The Conservative Impulse, Circa 2009

The description of the town hall meeting of August 4 held by Rep. Todd Akin (R.-Mo.) comes from Steve Benen of The Washington Monthly:

"This particular meeting, in a way is a little bit unique," Akin said. "Different people from Washington, D.C., have come back to their districts and have town hall meetings, and they almost got lynched."

The conservative crowd thought this was great."I would assume you're not approving lynchings, because we don't want to do that," Akin said, generating more laughs as he put his hand to his neck.

The video of this remarkable exchange was highlighted by firedupmissouri.com:



Understandably, the first reaction is: this guy thinks it's amusing that Democratic legislators have been almost "lynched" when they've appeared recently at town-hall meetings in their district. And the second reaction is that Akins' easily amused constituents are mighty pleased these legislators have gotten yelled at, hung in effigy, and worse.

It's bad enough that Akins cavalierly invokes "lynching" as if that does not bring up thoughts of the worst manifestation of the greatest stain on the American character, slavery. Perhaps the right, or extremists generally, are characteristically insensitive to the historical implications of emotion-laden terms: the far-right, traditionally not enthralled with Jews, likes to refer to abortion as a "holocaust." Those who can't argue, trivialize suffering.

But there is something else going on here, as reported by The St. Louis Beacon. Julie Eckstein, described as a former director of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services and now a project director with Newt Gingrich's Center for Health Transformation, received an approving laugh from the audience when, ridiculing health care freform, she said

How many of you think the government can run your business better than you do?

And apparently Akin also was auditioning for a gig as a stand-up comedian:

On the cap-and-trade bill -- or cap-and-tax, as Akin and the presenters termed it -- Akin started out by saying, "I hope you've enjoyed the global warming we've had here in St. Louis lately."

What do these comments have in common, a characteristic of the modern conservative movement?

The boldest (such as it is) and, possibly, defining characteristic of the reform effort is the public option. Still, Eckstein slammed reform by sarcastically asking whether "government can run your business better than you do?"

But is a public, government-run option tantamount to government running the business? Or is it government offering an alternative? Clearly the latter, as implicitly acknowledged by the health insurance industry and its lackeys when they claim that a public option would run the private suppliers of health care out of business.

And Akin, belittling the notion of climate change, chose to remind his audience of the recent weather, hot and humid, in the St. Louis area. Most of us are familar with global warming-deniers jumping on a cold wave to proclaim triumphantly: "aha, there's your global-warming! You enjoying this cold weather?" Sure, they are unaware, or pretend to be unaware, that a few days of unusually cold weather in one part of a country in one part of the earth means virtually nothing. But at least cold runs counter to warming. However, Akin- who reportedly was a big hit with the crowd- pointed to heat ("I hope you've enjoyed this global warming") to undermine the idea of a warming trend.

This is not your Republican Party of William F. Buckley or George F. Will- or even of Barry Goldwater or William Kristol. This has become a party allergic to reasoning- with those you oppose or even those with whom you agree. A party which finds thinking overly exerting, apparently dominated by a whatever-pops-into-the-mind conservatism, whose more conservative adherents and heroes (e.g., Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity) often exhibit a kind of ideological attention deficit disorder.

This doesn't apply to all conservative Republicans, obviously. Libertarians, though acutely misguided in their philosophy, tend to be somewhat thoughtful. Still, what understandably strikes some liberals as stupidity or ignorance in the right-wing really gives them too little, or too much, credit. Some of these guys and gals still win elections, and some make a whole lot of money. Look closely- it is more often a convenient lack of focus, a resistance to disciplined thinking and analysis which is at play.

Arlen Specter and Barack Obama: Perfect Together

Thanks to dailykos, here is video of Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter explaining on MSNBC's Hardball on Tuesday evening why he voted for McCain-Palin rather than Obama-Biden:



And thanks to the MSNBC website, we have the transcript to read the response of Republican-turned- Democrat Specter when Chris Matthews asked him for whom he had voted:

I thought that they were the better choice. And I was trying to work within the Republican party, and trying to bring moderation to the Republican party. The decisive step I took was when I heard President Obama early this year say we were on the verge of sliding into a 1929 Depression, and a new president with a new mandate. And I voted for the stimulus package.

And when Matthews wouldn't accept that answer at face value and asked him whether he was comfortable trying to place Sarah Palin "a heartbeat away from the presidency," Specter respnded:

Chris, I didn't exactly think my vote would be decisive. But when you're in a party and you work for a party and you're trying to work within the structure to moderate the party, I think that's the correct thing to do.

