By Lori Montgomery

A key House committee voted Monday to advance President Obama's plan to overhaul the nation's health-care system, clearing the way for the House to vote on the measure later this week.

The House Budget Committee voted 21 to 16 to send the health care legislation to the House Rules Committee. That panel is expected to meet Thursday to draft new language for the reconciliation bill, compiling a package of fixes to the $875 billion measure that passed the Senate on Christmas Eve.

Two Democrats voted with all 14 Republicans to reject the effort to proceed with the Democratic strategy. Rep. Chet Edwards (Texas) and Allen Boyd (Fla.) both voted against the House health care bill last fall.

By Lori Montgomery  |  March 15, 2010; 3:36 PM ET

Let The Sun Shine In......

Self-executing rule may be used to pass healthcare!

Whatever it takes. JUST DO IT!


Washington (CNN) -- Can the House of Representatives pass a health care bill without actually voting on it?

That question -- bizarre to most casual political observers -- took center stage Tuesday as top Hous e Democrats struggled to find enough support to push President Obama's top legislative priority over the finish line.

The House is expected to vote this week on the roughly $875 billion bill passed by the Senate in December. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, needs 216 votes from her 253-member caucus to pass the measure. No Republicans are expected to back it.

Pelosi's problem: A lot of House Democrats don't like the Senate bill. Among other things, some House members have expressed concern the Senate bill does not include an adequate level of subsidies to help middle- and lower-income families purchase coverage. They also object to the Senate's proposed tax on high-end insurance plans. The House passed its more-expansive health care bill in November.

Pelosi's solution: Have the House pass the Senate bill, but then immediately follow up with another vote in both chambers of Congress on a package of changes designed in part to make the overall legislation more acceptable to House Democrats.

Now, Pelosi also may try to help unhappy House Democrats by allowing them to avoid a direct up-or-down vote on the Senate bill. The speaker may call for a vote on a rule that would simply "deem" the Senate bill to be passed. The House then would proceed to a separate vote on the more popular changes to the Senate bill.

House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Tuesday that Republicans will try to block the procedure. They will try to force a vote on a resolution requiring the Senate health care bill to be brought to an up-or-down vote.

Video: Health care vote nears

Video: Obama pushes health care in Ohio

Video: Crunch time for health care

Video: Tea Party plans protests

RELATED TOPICS

• Health Care Reform
• U.S. House of Representatives
• U.S. Senate
• Democratic Party
• Republican Party

The Democratic plan is "the ultimate in Washington power grabs, a legislative ploy that lets Democrats defy the will of the American people while attempting to eliminate any trace of actually doing so," Boehner said.

Senate Minority Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, referred to the maneuver as Pelosi's "scheme and deem" plan Tuesday morning. He called it "jaw-dropping in its audacity."

The "process has been tainted," he said on the Senate floor. This "will go down as one of the most extraordinary legislative sleight of hand in history. ... Make no mistake: This will be a career-defining and a Congress-defining vote."
He said the "entire effort has been a travesty."

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, sought to brush aside the GOP complaints, telling reporters that Republicans have used the maneuver -- also known as a "self-executing rule" -- more often than Democrats in the past.

"Process is interesting," Hoyer said. "But in the final analysis what is [more] interesting [to] the American public is what this bill will do for them and their families to make their lives ... more secure."

Hoyer said House Democratic leaders haven't made any final decisions regarding the process that will be used to try to pass the Senate bill. But he defended the self-executing rule as a legitimate tactic and promised the House will vote on the Senate bill "in one form or another."

Congress first used the self-executing rule in 1933, according to a memo that Morris sent to reporters Tuesday. Morris noted the rule is typically used on votes to increase the debt limit. He also argued it has been used "far more often by Republicans than by Democrats."

The spat over the rule is the second major procedural argument to erupt between Democrats and Republicans in the health care debate in recent weeks.

GOP leaders also are fuming over Democrats' decision to use a legislative maneuver called reconciliation, which will allow changes to the health care bill to clear the Senate with a simple majority of 51 votes.

Senate Democrats lost their filibuster-proof, 60-seat supermajority in January with the election of GOP Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts.

Republicans contend that reconciliation, which is limited to provisions pertaining to the budget, was never meant to facilitate passage of a sweeping reform measure such as the health care bill. Democrats point out that reconciliation was used to pass several major bills in recent years, including George W. Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts.

Democratic leaders also have indicated they need to do whatever is necessary to bring closure to what has become an acrimonious yearlong debate. Obama has pushed for a final congressional vote in recent weeks.

"I think people have come to the realization that this is the moment," senior White House adviser David Axelrod said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union."

