They Can Choke On It

Congresswoman: you may want to check out last November's election results.

HELL YES:

Michael Steele delivers a genius game-plan to absolutely DERAIL the GOP.

Democrats need to STOP helping Republicans. “Let them choke on (their majority).”

His words were BLUNT:

“Y'all need to chill on this, all this kumbaya partisan bi-partisan crap.” He added.… pic.twitter.com/JgBJRCakbJ

— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) January 25, 2025

Steele and the tweeter are realistic. However, at the end of this video (more complete video below), Representative Sarah McBride, Democrat of Delaware claims "I think the American people want to see elected officials be serious and work together."

Steele replies "no, they don't," a truth which virtually no one (and "virtually" may be misleading) appearing in media ever acknowledges. Unsurprisingly, McBride, misunderstanding (probably intentionally) Steele's last point, responds

You're right, you're right. They're not doing that. They're not doing that. They've made it clear from immigration to economic policy and taxes to basic human rights. They have made it clear that they are more interested in driving forward an extreme partisan agenda rather than pursuing collaborative common sense solutions. I totally agree.

No, you don't. Of course, Republicans are more interested in an extreme partisan agenda than in collaborative solutions. But Steele was expressly disagreeing with the naive assumption of the Democratic Party and of the mainstream center and left media that "the American people want to see elected officials be serious and work together."

McBride is right that Republicans have made it clear on various issues that they're disinterested in cooperation.  Although not yet a member of the US House of Representatives, the freshman from Delaware undoubtedly remembers when last May

Senate Republicans blocked a bipartisan border security bill for a second time, part of an attempt by Chuck Schumer to flip the script on immigration – a major political liability for Joe Biden and Democrats in this year’s election.

The 43-50 vote was far short of the necessary 60 votes needed to advance the legislation. Republicans, who have repeatedly demanded Democrats act on the border, abandoned the compromise proposal at the behest of Donald Trump who saw it was a political “gift” for Biden’s re-election chances.

And how did voters reward Democrats when the latter joined with Republicans in formulating a compromise immigration bill and then watching it go down because of Republican opposition?  They failed to regain the House, which at the beginning of the year they appeared to have an excellent chance to do; lost the Senate; lost the White House; and regressed slightly in control of state legislatures.

Voters knew which party wanted to work with the other, and which party knew what it wanted and would ruthlessly pursue its aims. "Wrong and strong," Bill Clinton would have called it.

Democrats must put Republicans on the defensive by putting them into a no-win situation. They can start by forcing votes Republicans to vote on "heads I win, tails, you lose" propositions, such as this one. It will seem rude to most Democratic members of Congress. But as Michael Steele put it, "they don't want to work with you, they're not going to work with you." So be rude, confrontational, and determined to win.

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Show Some Self-Respect

He's not even President yet, and the submitters are submitting to Donald J. Trump already. This is fitting from one of the duo which went hat in hand, sans recording machine or witness, to Mar-a-Lago to chat with President-elect Trump 

Mika Brzezinski: "after we had our meeting with Trump and a lot of people said 'You said all these things about him and then you met him!' Yes and yes. Two things can be true at the same time and you still can be very concerned...you should never stop trying for civility and… pic.twitter.com/4nPjiIjYs2

— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) January 11, 2025

The first pilgramage for the couple to the Trump resort and residence in Palm Beach County took place in June, 2017, after which

MSNBC Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinski was "bleeding badly from a face-lift" while at his Palm Beach, Fla., resort for New Year's Eve. He also described her as "low I.Q. Crazy Mika."

The president sent a pair of tweets aimed at Brzezinski and co-host Joe Scarborough, whom Trump called "Psycho Joe,"

In response, GOP senator Susan Collins of Maine tweeted in part "we don't have to get along but we must show respect and civility."

Jen Psaki, MSNBC talk show host and former press secretary to President Biden, on the same show on Friday demonstrated that she is as unserious as a pundit as she was effective in her previous role.

Jen Psaki: "The American public is not waiting for someone to lead them out of fascism. That is not what the American public sent us a message about. They're waiting for people to listen to them and actually engage with them in their communities about what they want from the… pic.twitter.com/Hb8VK5Fsry

— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) January 11, 2025

Whenever a Democratic pundit purports to tell us what message voters were sending and does not include "they didn't want Kamala Harris," there is smoke being blown up our rear ends.  Admittedly, fascism is not the most important issue for voters, especially when a former Biden Administration employee wants to close her eyes and do a Sergeant Schultz impersonation.

We don't know the full context of Psaki's remark, so "they're waiting for people to listen to them and actually engage with them in their communities about what they want..." may make some sense. In his previous job, Psaki was skilled, as she was expected to be, at going on and on without saying anything definitive. However, elected officials habitually communicate- by newsletter, in person, or on traditional or social media- with their constituents. It's highly unlikely that Psaki explained what "engage with them in their communities means," though it sounds a lot likely a tactic that Donald Trump assiduously avoided on his way to being elected twice.

