Political Irony

Obama in a speech this week, makes a really good case against “false equivalences” from the media. I couldn’t have said it better myself!

You’ll hear if you watch the nightly news or you read the newspapers that, well, there’s gridlock, Congress is broken, approval ratings for Congress are terrible. And there’s a tendency to say, a plague on both your houses. But the truth of the matter is that the problem in Congress is very specific. We have a group of folks in the Republican Party who have taken over who are so ideologically rigid, who are so committed to an economic theory that says if folks at the top do very well then everybody else is somehow going to do well; who deny the science of climate change; who don’t think making investments in early childhood education makes sense; who have repeatedly blocked raising a minimum wage so if you work full-time in this country you’re not living in poverty; who scoff at the notion that we might have a problem with women not getting paid for doing the same work that men are doing.

They, so far, at least, have refused to budge on bipartisan legislation to fix our immigration system, despite the fact that every economist who’s looked at it says it’s going to improve our economy, cut our deficits, help spawn entrepreneurship, and alleviate great pain from millions of families all across the country.

So the problem… is not that the Democrats are overly ideological — because the truth of the matter is, is that the Democrats in Congress have consistently been willing to compromise and reach out to the other side. There are no radical proposals coming out from the left. When we talk about climate change, we talk about how do we incentivize through the market greater investment in clean energy. When we talk about immigration reform there’s no wild-eyed romanticism. We say we’re going to be tough on the borders, but let’s also make sure that the system works to allow families to stay together…

When we talk about taxes we don’t say we’re going to have rates in the 70 percent or 90 percent when it comes to income like existed here 50, 60 years ago. We say let’s just make sure that those of us who have been incredibly blessed by this country are giving back to kids so that they’re getting a good start in life, so that they get early childhood education… Health care — we didn’t suddenly impose some wild, crazy system. All we said was let’s make sure everybody has insurance. And this made the other side go nuts — the simple idea that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, nobody should go bankrupt because somebody in their family gets sick, working within a private system.

So when you hear a false equivalence that somehow, well, Congress is just broken, it’s not true. What’s broken right now is a Republican Party that repeatedly says no to proven, time-tested strategies to grow the economy, create more jobs, ensure fairness, open up opportunity to all people.

© Rob Rogers

The Tea Party has pretty much taken over the Republican Party. Who needs a radical fringe when you don’t have any moderates any more?

As predicted, no Tea Party challengers won their Republican primaries today. The glory days of wing-nut insurgents like Christine (I am not a witch) O’Donnell, Todd Akin, Ken Buck, Richard Mourdock, and Sharron Angle beating more traditional Republican candidates in the primaries – just to go on to lose big in the general election – seem to be over.

And so of course you are going to see the pundits declare the tea party all-but-dead, trampled by the big business Republican establishment. But is that so? From where I sit, it looks more like the establishment candidates gave in and adopted all the wing-nut policies of the Tea Party.

Don’t believe me? Are any of the establishment Republicans pushing to fix Obamacare rather than just repeatedly repeal it? Or working on improving the economy rather than sabotaging it (by shutting down the government) just to make Obama look bad? Or promoting immigration reform? Or willing to compromise with Democrats on anything? Or even consider stopping wasting our time and money investigating Benghazi?

In fact, do Republicans have any policies whatsoever other than “if Obama is for it, we’re against it”? After all, it was Mitch McConnell himself (who just defeated a Tea Party primary challenger) who said that his number-one political goal was to make Obama a one term president.

A few ironic stories in the news:

In Arizona, Republican Gary Kiehne decided that a primary debate was the right place to blurt out that “99 percent of (mass shootings) have been by Democrats pulling their guns out and shooting people.” Two days later he backtracked and said that he shouldn’t have made the remarks without any reservations.

In New Hampshire, police commissioner Bob Copeland loudly called Obama “that fucking nigger” in a restaurant and complained about having to see him on TV. He then refused to apologize, saying:

While I believe the problems associated with minorities in this country are momentous, I am not phobic. My use of derogatory slang in reference to those among them undeserving of respect is no secret. It is the exercise of my 1st Amendment rights… I believe I did use the “N” word in reference to the current occupant of the Whitehouse [sic]. For this I do not apologize – he meets and exceeds my criteria for such.