If enacted, the Democratic reform proposal would constitute the biggest expansion of federal health care guarantees since the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid more than four decades ago. The plan is expected to extend insurance coverage to more than 30 million Americans.

The Senate bill would reduce federal deficits by about $118 billion over 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Congressional Republicans contend the plan amounts to an ill-conceived government takeover of the country's health care system. They have said it will do little to slow spiraling medical costs. They also argue it will lead to higher premiums and taxes for middle-class families while resulting in deep Medicare cuts.

Public opinion polls indicate a majority of Americans have turned against the administration's health care reform plan, though individual elements of the proposal remain widely popular.

CNN's Ted Barrett, Alan Silverleib, Paul Steinhauser and Deirdre Walsh contributed to this report. 

....And how many of those people are misinformed 'till hell won't have it?

Let The Sun Shine In......

Republican lack of partisanship

 

Continues to be shocking, if not surprising.

 

March 7, 2010

Retiring Dem: GOP doesn't want to dance on health care

Posted: March 7th, 2010 11:24 AM ET

From CNN Associate Producer Martina Stewart

Retiring Rep. Brian Baird said Sunday that Republicans see health care reform as 'a potent political weapon.'

Washington (CNN) – A retiring House Democrat who is himself unsure whether he will back his own party’s health care reform bill criticized congressional Republicans Sunday for their lack of bipartisanship on the issue of health care.

“Tom DeLay was on ‘Dancing with the Stars,’” Rep. Brian Baird, D-Washington, said on CNN’s State of the Union, referring to the Republican former House Majority leader, who was also a guest on the show.

Later: DeLay explains turn on DWTS

“We don’t have a dance partner,” Baird said. “We don’t have someone on the other side who is seriously willing to say, ‘If you do these things, you will have our support.’ And the reason is they see it as such a potent political weapon.”

Assuming - as many in his party have recently – that the final health care reform legislation will get no Republican support, Baird defended use of a Senate procedural measure called reconciliation which allows certain budgetary bills in the Senate to be passed with just 51 votes.

“The choice you’re left with is a majority vote which I think most people think is how we ought to do things anyway,” Baird told CNN Senior Political Correspondent Candy Crowley. “And, secondly, the Republicans used reconciliation on multiple times including for the mother of all deficit increases, the Bush tax cuts.”

Baird previously voted against the health care reform bill that passed in the House. Now the Washington Democrat is trying to determine whether he will support a final bill based largely on the version passed by the Senate but modified slightly to address some issues of particular concern to the White House and House Democrats.

Related video: Dem unsure on health care

Baird, who was a practicing neuropsychologist before being elected to Congress, told Crowley he supports the idea of overhauling the health care system. “We have to do something and I actually applaud President Obama and the Democratic Party for taking this difficult challenge on,” he said.

“The question is: Is this the best way we can do reform?,” Baird said of his reservations. “It is very complicated. It will be expensive.” Baird quickly noted that both the House and the Senate bill would be largely paid for and have both been projected to reduce the deficit over time.

Baird said he would have approached crafting a bill “a good bit differently.”

“I would like to see us start and say ‘What are the things we can agree on?’”

The Democrat told Crowley he thought most Americans agree that “you should not discriminate against pre-existing conditions. I think it makes a lot of sense to be able to buy policies across state lines so you have competition and you can carry your policy with you if you move or lose your job.

“The complexity, I think, worries a lot of people,” Baird added.

Baird also said Sunday that he is not swayed by the notion of voting in favor the bill because his impending retirement means he will face no political consequences for supporting an unpopular piece of legislation.

“My personal struggle is, quite frankly, could we not do this in a much more simple, elegant, direct, straightforward way? I think we could. I doubt I’m going to get a chance to do that, so the difficult choice for some of us is to say: ‘This is not the bill I would write, by a darn sight, but it is certainly better than the status quo. What would we do if we don’t have this option?’”

Asked by Crowley whether he would vote against a final bill after determining it did not met his personal criteria even if that vote meant that one of the president’s top domestic agenda items would not pass, Baird did not hesitate: “Yes.”

But Baird quickly sought to clarify. The retiring Democrat said it would be “a tragedy” if some type of health care reform was not enacted. “And so that’s the choice. I don’t think this bill is what I would like to see us do if I ran the universe, as it were, but I don’t get to do that so the status quo is unsustainable.”

After a year of legislative work on health care reform on Capitol Hill, the White House has recently stepped in to try to move the process forward. Right now congressional Democrats are waiting for the administration to release final legislative language for a bill that would be put to a vote in both chambers through the reconciliation procedure. The bill crafted by the White House would contain a number of tweaks to the health care reform bill passed by the Senate late last year. In order to harmonize the provisions of the two separate bills passed by the House and Senate last year, the House will be asked to pass the Senate bill unchanged and then both chambers would be asked to vote on the White House bill.