Psaki doens't believe the public cares about fascism, and it appears she's not perturbed about it, either. Less comfortable is former chairman of the joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, who has said Trump is "fascist to the core" and "the most dangerous person to this country." Slightly less critical is retired Marine Corps general and Trump chief of staff John Kelly, who has maintained Trump "certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure."  But then Kelly, unlike Milley, hasn't been threatened with execution by the former and future President.

Civility! On Sunday, after the Special Counsel had resigned two days earlier afte completing his final report, Trump tweeted on Truth Social

Deranged Jack Smith was fired today by the DOJ. He is a disgrace to himself, his family, and his Country. After spending over $100,000 on the Witch Hunt against TRUMP, he left town empty handed!

Donald Trump plans to prosecute his political enemies. (Probation or a fine will not be an option.) Others will be threatened with worse. That should be enough to focus the mind of journalists and others. Michael Steele, a frequent contributor to Morning Joe, was too polite to run down the lady on the panel with him. However, he had enough with Scarborough:

 

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Four Peas In A Pod

What do Michael Steele, Rick Perry, Rush Limbaugh, and Barack Obama have in common?

On CNN, Michael Steele in January, 2009, shortly before becoming chairman of the Republican National Committee, claimed

first off, the government doesn't create jobs. Let's get this notion out of our heads that the government create jobs. Not in the history of mankind has the government ever create a job.

Michele Bachman's worst nightmare, Texas Governor Rick Perry, was asked by Glenn Beck late last month "can the government actually create jobs, sir?" Perry responded

Actually, what a government can do, it can create an environment where those jobs can be created. Government doesn’t create any jobs. They can actually run jobs away.

And of course, Rush Limbaugh:

Government doesn't create jobs. Government transfers wealth around. It doesn't create anything. It destroys it, pure and simple."

But even the President of the United States- a Democrat, they say- in an opinion column co-authored by British Prime Minister David Cameron wrote

Governments don't create jobs. Bold and innovative businesses do.

Matthew Yglesias demolishes this silly argument:

David Petraeus has a job. So does the guy who drove the truck that transported David Petraeus’ uniform to wherever he picked it up. So does the guy who sold that guy his truck’s tires. And so does the guy who served that guy some beer on Friday. And not only do police officers have jobs, but police officers who do their jobs well and make the streets safe create the conditions for economic growth. So do the people who build bridges and the people who man tollbooths. Medicaid pays for poor people’s medicine so they can recover from illness and go back to work rather than staying sick and dying.

Government directly creates jobs, as in the case of General Petraeus, teachers, police officers, and Governor Perry. It creates jobs indirectly by spending policies that increase demand, which in turn enables the private sector to create jobs. And just as a job was created for "the guy who drove the truck that transported David Petraeus' uniform to wherever he picked it up," innumerable businesses could not exist without government contracts. The Center for American Progress reports

The number of contractors in Afghanistan is likely to increase significantly in the next year as the Obama administration pulls back some of the extra 68,000 troops that it has dispatched there since January 2009.

Typically, the U.S. pays one contractor to support every soldier that has deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. The ratio of contractors to troops increases dramatically during a military surge as well as during a drawdown, and often stays higher than troop levels when military numbers are low, i.e. down to 30,000-50,000.

The reason is simple — the military needs extra workers to build new bases as well as to shut them down. Just like a hotel or restaurant, a military base also needs a minimum number of people to do the basics like janitorial or food service work. And as troops withdraw, U.S. diplomats are likely to hire extra security contractors as they are doing now in Iraq.

O.K. We know what Steele, Perry, and Limbaugh are trying to do. But what is the excuse for a President of the United States denying government can ever create a job?

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Steele, Again

Michael Steele has committed another gaffe, as Michel Kinsley would define it. On April 20 the Republican National Committee chairman told students at DePaul University in Chicago:

We have lost sight of the historic, integral link between the party and African-Americans. This party was co-founded by blacks, among them Frederick Douglass. The Republican Party had a hand in forming the NAACP, and yet we have mistreated that relationship. People don't walk away from parties, Their parties walk away from them.

For the last 40-plus years we had a 'Southern Strategy' that alienated many minority voters by focusing on the white male vote in the South. Well, guess what happened in 1992, folks, 'Bubba' went back home to the Democratic Party and voted for Bill Clinton.

Steele's comments hold some merit coming from a political scientist or historian. In "Steele Cage," printed in the February 4 issue of The New Republic, Jonathan Chait noted the GOP's failure "to acknowledge the link between segregation and conservative ideology." Though conceding "these facts don't make conservatism racist or wrong," Chait explained

white Southern conservatives defected to the GOP precisely because the Democratic Party turned against Jim Crow. Strom Thurmond joined the party in 1964, and never renounced his openly racist past. Lott continued into the 1990s to build open alliances with the Council of Conservative Citizens, a successor to the White Citizens’ Councils that fought integration. National Review opposed the Civil Rights Act and endorsed white supremacy.