But parties change. Look here, Ronald Reagan changed parties. Winston Churchill changed parties. Phil Graham, Dick Shelby. It's not so unusual. And in my case, I think there was good provocation to do it, and I think it was the right thing.

Now, up until then, Biden and Rendell and a lot of people had been trying to get me to become a Democrat. When I voted for the stimulus package, I had more Republicans urging me to become a Democrat than the Democrats. And the effort to bring moderation to the Republican party was not successful. And I feel very comfortable as a Democrat.

It's hard to figure out why trying to "moderate" the party would entail voting for John McCain and, especially, Governor Palin, and Specter never explained. He does remind us that he voted for the stimulus package, though neglecting to remind us that he first (successfully) worked to weaken it. But he never concedes that he made a mistake voting for McCain-Palin- if in fact he thinks he does- or even that he finds Democratic/liberal ideology preferable to the reigning ideology of the Republican Party. Only that he "feel(s) very comfortable as a Democrat," which might mean only that he's more at ease when he actually has a chance to win re-election.

Pat Toomey, the former president of the right wing libertarian Club for Growth who very likely will be the Repub nominee for the Senate seat in 2010, had it right when he appeared immediately before Specter on Hardball and observed

Chris, Arlen Specter is whatever he thinks the political calculus suggests he should be at any moment in time.

Right now, that means liberal Democrat, because he's got a primary challenge from the left. If-if he manages to get by that, which I don't know that he will, but, if he does, he will be something else again. This is a guy who has made a career out of being on both sides of as many issues as he can.

It's not likely that Toomey, former chairman of the right-wing/libertarian Club for Growth, has seen the bar graph posted Wednesday by Moulitsas on his dailykos site. It seems hardly coincidental that Arlen Specter voted with the GOP most of the time when he belonged to that party, then voted primarily with the Democrats after his switch, then veered sharply left once it became clear he'd be challenged in the Democratic Party by Joe Sestak, who announced Tuesday that he would enter the race.

And the stance of President Obama, whom Specter apparently is still satisfied he voted against? As the New York Times reported, the day after Mr. Opportunistic announced his change of party

Mr. Obama pledged enthusiastic support for Mr. Specter’s candidacy as a Democrat in 2010, saying, "We are confident that Arlen Specter is going to get a sixth term."

No doubt the President has believed all along that Arlen Specter would be a valuable supporter as a Democrat of his agenda. And so he has been, and will be until, if planned, he is re-elected, at which time his political calculus will shift. Meanwhile, it will be interesting to view President Obama campaign for the incumbent against two-term U.S. Representative Sestak, the highest ranking former military officer in Congress. Sestak is a little different than Specter, having been a critic of the Iraq War, supporter of gun control, and an original co-sponsor of the pro-labor Employees Free Choice Act, which Senator Specter still opposes. And someone who has cast a vote for for Barack Obama.

Hating Government

Check out this video, especially beginning at approximately 35 seconds, featuring this astonishing statement:

If you like the Post Office and the Department of Motor Vehicles and you think they’re run well, just wait till you see Medicare, Medicaid and health care done by the government.



This was not from some right-wing fanatic disrupting a town hall meeting hosted by Senator Arlen Specter (D.-Pa.), Representative Lloyd Doggett (D.-Tx.), or House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D.-Md.). This right-wing fanatic is Arthur Laffer.

Yes, the Arthur Laffer, whose theories arguably are responsible for some of the biggest damage done to the economy of this country the past thirty years, as the Laffer Curve became the intellectual underpinning of supply side economics. In "The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijaacked by Crackpot Economics," Jonathan Chait noted it all started innocuously 35 years ago:

The cult in question generally traces its political origins to a meeting in Washington in late 1974 between Arthur Laffer, an economic consultant, Jude Wanniski, an editorial page writer for the Wall Street Journal, and Dick Cheney,then chief of staff to President Ford.

Soon afterward, Wanniski introduced Irving Kristol to Jack Kemp, who converted Ronald Reagan to an ideology whose

core principle is that economic performance hinges almost entirely on how much incentive investors and entrepreneurs have to attain more wealth and this incentive in turn hinges almost entirely on their tax rate. Therefore, cutting taxes- especially those of the rich, who carry out the decisive entrepreneurial role in the economy- is always a good idea.