Senate Democrats have had to fall back on the reconciliation process after losing the critical 60th vote in their caucus when Republican Scott Brown won a recent special election to occupy the seat held for decades by the late Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts.

Follow Martina Stewart on Twitter: @MMStewartCNN

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Let The Sun Shine In......

Morning Joe

Listening to Morning Joe this morning. The talk was about just how split the American electorate is these days. Apparently not as bad as right before the (un)Civil war, but pretty bad nonetheless.

Mika and Joe were talking about how they get savaged on twitter and Peter (somebody; didn't catch the name)) has found that part of the problem is that there is a right and left echo chamber. Well, I guess that's true. I've certainly seen and been a part of it.

As a life long independent, I get so annoyed that pundits just assume that all independents are right-wingers. Not true, as I have stated time and time again. I believe bringing together good ideas from both sides and finding a way to use those ideas to support the American people in their lives, to make life as good, secure and free as possible is what D.C. and every state house should be about.

I guess that, for me, it is difficult to get over how we were lied into an unnecessary war in Iraq and that much of what we were promised about the war in Afghanistan was, apparently, poppycock. Osama is still on the loose and the women of Afghanistan are still living quiet lives of desperation.

It is equally difficult to stomach racist signs and Tea bagger rallies against Obama. What is wrong with these people, I ask myself. Are they willing to destroy the country just because we elected an African American president or are these people simply so misinformed (disinformed) that fear has taken over their brains and caused a serious internal head injury?

Why on earth would I vote for a party, that does not believe in government at all, to govern. It makes no sense. Where would we be without government? Here is a clue; the SEC was damned near gutted during Bush/Cheney and look at the fine mess we are in. Bush ran two wars on a credit card and look what a fine mess we are in. There are many more examples.

One purpose of the federal and state governments must be to protect the American people, not only from those who would harm them from the outside, like Al Qaeda terrorist, but to protect them from internal threats like massive wealth and power in the corporate world of greed.

I have to ask myself, when considering these things, who has really done the most damage to the U.S.A and its people?

Furthermore, I wish we could all stop saving one another.


Let The Sun Shine In......

Translating Way Off-year Election Results

In the run up to yesterday's off-year elections, conservatives sought to cast the high-profile contests as a referendum on President Obama's first year in office. "These are bellwether races -- not just as a referendum on this administration, but on our party as well," said Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele. "

And it just gets worse from there....

So is this really a referendum on Obama, or is this just the political tide changing?" Fox News' Sean Hannity asked former Bush adviser Karl Rove. "Well, I think it's both," replied Rove.

However:

Despite the fact that Obama's party lost control of the governor's mansions in both Virginia and New Jersey, claims of a referendum do not pan out. While the two governorships have gone to the party not in control of the White House in every election since 1989, the results have not correlated with presidential approval, indicating that they are not a referendum on presidential leadership. "The Democratic losses of these two governorships should not be interpreted as a significant blow to President Obama," writes CNN Political Editor Mark Preston, noting that 56 percent of Virginians said in exit polls that the President was not a factor in their vote, while 60 percent of New Jersey voters said the same. In fact, "just under half the voters in Virginia, 48 percent, approved of the way Obama is handling his job, rising to 57 percent in New Jersey."

And Then There Is This:

Additionally, Democrat Bill Owens' victory over Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman in New York's 23rd district -- where Hoffman's third-party candidacy became the vessel for a Republican Party civil war -- dealt "a major setback to conservative organizations."

Note from the Pelican Editor of the day: I don't see this as a set back for real conservatives. It may be yet another blow for the citizens of Wingnuttia, whose queen Winkidink swooped in by Face book and backed Hoffman, who, from what I can tell, is slightly to the right of Attila the Hun. Nevertheless, one can never right off the wing-nuts. Apparently they never grow weary of being used and abused by the other GOPers, like the real true believers; Capitalists-on-steroids or people who think they have enough money to be republican, until they are disabused of that notion by foreclosure, collapse of business or one of several hundred really bad nightmares caused by the really bad, but practically, unchallenged policies of the last administration, the Neocons, who can make some of the more hilarious jokes about the Zionist Christians and other religious whack-jobs, but remain no laughing matter, themselves. They haven't gone anywhere and, yes, they are ideologically dangerous.

What remains to be seen is if the results of this little congressional race in nowhere N.Y. will be enough to stop the republican civil war in its tracks. It may well do just that, making the demise of the GOP and all of its constituents greatly exaggerated by a number of commentators.