Steele, then, has again made Republicans shake their head and probably, understandably, boil with anger as their chairman has suggested a legitimate reason for blacks to back Democrats, and done so without the usual (disingenuous) Republican charge that Democrats are taking African-Americans for granted. Still, he hasn't been fired- voted out- and ultimately there is only one reason, as Steele hinted at in an interview in November with Roland Martin:

MARTIN: But your candidates got to talk to them. One of the criticisms I've always had is Republicans -- white Republicans -- have been scared of black folks.

STEELE: You're absolutely right. I mean I've been in the room and they've been scared of me....

Republicans have a big problem- a spokesman who damages the party and the image it's intending to foster. But he's a spokesman who thoroughly intimidates them.

In his piece, Chait remarked also that "it feels ridiculous to have to point out this history." It does feel ridiculous. But thanks to Michael Steele's candor, it shouldn't any longer be necessary.

Job Security

On one level, it's difficult to figure out why the GOP has not yet canned its national party chairman, Michael Steele.

After consistently embarrassing the party, early January featured the release of a new book by Steele while a Washington Post blogger noted

"Right Now: A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda," surprised Republican congressional leaders, some of whom first learned of the book by watching Steele's television appearances this week, three top GOP congressional aides said Friday. The staffers would only describe their bosses' communications with the Republican National Committee chairman on condition of anonymity.

"The book came out and everybody went, 'Whoa, what happened?'" one aide said, adding that his employer, a senior House Republican, learned of the book by watching cable news.
"No one in the House or Senate leadership knew he had a book contract."

"He's freelancing," said another top congressional aide.

Asked in a radio interview whether, according to the WaPo (lingo for the pretentious), he was "a detriment to GOP fund-raising," Steele threw down the gauntlet (video below):

I am in this chair. If they want it, take it from me. Until then, shut up, step back and get in the game and help us win -- and stop the back-biting and the name-calling and the finger-pointing....

I hope you play this tape over and over again because these folks are the problem, not the solution. Get with the program. I'm the chairman. Deal with it.

Generally, telling one's employer- in this case the Republican National Committee- to "shut up (and) deal with it" is not a sound prescription for job security.

Not so, however, with Steele. Certainly, there is wide dissatisfaction with Steele, under whose leadership the RNC has spent more than it has raised. The Daily Caller recently reported that in February the National Committee spent $17,514 on private aircraft and $12,691 on limousines; a $9,099 stop at the Beverly Hills Hotel with $6,596 spent at the nearby Four Seasons; and $1,946,25 "at Voyeur West Hollywood, a bondage-themed nightclub featuring topless women dancers imitating lesbian sex." Other expenses have included "bills from a long list of chic and costly hotels such as the Venetian and the M Resort in Las Vegas, and the W (for a total of $19,443) in Washington. A midwinter trip to Hawaii cost the RNC $43,828, not including airfare." Fiscal conservatism, indeed.

Nonetheless, the chairman remains, despite- or perhaps because of- his challenge to the party.

A new controversy arose with this exchange (video way below) on ABC's Good Morning America on April 5:

STEPHANOPOULOS: We’ve got questions on my blog for you, this morning. One came in from Myron, he asked, do you feel as an African-American, you have a slimmer margin for error as another chairman would?

STEELE: The answer is yes.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Why is that?

STEELE: It just is. Barack Obama has a slimmer margin. A lot of folks do. It’s a different role for, you know, for me to play and others to play. That’s just the reality of it. But you take that as part of the nature of it. It’s not — it’s more because you’re not someone that they mow. I’m not a Washington insider, even though I grew up here in D.C. my view on politics is much more grassroots oriented. It’s not old boy network oriented. And so, you know, I tend to come at did stronger, streetwise, if you will.

Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic posits five reasons he believes the Republican National Committee will not fire Michael Steele:

Reason one: It's hard. Being the party of loyalty and hierarchy, the Republicans have made it virtually impossible for members to throw out a chair; it'd take a vote of two thirds of the membership.

Reason two: Steele is no less popular, publicly, than other Republicans -- it's not like he's a magnet for negative energy. OK, well maybe he is. But not MORE of a magnet than other Washington-based party leaders.

Reason three: Fundraising tactics aside, he's proven to be a fairly competent fundraiser. And there'll be plenty of money for Republicans outside the RNC.

Reason four: The press would focus obsessively on the impeachment process, and Republicans could look bad...uh, worse, than they do now.

Reason five: He's black. Republicans don't want to be stuck with the symbolism of having rejected their first elected black chairman because of financial issues or problems controlling his public image.

With approval of two-thirds of the 168 members of the RNC required to discharge a chairman, Steele will not be fired short of an indictment. And then it would be a toss-up. This would not be because of reasons 2, 3, and 4. It is because of reason five. If the GOP found it difficult to fire its first black chairman prior to his recent outburst, it would be far more uncomfortable now that he has drawn attention to race (all hail the "streetwise"!).

Talking Point Memo's Josh Marshall commented that the GOP response to Democratic nomination of Barack Obama was to

turn around and hire someone to lead their party pretty much for the sole reason that he was black. As is so often the case, the critics of racial progress, because they don't comprehend it, resort to a parody of it.