And continuously cutting taxes gave us a war in Iraq paid for by borrowed money, back when Republicns like Dick Cheney argued "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." Until recently- when the need for health care reform awakened in the GOP a convenient distaste for deficits- supply siders would argue "either that tax cuts will produce enough growth to wipe out deficits or that deficits simply don't matter."

Arthur Laffer is the man who gave birth to the free lunch- cut taxes and keep spending- which fueled the Reagan and Bush 43 tax cuts, ballooning the deficit and helping exacerbate the gap betweeen rich and poor. Arthur Laffer now implies a) the Post Office (really, the U.S. Postal Service) is undependable; and b) Medicare and Medicaid are not government programs.

Could it be that the Arthur Laffer, a conservative economist, is not aware that the mail does get delivered on time? Or that Medicare and Medicaid are government programs?

Virtually impossible. Thirty-some years ago Arthur Laffer realized his theory made no sense, and he now realizes that the incomparably popular Medicare is a government program- a popular, efficient government health program. So it's necessary that Laffer, and the rest of the denizens of the despicably dishonest right, spread the fiction that Medicare is a private program.

It's possible to argue that Medicare is popular and run by the government and simultaneously to oppose health reform which includes a public option. But that requires some explanation and reasoning, two things that the conservative mob, either bereft of an interest in detail or suffering from a deficit in attention, has now almost entirely relinquished.

Rush Looking Down On The People Who Look Up To Him

While he routinely misinforms, misleads, distorts, manipulates, and occasionally lies, Rush Limbaugh is never at a loss to hold his audience of "dittoheads" in contempt. Rush was at his best Friday when, as his website has it, he whined:

Now, if you've heard since last night the program's suspended, and the news has been all over the place. Now you hear that it's not suspended. What do you do? More than likely you wait to find out what the truth is. In the meantime, if you have any sense yourself, you realize you're dealing with a bunch of frigging idiots. And then you realize it's the same bunch of frigging idiots that wants to administer your medical treatment. Not just your insurance, your medical treatment. And then you'll realize it's the same bunch of frigging idiots that claims global warming is being caused by you and that you gotta pay even more taxes to be punished for that. And then you gotta realize that these are the same frigging idiots that say they're going to rebuild the economy with "green jobs" in this new environmental technology sector, but you haven't seen an ad for one of those jobs 'cause not one of them has been created.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Christina Romer, Debbie Stabenow, Sander Levin, they are all frigging idiots. This whole thing, this whole administration, is no more than a Charlie Foxtrot -- and if you don't know what a Charlie Foxtrot is, ask your nearest military person and they will tell you what a Charlie Foxtrot is.

Presumably, Rush could have come up with some evidence of his claims about government health care and the human origin of climate change. Or maybe not. But five instances of "frigging idiots" in eleven sentences. Respect for opponents, Limbaugh style. Intelligent monologue, Limbaugh style. Contempt for audience, Limbaugh style.

Rush: Socialized Medicine, Socialized Care Policy, Social Security

Maybe this is the key to Rush Limbaugh's success: as he flits from issue to issue, Rush is a kind of whirling dervish of misinformation, confusing as he entertains.

Strategically, if irrationally, conflating the Car Allowance Rebate System with health care reform, Limbaugh Friday exhorted:

You could almost say they're the same plan. We're going to get rid of your old clunker car and we're going to get rid of your old clunker grandparents with Obama's health care. Cash for clunkers. Death for clunkers. Disastrous government programs that, it should be noted, were not inherited from George Bush, either. Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, have the gall to call various groups of Americans "villains." These greedy compensates who are trying to jam socialized medicine down our throats, which is a law designed to deny health care to those who have paid in the longest.

That's where this is going to end up. It's going to end up like Social Security: The young are going to pay for the old, pure and simple. That's what's going to end up being. Our parents, our grandparents, our great-grandparents. What kind of person would design a program to deny care for those who raised us?

Trying "to get rid of your old clunker grandparents with Obama's health care," while a humorously contemptous means of referring to the elderly, has been debunked, here at thinkprogress.org. (Medicare now pays for an end-of-life consultation for an elderly patient if the doctor initiates the subject; the amendment proposed would extend payment by Medicare to the consultation if intitiated by the patient.) The myth that Democrats want to kill the elderly was created by the Republican right to kill health care reform, apparently the impetus for Rush's reference to "deny(ing) health care to those who have paid in the longest" and "design(ing) a program to deny care for those who raised us."