Still, while yesterday's election was not a referendum on the President, the tea leaves do highlight challenges for the administration going forward as "a vast 89 percent in New Jersey and 85 percent in Virginia said they were worried about the direction of the nation's economy in the next year."


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Let The Sun Shine In......

How Can A Diseased, Dysfunctional Congress Be Expected To Do Anything About Broken Healthcare

So, what do we do about it? 

P.M. Carpenter


I try my best to avoid writing apocalyptic pieces, since, according to the blogosphere, the sky has been falling with almost daily regularity since roughly the blogosphere's creation. Still, it's time to look around and acknowledge that, to seize on just the latest example, Sen. Max Baucus' wasted days and wasted nights of fraudulent bipartisanship were but the tip of a representative democracy on the major skids. And recovery is questionable.


Yesterday I noted the Politico's characterization of contemporary bipartisanship as "The Great Myth" -- every Washington pol knows, observed the paper, "that the political incentives driving them toward conflict are vastly stronger than any impulses they may personally harbor for conciliation and compromise" -- yet failed bipartisanship is but a symptom, it seems to me and many others, of that far uglier disease mentioned above, which we'll return to momentarily.


First a rapid survey, as outlined by the Politico, of the reasons why modern bipartisanship nearly always crashes. And there's no better place to begin than at the Politico's beginning: the stain of redistricting, a corruption of democracy "that allows the two parties to conspire to make a big chunk of House seats virtual locks for one party or the other, meaning the typical member has scant reason to gravitate to the ideological center."


Then the gauntlet of primaries does its damage. In any ideologically extreme district, or at a minimum, within any ideologically extreme primary base, there's no safety in the middle; this has been especially true in redder districts, where races to the bottom of Reason have dominated the candidate-selection process. The results: "The past three elections have basically clipped off the moderate wing of the GOP.... [M]ost of the Republicans left don’t consider the Democratic criticism -- that the GOP has become 'the party of no' -- to be much of an insult."

(Actually, moderate Republicans are now Democrats, making everything more confusing. Right now, the GOP is purely ideological and constantly courting the crusading crackpots and other wing-nuts on the Right and the Democrats are not. Still, because the Democrats, still seen by many as flaming Liberals, are actually liberal, moderate and conservative. For the most ideological party, it is true, that they have no incentive to do what's best for the people. Rather, they believe that it is in the best interest of everyone that they win, as they cannot possibly see any good in any ideas other than their own. That is the very definition of rigid ideology. Therefore, there is no need for reconciliation. Actually, they see any move toward compromise as against their own need to win power in order to codify their own beliefs. Who has not heard Republicans vilify Democrats because they cannot seem to get their own house in order?)

And in politics, crap runs uphill. Notes the Politico: "The Senate, which despite its public reputation as the reasonable, statesmanlike chamber, has been indisputably more partisan the past decade, in part because so many House members are graduating to the upper chamber and bringing their tactics with them."


Of not inconsiderable influence is the "new media culture" as well, a remorseless jackhammering of sensationalism and superficiality "that guarantees plenty of cable TV time and fundraising success for the most flamboyantly confrontational figures" -- just witness the sudden death and miraculous resurrection of Rep. Joe Wilson -- "and the partisan fire burns wildly."


An exiguous list, for sure -- hey, this is the Internet, where readers' attention span is as scanty as any list must be; if you've made it this far, my heartiest congratulations, you're one of the plucky few -- but rounding it out nicely the other night was a conversation, on "The PBS Newshour," between NY Times' columnist Ross Douthat and political historian Richard Norton Smith.

Actually it was more of a riveting mini-debate of a gargantuan issue -- a squaring off of the "extreme partisanship is only natural" side (Douthat) against the "extreme partisanship is unforgivable" argument (obviously, Smith's).

Thrusted Douthat: "What we're seeing, in a way, is the working out of something that's been happening for 50 years in the United States, which is that the parties are sorted by ideology in a way that they hadn't in the '40s, '50s and '60s.... [N]ow you have a much more -- you could say a much more rational system, where you have a liberal party and a conservative party. But what that means is that you're going to have ... real divergence, real heated debate, and real inter-party tension.... [Y]ou'd expect that a large Democratic Party and a shrunken Republican Party to have a very hard time finding common ground."

Parried Smith: "[I]t may be rational in theory to have a neat liberal party and a conservative party. But we see an awful lot of irrationality arising out of that equation this summer.... [N]ot only the political culture has been coarsened, the country has been coarsened over the last 40 years. Forty years ago ... they may have been liberals or conservatives. And they fought like cats and dogs until 6 o'clock. But at the end of the day, there were political incentives for them to seek out common ground. Consensus was not a dirty word. Differences were seen as something to be narrowed, rather than exploited."