Steele was hired because he was black. And the other truth is that now he can't be fired, in significant measure, because he's black. Because canning Steele now would only drive home the reality that Republicans were trying to paper over, fairly clumsily, when they hired him in the first place.

Perhaps Marshall had read The New Republic's Jonathan Chait, who in mid-January explained (and now has been quoted twice on this site)

Republicans, though, have treated Obama’s race as a trump card. Thus the immediate Republican response to Obama has been to find their own black guy.

The perfect token antidote seemed to be Michael Steele, who

perfectly embodies modern Republican racialism. Democratic racialism represents a perversion of the civil rights ideal--an opposition to racism taken to excesses of hypersensitivity, occasionally devolving into a mere political tactic. Republican racialism is an attempt to mimic Democratic racialism without first having any grasp of the original sentiment underlying it--a parodic replica of the original thing, like a person who decides to convert to Judaism by studying Madonna.

Republican racialism is not an expression of racism but, rather, a failure to understand racism.

And the GOP, at least for now, is stuck with him. This won't be forever because at some point party leaders will make Mr. Steele an offer sufficiently attractive that he will make a graceful exit, a far superior outcome than having the chairman resign amid the charges of racial insensitivity he would trumpet.











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Quote Of The Week

"I think that it is a very silly comment to make. I think Michael Steele's problem isn't the race card, it's the credit card."

Presidential Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, responding to RNC Chairman Michael Steele's invocation of a "slimmer margin" for Barack Obama and his own "streetwise" credentials in defending himself on ABC's Good Morning America on 4/5/10 over the lesbian bondage sex club scandal

Of One Mind, Or Else

The very conservative, if relatively erudite former Bush 43 speechwriter David Frum, has involuntarily resigned from the American Enterprise Institute. He had the temerity to suggest in his blog on March 21 that the lockstep opposition of the GOP to health care reform has damaged his party politically. He explained

No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there – would President Obama sign such a repeal?

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.

There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or – more exactly – with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?

It did Frum's employment status little good when the voice of GOP corporatism, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, two days later complained

Mr. Frum now makes his living as the media's go-to basher of fellow Republicans, which is a stock Beltway role. But he's peddling bad revisionist history that would have been even worse politics.

Mike Allen of Politico reports

David Frum told us last night that he believes his axing from his $100,000-a-year “resident scholar” gig at the conservative American Enterprise Institute was related to DONOR PRESSURE following his viral blog post arguing Republicans had suffered a devastating, generational “Waterloo” in their loss to President Obama on health reform. “There's a lot about the story I don't really understand,” Frum said from his iPhone. “But the core of the story is the kind of economic pressure that intellectual conservatives are under. AEI represents the best of the conservative world. [AEI President] Arthur Brooks is a brilliant man, and his books are fantastic. But the elite isn’t leading anymore. It’s trapped. Partly because of the desperate economic situation in the country, what were once the leading institutions of conservatism are constrained.

In the wake of Frum's forced resignation, economist Bruce Bartlett, who worked for President Reagan, President Bush 41, and was himself fired from a right wing think tank when he criticized Bush 43, recalled that Frum a few months ago had asked if he

had noticed any comments by AEI "scholars" on the subject of health care reform. I said no and he said that was because they had been ordered not to speak to the media because they agreed with too much of what Obama was trying to do.

It saddened me to hear this. I have always hoped that my experience was unique. But now I see that I was just the first to suffer from a closing of the conservative mind. Rigid conformity is being enforced, no dissent is allowed, and the conservative brain will slowly shrivel into dementia if it hasn't already.

Justifiably frustrated- and enraged- by the ubiquitous charge that liberals are the politically correct, Hullabaloo's other blogger, tristero, observes

None of the bozos who require purity tests in liberal and leftwing circles are anywhere remotely as powerful or as influential as the fanatical psychopaths who both fund and staff the conservative think tanks. Nor are they likely to become influential anytime in the forseeable future. I can't think of even a moderately liberal group, let alone a genuinely leftwing group, that funnels staff that have been ideologically vetted into the government at anything close to the level at which the AEI and the Federalist Society pack presidential administrations with the politically correct. Nor does any liberal-leaning group - say, CEIP or CAP - require anything close to the purity of ideology the right does. It's very simple:

The politically correct are conservatives. The politically correct are rightwingers. The politically correct are the teabaggers. The politically correct are Republicans.

They are not "fanatical psychopaths" (o.k., maybe fanatical fits). These folks act on behalf of their own financial and/or ideological interests, however damning they may be to the middle class. But there is a strong, and much under-reported, element of political correctness in Republican circles.

In the wake of Majority Leader Harry Reid's controversial comment about candidate Barack Obama, in January The New Republic's Jonathan Chait made a similar point. He noted

Last weekend began with Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, clinging to his job primarily via implicit racial blackmail. Steele’s tenure has consisted of a string of gaffes and managerial blunders, but Republicans had concluded that his color made him un-fireable. “You’re not going to dump the first African American chairman,” an influential party strategist told Politico, “That’s the only reason....”