After Republicans Mitt Romney (who has a vacation home nearby) and Senate candidate Scott Brown sharply criticized Copeland, he finally resigned. Still no word on any apology.

And finally, conservative activist Larry Klayman is calling for a pre-emptive “second American Revolution” in order to prevent Hillary Clinton from becoming president. Klayman believes open insurrection is called for, despite the fact that Clinton hasn’t even announced that she is running, and the election is over two years away. He also compared Clinton unfavorably to Richard Nixon, saying she “would make Nixon look like a saint” and that “whatever his shortcomings, Tricky Dick at least was not a traitor”.

Ironically, while gun violence in the US has dropped significantly, most Americans think gun violence has gone up.

In under 20 years, since its peak in the 1990s, gun violence has nearly been cut in half. The number of killings due to guns dropped 39% between 1993 and 2011, while gun crimes that weren’t fatal dropped 69%. Even so, guns are still the most popular way to kill someone in the US – two out of three murders in the US used guns (in the same time period). The US still has a higher murder rate than most developed countries and has more guns per capita than any other country.

But when surveyed, only 12% of Americans think gun violence has gone down in the last two decades. 26% said it has stayed the same, and 56% thought it had increased.

There are many explanations of why gun violence has gone down. Some researchers think it is due to the declining popularity of crack cocaine. Others link it to the reduction of lead in gasoline, which is known to increase aggression and impulsive behavior. Others point to surging incarceration rates.

So why do only 12% of Americans think gun crime has gone down, when it has dropped significantly? Who benefits from us being scared?

It is almost enough to make you feel sorry for Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the Senate minority leader. Almost, but not quite.

On one side, the Republican politician and former Kentucky senator who gave McConnell his first job in politics, says that McConnell has betrayed the people of Kentucky by mounting a crusade to repeal Obamacare. Why, back when McConnell was fresh out of law school, Senator Marlow Cook remembers how McConnell “worked and worked hard” to pass the Equal Rights Amendment for women, was skeptical about the Vietnam War, and was even inspired by Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement.

But now Cook has slammed McConnell for trying to kill Obamacare. He says: “If he had any knowledge of the lack of health and medical facilities in the hills of Kentucky, he’d know it’s a problem we need to solve. For Mitch McConnell to decide the new health program is not good for Kentucky — it tells me he’s not looking out for his own constituency.”

Cook goes on: “I don’t know what Mitch is doing. If he thinks this whole thing should be killed, it’s an awful crap shoot. Instead of stopping [Obamacare], they should be correcting the things in the bill that need correcting. But to say it should be killed? I know what the real, real conservative Republicans want. They would love to get rid of Medicare. They would love to get rid of Social Security.”

On the other side, McConnell is being challenged from the right by even more conservative Republican Matt Bevin. Naturally, Bevin also wants to kill Obamacare.

But here is where it gets ironic. At a campaign stop on Monday, Bevin told his audience that after leaving a job “My wife and I literally didn’t have health care for about a year because of a pre-existing condition.” That’s right, Bevin himself was denied health care coverage because of a pre-existing condition, a problem that the Affordable Care Act fixed.

So what was this pre-existing condition that cost Bevin his health insurance? Why, it wasn’t a condition at all. It was because Bevin and his wife adopted a child. That’s right, Bevin couldn’t get health insurance for his entire family because he adopted a child. In fact, Bevin has adopted four children from Ethiopia, something for which he and his wife should be lauded.

Despite practically being a poster child for the benefits of Obamacare, Bevin told the crowd that he remains committed to “100 percent repeal”. Even though 400,000 Kentuckians have gotten health care coverage through Obamacare, resulting in a 40 percent drop in people without health insurance in the state.

What will the Republicans do if they take over the Senate in the upcoming mid-term election? Once they have the votes in both the House and the Senate, will they really go nuclear and repeal Obamacare? Obviously, Obama would veto any such attempt, but it still would be costly to them politically, since by then Obamacare will be even more popular. But if they don’t repeal it, will challenges from ultra-conservatives like Bevin cause them even more problems?

Maybe, or maybe not. As the Washington Post notes, in the upcoming primaries next Tuesday, not a single Tea Party candidate is predicted to win.