Plus, added Smith, rather delightfully, "We [now] have cable networks that should be registered with the Federal Election Commission," and, more ominously, we "have all of these outside forces, including lobbyists, whose business ... it is to pour kerosene upon those differences rather than try to put out the fire."

I once subscribed wholeheartedly to Douthat's argument. A cleanly delineated liberal vs. conservative system is indeed a rational, perhaps even desirable, one. But ours, as Smith poignantly observed, has evolved as a harshly divided one without the rationality.


What we have, instead, is a vastly unrepresentative Congress -- the sorry result of rather acrobatic redistricting and hardcore-base groveling -- encouraged 24/7 by "outrage"-obsessed media -- ratings, ratings, ratings -- and fueled by the worst sort of capitalist concentrations of grotesque wealth -- corporate plutocrats -- and those who represent it -- lobbyists.

AMEN!

It only gets worse. And there seems to be no way out. Incumbents and their mothering parties positively adore the tidy ideological diaper-pinning of electoral safety; the media, from talk radio to Fox to MSNBC, aren't about to let loose of a profitable ratings game ruled by conflict; and the growing malignity of big money in politics is of course self-sustaining -- its recipients aren't about to cut their own throats with the sharp remedial blade of public finance.

What we're left with -- maybe, stuck with -- is a bracing, Congressional dysfunctionality, a gross corruption of representative democracy that indeed benefits the very few, but screws the hell out of most. Just take a gander someday at this nation's gaping income inequality -- to date, a statistical trajectory of steep ascent with only fleeting disruptions; I'd also advise having a stiff one, first, but after reading this, you may want to do that anyway.

Ironic, is it not, that our systemic political disease is now being tested by the matter of health care.

Please respond to P.M.'s commentary by leaving comments below and sharing them with the BuzzFlash community. For personal questions or comments you can contact him at fifthcolumnistmail@gmail.com

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Let The Sun Shine In......

Call Now...Single Payer....Like That's Ever Gonna Happen!

Who in hell are these Democrats, anyhoo?

Call Congress now: Imminent vote on Single Payer

www.democrats.com/friday-key-vote-on-single-payer-healthcare

A dedicated group of 86 Democrats are fighting for single-payer (H.R. 676), and they need our help today.

The battle over single-payer is in the House Energy & Commerce Committee (E&C). The committee was supposed to vote on Rep. Anthony Weiner's single-payer amendment on Monday, but chairman Henry Waxman keeps postponing the vote because it might pass - just like the Kucinich Amendment for a single-payer state option passed on July 17 by a shocking 25-19 bi-partisan majority. Today we're told the vote could be tomorrow (Friday). Can you call the 6 lean yes and convince them to become solid yes on Rep. Anthony Weiner's single-payer amendment in the Energy & Commerce Committee?

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Let The Sun Shine In......

ARE OBAMA'S FINANCIAL PROPOSALS A ROAD TO REAL REFORM?

June 18, 2009

By Danny Schechter

THE OBAMA FINANCIAL REFORMS: ROAD TO CHANGE OR PERDITION?

Stabilizing A Flawed System is Not The Same As Restructuring Or Remaking It

By Danny Schechter

Author of Plunder

A recent study cited by the Editor of the Financial Times argues that we are now in a Depression although no one wants to use the term or face the music.

Recall that it took the National Bureau of Economic Research a full year to recognize the reality of a recession that analysts at investment banks had been acknowledging for as long. Despite everything that has happened, and is continuing to occur on the economic front---a rise in unemployment claims, mounting foreclosures, and escalating bankruptcies—the sense of crisis is being downplayed to stoke confidence and encourage the belief in “green shoots” and an emerging recovery.

The Obama Express is in full motion with new announcements, proposals, and laws signed daily. Yet, something’s missing. Au Contraire, Mr. Maher, there is no lack of audacity, just a failure to recognize that cosmetic alterations do not fundamental change make. What we have is a political elite that is more Clintonesque than Rooseveltesque. (If only the Repugs were right with their fears of the Socialist menace!)

These proposals, described as “new rules for the road,”  were mostly embraced by the banks, a sign they are not tough enough. The Congress will probably approve them quickly because they were “hammered out” through a process of negotiations that seems to have heard more from the industry than public interest advocates.

The Washington Post tells us:

“Time and again, lawmakers, regulators and industry lobbyists pressed their concerns behind closed doors at the White House and the Treasury Department, according to participants.

“Turf-conscious regulators opposed the idea to consolidate banking oversight agencies and took their appeal over the Treasury directly to the White House. Ultimately the administration spared all but one agency.

“A few key lawmakers argued against merging the two federal agencies that oversee the stock and commodity markets. That did not happen.