.... the immediate Republican response to Obama has been to find their own black guy. In 2004, the Illinois GOP imported lunatic Alan Keyes from Maryland to run for Senate, on the apparent assumption that another African American could neutralize Obama’s strength. In 2009, they elevated the buffoonish Steele to party chairman, where he has proven a regular source of embarrassment. (Incidentally, why are such a high proportion of black Republicans in elected life crazy? Is it because the party’s demand for ideologically qualified African Americans so outstrips the supply? I’m open to alternative explanations.) The post-election Bobby Jindal wave and the current Marco Rubio wave--Mike Huckabee: “He is our Barack Obama but with substance”--represent ethnic variants of the we-need-our-own-black-guy strategy.

The campaign to whip up faux racial outrage at Reid likewise shows a party clumsily attempting to mimic what it considers a devastatingly effective tactic.

Conceding that Democratic racialism represents... an opposition to racism taken to excesses of hypersensitivity," Chait maintained "Republican racialism is an attempt to mimic Democratic racialism without first having any grasp of the original sentiment underlying it- a parodic replica of the original thing, like a person who decides to convert to Judaism by studying Madonna."

Though not identical, these two strains of GOP thought are a variant of the dreaded "political correctness." Republicans have a problem with race, and it's not primarily racism but rather an awkward attempt to convince minorities and independents that they, too, embrace ethnic heterogeneity. And if the present-day GOP sometimes appears to be short of ethnic diversity, we learned from the health care debate that it increasingly shuns intellectual diversity, a state of affairs which has now ensnared David Frum.

Intimidating Terminology

The Republican Party generally seems to be exorcised about President Obama's terminology when he addresses the issue of terrorism.

On the Today show on January 5, RNC Chairman Michael Steele criticized the President:

If you can't call a thing what it is, then there's a question about what do you think it is? You, you can't look at this as, as a, as an intervention. You can't look at this as dealing with criminals as you would the guy who robbed the 7-11, you know, where you're trying to hijack a plane or bomb a plane or something like that....

I think the American people know full well what it is, they view it as a war against terrorism.

And Steele argued that the former

Vice President has, has made it very clear and I think he's been very consistent and correct in saying that the inconsistency in, in the Obama administration's approach to foreign policy, particularly with respect to terrorism is a concern. If you can't, if you can't call a thing what-

After the President's statement on January 6, New York's Peter King, ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, told the New York Daily News

He seems to be genuinely angry and I would think that's paving the way for someone to go (but) "He still refuses to use the word 'terrorism.'"

President Obama does seem to prefer the appellation "extremist" but does not ignore the term "terrorist" or "terrorism."In his remarks, Mr. Obama had referred to "suspected terrorist" and "individuals with terrorist ir suspected terrorist connections" and to the "list of state sponsors of terrorism" and the "terrorist watch list system" (twice).

The tendency of some conservative Republicans periodically to make things up is curious. But of particular interest as applied to terrorism is their tendency to use the word "war"- against terrorism, against Islamic extremists, or just plain "war."

Because it's not. George W. Bush consciously decided not only not to declare war against Iraq (securing an authorization to use force instead) or against Afghanistan (fought with one hand tied behind our back) but also against Al Qaeda. President Obama has followed suit.

And it's not as if we are precluded by morality or legality from declaring war against terrorists or, specifically, Al Qaeda. Three days after the attack on the World Trade Center 8-9 years ago, Slate's Dahlia Lithwick wrote:

If Osama Bin Laden's group al-Qaida proves to be responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, can the United States declare war on him and his organization?

Yes....

Under Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, Congress is constitutionally empowered to declare war on terrorists and is not obligated to name a host country. Article I authorizes Congress to "define and punish Piracies, Felonies committed on the High Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations.

Lithwick might have been right when she contended declaring a "war" on terrorism sounds as toothless and vague as declaring "war" on drugs." But it is not as toothless, vague, and evasive as dishonestly claiming the President does not use the word "terrorist" or that he wants to treat terrorists as common thiefs. Or that we are in a war. If Obama's opponents believe that the President is insincerely claiming that he is appalled by terrorists and terrorism, they can call his bluff and introduce a resolution to declare war, or call upon Congress to do so.

Grassley Does Rationing

Less than fifteen months after surgery to remove a brain tumor, Senator Edward Moore Kennedy has died, and liberals, conservatives, and corporatist Democrats have rushed to claim his legacy as their own. He would have insisted on a public option; he would have opposed it; or he would have thought it nice, but cheerfully would have bargained it away to get something called "health care reform."

But once the memorials and the funeral have taken place, at least one powerful politician, one who eagerly exploited Kennedy's illness before his death, ought to be asked to explain what he meant when he told an Iowa radio station:

I’ve been told that the brain tumor that Sen. Kennedy has — because he’s 77 years old — would not be treated the way it’s treated in the United States. In other words, he would not get the care he gets here because of his age. In other words, they’d say ‘well he doesn’t have long to live even if he lived another four to five years.’ They’d say ‘well, we gotta spend money on people who can contribute more to economy.’ It’s a little like people saying when somebody gets to be 85 their life is worth less than when they were 35 and you pull the tubes on them.