“Insurance companies fought over whether a national regulator should oversee them. The White House dropped the proposal.”

Etc. Etc. Etc, ad nuseum.

So now we have 88 pages of financial reforms as if the authors of this compromised and consensualized agenda were being paid by the word. The President is telling us that “mistakes” were made as if massive crimes, theft, fraud and unregulated greed were not involved in causing the calamity at the heart if the crash of the economy.

Bloomberg surveyed the wreckage: “Financial firms worldwide have recorded more than $1.4 trillion in writedowns and credit losses since 2007 as the U.S. housing market collapsed and the economy sank into recession.”

Billions spent to unlock credit and get banks lending again have led nowhere. The financial news service quotes Tim Backshall, chief strategist at Credit Derivatives Research LLC in Walnut Creek, California.

“It is becoming clearer that banks are not as willing to lend,” he said in an e-mailed message. “With their risk rising once again, risk premiums on non-financials must rise commensurately.”

They don’t see a recovery around the corner either, “The broad sense is we have not seen the bottom there yet,” said Bert Ely, a banking consultant in Alexandria, Virginia. “For later this year, and into next year, there are just big question marks out there.”

Question marks indeed.

What are the questions we should be asking? What happened to changes for ratings agencies that gave high marks for bogus mortgage securities? Why trust the Fed which, in the words of one critic “started the fire” through low interest rates to extinguish it

Simon Johnson, the ex-IMF Chief now at MIT asks some others:

•Has the President really been briefed on the supposed benefits of having large financial institutions with great economic power and pervasive political influence?  Don’t just claim that these are a good thing – tell us, in detail and preferably with numbers, what we the public gain from the presence of these behemoths among us.  Keep in mind that “everyone has them” is no kind of argument – something so manifestly dangerous is not to be blindly copied.

•Why was executive and other compensation so notably absent from the latest Geithner-Summers joint statement of our problems and likely solutions?  Does the President really expect us to believe that any set of reforms will work if they do not directly constrain the amounts that can be earned from misunderstanding risk today and hoping that the consequences do not appear on your watch?  Does he have any idea of how the people who run big financial firms will game whatever controls try to limit their risk-taking?

•. Can President Obama finally talk about the much broader break down of corporate governance in this country, with boards of directors serving no discernible purpose in terms of limiting the excesses of corporate executives in the financial sector but also more broadly?  Surely, without a reform package that includes measures to address this core issue, we will get exactly nowhere.”

Perhaps “exactly nowhere” is the real destination” in the sense that the real goal of the Geithner-Summers-Obama “reform” package seems to be to restore the old financial order, not restructure it,  or heavens forbid,  bring it under public control and accountability.  New Rules and regulations are great, but do they add up to real reform?

Have the banks really acknowledged their role in the demolition derby that wrecked the economy? Not really, even as Llloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs admits, "We know that we have an explicit contract with our shareholders to be responsible stewards of their capital . . . we regret that we participated in the market euphoria and failed to raise a responsible voice."

Is that all they are copping to? A few weeks back. Goldman paid $60 million to Massachusetts to settle a complaint that they funded mortgages “designed to fail.”  They admitted no wrong-doing, in a practice so common when Wall Street gets its fingers caught in the cookie jar of criminality.

Tell that to the millions losing their homes.

After helping to fund the subcrime market, Goldman was hailed as a visionary for turning against it. “it made $4bn profit from betting against the sub-prime mortgage market, and because - bar the fourth quarter of 2008 - it has continued to make a profit throughout.”

Clearly the profiteers are far more secure than their victims. Here are the thoughts of some knowledgeable people who want progressive change and who are in the know:

Former Investment Banker Nomi Prins: “The plan makes no mention of reconstructing the financial system.”

Marshall Auerback sees an opportunity for real reform squandered.

“As with so much of the Obama administration, great-sounding words, but nothing in the way of substantive change.  Particularly disturbing are the moves on derivatives, notably “credit default swaps”. Excuse us for not liking a market that is rigged in favor of the sellers, the monopoly dealers, who even today refuse to allow open price discovery in credit default swaps among and between other dealers.  True to their Wall Street ethos, Summers and Geithner have capitulated on the most important aspect of derivatives, by refusing to place these instruments on a regulated exchange, where transparency and standardization would be far more operative.

A New Way Forward: “It’s not enough to try to patch up the current system. We demand serious reform that fixes the root problems in our political and economic system: excessive influence of banks, dangerous compensation systems, and massive consolidation. And we demand that the reform happen in an open and transparent manner.”