Sure, this was in bad taste, but that's not illegal. Nevertheless, Senator Charles Grassley (R.- Iowa) needs to answer several questions. Among them:

- Who is this who "told" you about the care Senator Kennedy would have gotten if he were residing in another country?

- Which countries with "government running things," as you put it, ration care on the basis of age or the patient's contribution to the economy?

- Cheryl Tidwell, the director of commercial sales training at the nation's fourth largest health insurer, has acknowledged that her industry rations care and has criticized a public option. What evidence do you have that such a health plan would result in more rationing when that is an indispensable component of the private system we now have no choice but to depend on?

- Given that Senator Kennedy tragically failed to survive "another four to five years," can we conclude that our privately-based health care system failed him in the same manner you suggest the nations with more government involvement fail their victims of cancer?

It's not only Senator Grassley, of course, but it's one of the GOP's favorite talking points. Sarah Palin, fresh off quitting her job and giving up on the Alaskan people she always claimed to be devoted to, wrote on her Facebook page, "nationalized health care inevitably leads to rationing. There is simply no way to cover everyone and hold down the costs at the same time." (For those of you too young to remember, there once was a time Repub policians preached the virtue of competition and the mainstream media eagerly believed they were serious.) Republican Party leader Rush Limbaugh said "It would be an insult to the memory of Ted Kennedy to put his name on a bill that has rationed health care according to someone's age and the extent of their illness." (Which it probably would be if there were such a bill; Rush realizes there isn't, but figures individuals who listen to him aren't exposed to facts, so they'll believe almost anything he says.) RNC Chairman Michael Steele is more creative, suggesting that Democrats want to ration health care based on political affiliation.

And on and on and on. Most of these Republicans have a clear motive for demagoguing health care policy; Palin wants to secure her base for a possible run for the presidency; Limbaugh wants to tear down a President whom he brags he wants to fail; Steele needs to attack a Democratic initiative and have it fail so that he proves he is not inadequate as a party chairman. And we know they are enemies of President Obama. Chuck Grassley, though, is one of the three Republican members of the "Gang of Six" on the Senate Finance Committee negotiating (pretending to negotiate) its health care bill. And if the mainstream media had the slightest interest in clarifying the issues involved, it should stop pandering to the Iowa Senator and sit him down with a few good questions.

Steele And GOP Priorities

First, it was over whether the three GOP senators who voted for the stimulus package might be denied campaign funds by the national party. On February 3, Michael Steele stated "Oh, yes, I'm always open to everything, baby, absolutely." The next day, he backtracked, saying "it's totally up to the state parties."

Then it was Rush Limbaugh. On March 1, Steele pointed out on the since-cancelled D.L. Hughley show on CNN, "Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. His whole thing is entertainment. Yes, it's incendiary. Yes, it's ugly" (video below). After Limbaugh blasted him on his program two days later, Steele waited almost an hour to grovel (in a statement) "I respect Rush Limbaugh, he is a national conservative leader, and in no way do I want to diminish his voice....To the extent that my remarks helped the Democrats in Washington to take the focus, even for one minute, off of their irresponsible expansion of government, I truly apologize."

Then we learned that a few days earlier (March 24) in an interview with Lisa DePaulo of GQ Magazine, the head of the Republican National Committee argued of homosexuality that one cannot "turn it off and on like a water tap" and that he approved of such relationships up to marriage:

I have been, um, supportive of a lot of my friends who are gay in some of the core things that they believe are important to them. You know, the ability to be able to share in the information of your partner, to have the ability to—particularly in times of crisis—to manage their affairs and to help them through that as others—you know, as family members or others—would be able to do. I just draw the line at the gay marriage. And that’s not antigay, no. Heck no! It’s just that, you know, from my faith tradition and upbringing, I believe that marriage—that institution, the sanctity of it—is reserved for a man and a woman.

That same day, however, Steele assured syndicated conservative radio talk-show host Mike Gallagher that he finds civil unions as distasteful as gay marriage:

GALLAGHER: Is this a time when Republicans ought to consider some sort of alternative to redefining marriage and maybe in the road, down the road to civil unions. Do you favor civil unions?

STEELE: No, no no. What would we do that for? What are you, crazy? No. Why would we backslide on a core, founding value of this country? I mean this isn't something that you just kind of like, "Oh well, today I feel, you know, loosey-goosey on marriage." [...]

GALLAGHER: So no room even for a conversation about civil unions in your mind?

STEELE: What's the difference?

In the same interview with GQ, Mr. Steele, asked whether he believes "women have the right to choose an abortion," responded "Yeah. I mean, again, I think that’s an individual choice." Promptly recognizing a tactical error, Steele issued a statment which included "I am pro-life, always have been, always will be.... In my view Roe vs. Wade was wrongly decided and should be repealed."

If the chairman of the Republican National Committee seems a little confused, it's with good reason. On Hardball on March 13, the usually insightful Eugene Robinson remarked "I think fundamentally he‘s a moderate Republican. And those are the views that he is expressing. But he doesn‘t have a moderate party that he‘s supposed to lead. It‘s a very conservative party."

But here Robinson, and others who also suspect that Steele made his initial, later retracted or "clarified," remarked because he is a "moderate Republican," are wrong. When a Repub suggests a liberal or moderate position on abortion or gay rights (apparently, gun control and some other cultural issues are completely off limits), he or she is exalted in the mainstream media as a "moderate."

Whether Steele actually is a "moderate" is difficult to detemine. What is clear, however, is that he is a man without firm attachment to any view on policy- someone far more opportunistic than principled. Michael Steele has veered from GOP orthodoxy on support for experienced incumbents, gay rights and abortion, and attacked powerful Republican Rush Limbaugh. But as of this writing, he is still chairman of the party. Suppose, instead, Steele had made comments similar to these rather obvious and moderate comments:

- Congress should give due consideration to passing the Employee Free Choice Act because it would lead to higher wages, which have been stagnating in our country;
- The rush to deregulate the financial market helped spur the economic crisis we have today;
- Greed in the private sector has contributed significantly to our economic collapse;
- The Social Security system is relatively stable and the party should attempt to strengthen it rather than weaken it with a privatization scheme, reducing benefits, or increasing the retirement age;
- Given the increasing debt caused by the stimulus package, increasing taxes modestly on the wealthy is reasonable.

If he had made any of these statements- with or without retraction or apology- instead of those he did make,M Michael Steele would be out of his position as chairman of the Republican National Committee. Not today. Yesterday.

Steele, Assault Weapons, Mexico

In April, 2008, ABC News' Brian Ross and Esposito found

U.S. gun stores and gun shows are the source of more than 90 percent of the weapons being used by Mexico's ruthless drug cartels, according to U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials.

"It's a war going on in Mexico, and these types of firearms are the weapons of war for them," said Bill Newell, the special agent in charge of the Phoenix field division of the ATF, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which has primary law enforcement jurisdiction for investigating gun trafficking to Mexico.

"It's virtually impossible to buy a firearm in Mexico as a private citizen, so this country is where they come," said Newell.

But U.S. efforts to stop the smuggling of tens of thousands of guns to Mexico, including high-powered assault weapons, have been hampered by lenient American gun laws and the Bush administration's failure to give priority to anti-gun smuggling efforts....

U.S. and Mexican officials say they have traced most of the thousands of high-powered weapons seized from the drug cartels to gun dealers in Texas, California and Arizona.

And the problem is only getting worse. On January 15, 2009, Shannon O'Neil, a Douglas Dillon fellow for Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations who blogs at www.LatIntelligence.com, noted

There are about 6,650 Federal Firearms Licensees in this area, and the border is 2,000 mile long, meaning that there are 3.3 gun shops per mile (I said 3 per mile in the article). If we include all the shops in border states (not just near the border), the number rises to 9,161 locations....

The U.S. government recognizes that U.S.-purchased weapons are fueling Mexico’s violence. In fact, ATF acting director Michael Sullivan said last year that investigators have traced 90 to 95 percent of weapons seized in Mexico to the United States.

Currently, Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms assigns approximately 200 agents to monitor the licensed gun dealerships along the Mexican border. By contrast to the ease with which military-style weapons can be purchased in the U.S.A., "Mexican civilians must get approval from the military to buy guns and they cannot own large-caliber rifles or high-powered pistols, which are considered military weapons," according to The New York Times.

And the cartels are moving much of their operations northward. With its growing Hispanic population and access to major highways and population centers, Atlanta, Georgia now is a major storage center for marijuana, heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamines smuggled in from Mexico. They then are moved to distribution operations in methamphetamine, Carolinas, Tennessee, the Mid-Atlantic, New York and New England, reports USA Today.

So what in the name of pandering to the NRA and Rush Limbaugh is Michael Steele sending this e-mail message to right-wing supporters, including one from something called the St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner?:

The Obama Administration has revealed its intention to reinstate the so-called "assault" gun ban -- Step One of their plan to repeal the 2nd Amendment.

Having already taken advantage of our country's current economic woes to speed the largest, most pork-laden spending spree in history through the Democrat-controlled Congress, the Obama team is again using fear tactics to impose bad policy.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced his desire to once again deny law abiding Americans their 2nd Amendment rights, using the ongoing violence in Mexico as justification.

Perhaps Michael Steele should be asked why he condones the distribution of over 500 metric tons of cocaine, 15,500 metric tons of marijuana, 18 metric tons of heroin, and a still unknown amount of methamphetamines which make their way through Mexico into the United States. Or why he condones the proliferation of high-powered weapons along the Mexican border. Or why he condones murder and rape on American soil in the name of a distorted interpretation of the Second Amendment.