“You go to war,” the not missed Mr. Rumsfeld once said “with the army you have.” Unfortunately in the case of Financial Reform, we are being led by Generals at the top but there are no troops or people’s army below to hold them accountable, much less push them to emulate a more aggressive approach a la FDR,

Organizing put this president in office. Only organizing can push him to do what must be done. Can we get the Congress to toughen up these uneven and timid proposals?

News Dissector Danny Schechter, blogger in chief at Medichannel.org, is making a film based on his book PLUNDER (Cosimo) news.dissector.com/plunder. Comments to Dissector@mediachannel.org

Author's Bio: News Dissector Danny Schechter is blogger in chief at Mediachannel.Org He is the author of PLUNDER: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books) available at Amazon.com. See Newsdisssector.org/store.htm.

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Let The Sun Shine In......

Democrats? What Does That Word Mean?

Eons ago I took an undergraduate course on parliamentary systems, and as I recall -- and forgive me for any misrepresentations here; it has been a while -- the British system had the niftiest little method of party discipline, which worked something like this:

When legislation was up for a vote the leadership would distribute the bill, which, if not textually underlined by the leadership, meant party members were free to vote however they liked, according to conscience or whim. If the bill was underlined once -- thus -- if meant the leadership took some moderate interest in seeing it either pass or fail, and would appreciate the members' cooperation.

If a bill was underlined twice, however, well, there we enter a spot of serious business: The leadership was saying that it was keenly interested in the legislation -- that is, seeing to either its life or death -- and urged all members to see it their way and vote accordingly.

But finally, if a piece of legislation was underlined three times, it meant you as a party member would bloody well vote the leadership's way or you'd be boiled in oil and your children sold into slavery. A bit of license there, but that was the prevailing upshot.

All of which I always thought, as mentioned, was a rather nifty little method of efficiently defining the concept and execution of "party." It provided members with generous latitude and individual maneuverability, often so necessary to smooth running in their home districts, but also literally drew the line on some issues. In short there were some higher things that a Tory or Labourite or Liberal stood for and would support, otherwise his or her identification with the party and indeed the party itself meant nothing.

The party system also meant that when the electorate pulled the Conservative or Labour or whatever lever, the electorate knew -- with respect to those higher matters of advertised party position -- precisely what it was voting for, and that leadership's party discipline would guarantee its execution. In a word, the system provided for political accountability.

OK, so you know where this is going. Yeah, right, those feckless, unherded, atomistic Congressional Democrats, whose comprehensive position on any given issue is as difficult to discern with precision as it would be to nail down a workable Unified Field Theory before lunch today.

Republicans, as we all know, took the parliamentary concept of party discipline a trifle too earnestly. In the imaginations of their leadership, virtually every bill was underlined thrice, since each piece of legislation was but another ingenious cog in the Grand Celestial Clock of ideological purity. In truest Bushian fashion, one was either with 'em or agin' 'em -- there was never an in-between; individual consciences couldn't and didn't count, since God Himself had already ordained what defined the GOP conscience, so to speak.

But Congressional Democrats? Concept of party? Some semblance of discipline? Pshaw. Every day is Anarchy Day for Democrats, who operate not as some Grand Celestial Clock but as spark-flying metal upon screeching metal.

Months ago I warned of Democratic overreach, once they had tidily wrapped up both legislative chambers as well as the White House. With all that amplified Congressional power, a president to apply a sympathetic stamp, and Republicans in downright laughable disarray, there could be, I cautioned, an ill-advised party inclination to shotgun the electorate with every pellet of old-coalition stuff that had been encased in powerlessness for so long.

What the hell was I smoking? These were Democrats I was talking about -- an alarmingly eclectic assemblage of leftists and rightists and libertarians and pragmatists and Greenbackers and Free Silverites and the occasionally just plain lobotomized.

Hence I give you ... the latest: "Two powerful groups of moderate Democratic lawmakers" -- the New Democrat Coalition and the Blue Dogs -- "have met with their House leaders to warn against pushing health care reform proposals too far to the left." Translation: a humane, universal system, as promised to the electorate in 2008.

If nothing else, you see, we can't afford such extravagant reforms; which is why, of course, these same conscientious objectors just voted in favor of another $96 billion in war funding -- just to see us through Sept. 30, mind you -- as they ratchet up the total war-tab to multiple trillions.

And, over on the Senate side of anarchy, "Democratic leaders [are] warning their supporters that they won’t be able to accomplish everything they set out to do this year."

I'm beginning to align with Republicans on this name-game thing: Why do Democrats call themselves the Democratic Party when the electorate's majority will seems to mean so little, and their leadership seems to care so little?

Think about it: The leaders are out there "warning their supporters" -- not the internal malcontents and troublemakers.



Please respond to P.M.'s commentary by leaving comments below and sharing them with the BuzzFlash community. For personal questions or comments you can contact him at fifthcolumnistmail@gmail.com

THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter


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Let The Sun Shine In......