The Silly Michael Steele

It's a long way from Senator Claire McCaskill (D.-Mo.) and Caroline Kennedy to the disreputable Michael Steele, newly-elected chairman of the Limbaugh National Committee. Still....

Many of us on the left treated the latest pronouncement from Mr. Steele with loud guffaws when he told the Washington Times' Ralph Z. Hallow

We want to convey that the modern-day GOP looks like the conservative party that stands on principles. But we want to apply them to urban-surburban hip-hop settings....

It will be avant garde, technically. It will come to table with things that will surprise everyone - off the hook.... I don't do 'cutting-edge'.... That's what Democrats are doing. We're going beyond cutting-edge.

Now, you might find that silly, superficial, and condescending. And you'd be right. But this frivolous appeal to youth has its antecedents in the presidential campaign we've just been through.

Here is Time Magazine's explanation from January, 2008 of how a member of that great deliberative body, the United States Senate, thoughtfully determined which individual could best serve as leader of the Free World:

But there's something about an 18-year-old that can't abide careful hedging and cautious steps. The Senator's daughter Maddie Esposito had seen the way her mother teared up whenever she heard Obama speak. And now it was happening again as mother and daughter sat side by side on the family-room sofa in a suburb of St. Louis, watching the results of the Iowa caucuses on TV. "You know you believe in him," Maddie admonished her damp-eyed mother. "It's time to step up." The next morning, Maddie, a college freshman home for the holidays, added a threat: "You have to do it, or I'm never talking to you again."

McCaskill endorsed Obama — a big boost in an important Super Tuesday primary state.

And also in January, an extremely high-profile endorsement from the scion of the ultimate Democratic family:

And the generation he inspired has passed that spirit on to its children. I meet young people who were born long after John F. Kennedy was president, yet who ask me how to live out his ideals....

He has built a movement that is changing the face of politics in this country, and he has demonstrated a special gift for inspiring young people — known for a willingness to volunteer, but an aversion to politics — to become engaged in the political process....

I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.

Iraq; Iran; nuclear proliferation; health care; taxes; trade; immigration; Social Security; education; housing. No, decide because a teen-age daughter told you what to think or because the spirit of the deceased has transferred to one candidate the ability to inspire young people.

(And watch John McCain here pander to ill-informed young voters on Social Security.)

True, Michael Steele is (insert adjective here; numerous apply). What he says is nonsense, but give him this: he didn't start the fire.

The New GOP Leader

Chris Cillizza begins his post in the Washington Post, The Fix, with "The Republican National Committee elected Michael Steele as its first African American chairman today in Washington..."

No wonder. When as Maryland's lieutenant governor Steele ran as the Republican nominee for the United States Senate in 2006, he responded to a question about stem cell research by telling the Baltimore Jewish Council

Look, you of all folks know what happens when people decide they want to experiment on human beings, when they want to take your life and use it as a tool. I know that as well from my community and our experience with slavery.

Assailed for clearly linking stem cell research with the Holocaust, Steele issued a non-apology apology, stating "I offended members of the Jewish community and members of the Maryland community. It was a remark that was an improper inference, because I never specifically said Holocaust. . . . And it did not reflect my attitude and my belief, and I am really sorry about the whole thing." (Sorry I offended you because you misunderstood me.) But Democratic politician and former NAACP President Kweisi Mfume recognized the race card when he saw it: "Any further comparison to equate slavery to stem cell research is a reach that I and others who are the descendants of slaves don't understand."

The remark probably was not out of character for the charismatic Steele. The Washington Post reported on September 24, 2006 of a rally of Democrats for Steele in Baltimore (a heavily Democratic city), where Steele supporters waved signs and gobbled up bumper stickers that said "Steele Democrat."

And the Post on November 7, 2006 described sample ballots distributed on election day by campaign volunteers (some of whom apparently thought the GOP candidates were Democrats) bused into Maryland from Philadelphia. They were "paid for in part by the Bob Ehrlich for Maryland Committee, as well as the Steele committee, as well as the Maryland GOP," according to a Repub spokeswoman, and

Under the heading "Democratic Sample Ballot," the fliers urge voters to select Ehrlich for governor and Steele, his lieutenant governor, for U.S. Senate, along with a largely Democratic slate of candidates for other statewide and local offices.

The Post reported on November 9:

The fliers included a "Democratic Sample Ballot" suggesting that voters back Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and Senate candidate Michael S. Steele, both Republicans. Entitled "Ehrlich-Steele Democrats," it pictured three influential Democrats -- Wayne K. Curry, Prince George's County Executive Jack B. Johnson and Kweisi Mfume -- and said at the bottom, "These are OUR choices." Curry had endorsed Steele but not Ehrlich, and neither Johnson nor Mfume had endorsed either candidate.

So Steele, now chairman of the Republican National Committee, ran (unsuccessfully) for the United States Senate in solidly Democratic Maryland pretending he was a Democrat. Black, white, Hispanic, or Asian: Michael Steele is not a conservative, not a moderate, only a political cipher with little notion of integrity.