The Republican Party: A study in comedic uselessness

P.M. Carpenter

 

Here's a little epistolary advice for the GOP, c/o the House Republicans, attn: Eric Cantor: Stop trying.

Just stop. At least for a few months. Go home or back to the office, kick up your feet and forget the whole scene. Pour a few drinks. Say a few prayers. Get into group therapy. Maybe ... maybe even read a book -- you know, go radical. Anything but these endless public displays of cluelessness. Because when you're in a hole ...

Yet House Republicans dug themselves yet deeper yesterday, or perhaps it was sometime late last night or during the wee hours of this morning. I don't know the precise moment of Creation, nevertheless the fruit of their labor is now viewable: the "Economic Solutions Center: Brought to you by the House Republicans." No kidding.

The Web site was, I gather, meant to be up and running in tandem with the Politico's lead story yesterday: "GOP scrambles to show it has ideas" -- the editorially chosen verb an appropriate one, since the GOP-ballyhooed site was nowhere to be found. Although more than once it referenced the site as a going concern, the Politico -- suspecting unremedied incompetence, I guess -- graciously provided no link; nor did several online searches of various word-combinations produce a relevant result.

I swear, today's GOP makes the disheveled left of the 1980s look like a gaggle of efficiency experts.

Anyway, by this early morning -- poof -- there it was, unscrambled, although frankly its existential absence was immeasurably more interesting.

Working deductively, here's what the Politico reported: "The mission appears to be as much about repackaging long-standing principles as it is about offering brand-new ideas for each debate. [The site] often restates proposals Republicans offered as their alternatives to the president’s plans. In the jobs section, for instance, Cantor reiterates the party’s commitment to offer small businesses a tax deduction and to reduce the tax rates on the lowest income brackets."

(There is a "Learn More" link helpfully provided on the "Jobs Plan" page, and, wishing indeed to learn more about the GOP's latest tax-reducing benevolence toward the oppressed affluent -- sadly unmentioned on the main "Jobs" page -- I clicked on it. This yielded only a staring match. Frank Luntz must still be working on the doubleplusgood wording.)

So, a tax deduction and a tax reduction -- the House GOP's twin answers to its self-posed question: "How will I keep my job?"

Well, moving on, what about, "How will I grow my savings?" First, House Republicans want you to know -- and I sure didn't know this -- that "current law limits the amount Americans can put into their retirement savings." (Alert to Bill Gates' accountant.) Second, they're offering -- you got it -- a savings tax credit, which presumably you'll take advantage of when you manage to keep your job only through a tax deduction/reduction.

"How should we use taxpayer money?" asks the GOP on a separate page. Naturally, in the dire depths of a repression we should choke the one spending outlet we have -- government -- but equally important is that the GOP -- ready? here it comes -- would "permanently [extend] the 2001/2003 tax relief provisions."

OK, so now you're keeping your job and you're growing your savings and you're taming the dastardly Leviathan, all through the miraculous blessings of tax relief, but, I hear you cry, "How will I keep my house?" Right. Need I even bother? "Republicans propose a ... tax credit."

And that, gentle reader, is a comprehensive survey of every possible House GOP solution to every possible problem at every possible turn: tax relief, tax credits, tax deductions, tax reductions, less taxes, fewer taxes, smaller taxes, shorter taxes, not so many taxes. I sense a theme here.

Regrettably, the one Q&A missing from Eric Cantor's Solutions Center is, "How will we ever maintain a two-party system to better confront this economic calamity when our party is so unspeakably lame?"

A principal reason for Cantor's cyber-gibberish is, as the Politico reports, because "GOP leaders ... want to insulate themselves from the 'party of no' label." Which, of course, is easily achievable through the simple cessation of always saying "no."

Another reason, they say, is that they really do have ideas and alternatives, but those ideas and alternatives are going unheard. Hence scrambling Web sites and gimmicky "Solutions Centers" and electronic interactivities on the symbolic fritz. What they cannot seem to digest, however, is that, while ghostly, their solutions are far from unknown. We're perfectly aware of their economic formulas from the Age of George V; it's just that those formulas are forever as dead as he.

Until the GOP goes home in hibernation and rethinks all the fundamentals of its raison d'être, it'll twist in the wind and bleach its bones and ultimately scatter to the ages. For now, it is simply, comically useless. 

(Until then, the Dems will just have to keep the Goopers afloat, eh?)

Please respond to P.M.'s commentary by leaving comments below and sharing them with the BuzzFlash community. For personal questions or comments you can contact him at fifthcolumnistmail@gmail.com
THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter

Let The Sun Shine In......