But if Rush really believed that the bill targeted elderly Americans for extermination, it's unlikely he'd protest it so vehemently. In the very same stream-of-consciousness rant, he complains of the 'cash for clunkers' program

That's where this is going to end up. It's going to end up like Social Security: The young are going to pay for the old, pure and simple. That's what's going to end up being.

This, apparently, is Rush's nightmare: the car program is going to end up like Social Security! The young are going to pay for the old, pure and simple! Social Security- the beginning of the end of civilization!

Never mind that the crash of housing prices has been a multi-billion- or is it trillion- dollar subsidy from the old to the young. (Housing prices drop, retired people sell their house for far less than earlier would have been expected, said house then bought by young people at a bargain price.) Rush says health care reform is going after the elderly- and worse yet, the automobile program is going to be like that awful Social Security, in which elderly people are financially aided by younger people (who later become the elderly who are helped by the young, as the social compact is continually reinforced).

Characteristically convoluted logic by El Rushbo, whose only complaint should be that it can't be patented.

Next Rush: Frigging, frigging, and more frigging

Rush: Cash For Clunkers= Tax Cut

There is nothing Rush Limbaugh, a paragon of disingenuousness, does better than trying to have it both ways. And so it was on Friday, while Rush was on his way to claiming "cash for clunkers is a public sector disaster. It turns out our cars aren't clunkers; the program is," he would contend

By the way, this billion dollars that they allocated has been the most stimulative thing they have done. And the reason is it's essentially a tax cut..... just imagine if just half, if just half of the stimulus bill had been returned to people in the form of tax cuts we would be on our way out of the recession....

You know, I'm tempted to say when I listen to Debbie Stabenow, "Just shut up! Just shut up, cut taxes for everybody. Cut taxes $4,500 for everybody has a chance to use their money or all kinds of things."

The Car Allowance Rebate System, Limbaugh (a multi-millionaire who never saw a Republican tax cut he didn't like) argues, is "essentially a tax cut." Let's see: as explained here, "the dealer will take your trade, apply the credit toward your purchase price, have your clunker destroyed, and get reimbursed by the government." And that would be a tax cut?

It's really not very complicated. Rebate program: go to a private dealer, buy a car you hadn't intended to buy, agree to pay for the car, and get a credit on the price. Tax cut: send the government less money than otherwise because the tax rate has declined; save most of the money.

A result of an automobile rebate program? Not surprisingly,

Manufacturers, who had cut back on production late last year and early this year, are accelerating production schedules to accommodate the rebate program.

And the Bush tax cuts? According to an article written by Larry Beinhart on April 28, 2008- before the economy went into a tailspin-

Ordinary Americans found that their income was declining. From 2001 to 2007, median family income declined -- depending on where you get your figures from -- by somewhere between $500 and $1,000. Median individual income went down by at least $1,000.

The yearly average number of new private sector jobs created from 2001-2008 was just 369,000, not even keeping up with the growth in population. It should be compared to the average number of new private sector jobs created from '92 to 2,000: 1,760,000 per year.

The number of people in manufacturing jobs decreased by over 3 million.

And few industries have suffered in recent years as much as the domestic auto industry, and probably none with as devastating an impact on the American economy.

Fortunately, this program isn't a tax cut. Just something that will do its part to help wean us off foreign oil, stimulate the economy, and make the automobile industry a little more viable. And in so doing, annoy Rush Limbaugh.

Next Rush: Cash for Clunkers is similar to socialized medicine, bad for the elderly just like Social Security.

Rush: Health Care Reform To Be As Unsuccessful As Car Clunker Program

On Rush Limbaugh's website, it's called "Government Disasters: Cash for Clunkers, Obamacare for Suckers," and it was a twisted attempt on Friday to tie the "cash for clunkers" program in with health care reform.

You would think most rational conservatives, observing how successful the Car Allowance Rebate System, would not want to conflate this new auto program with the drive for what Rush terms "Obamacare." But then most conservatives aren't as brazen as the head of the Republican Party was on July 31:

And now we get the cash for clunkers, and care for suckers. Cash for clunkers. Health care for clunkers. You could almost say they're the same plan..... Cash for clunkers. Death for clunkers. Disastrous government programs that, it should be noted, were not inherited from George Bush, either. Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, have the gall to call various groups of Americans "villains...." .

.... Cash for clunkers is a public sector disaster. It turns out our cars aren't clunkers; the program is. Just like Obamacare. You know, I warned everybody. I told you America could not afford Barack Obama. I said, "I hope he fails," because Obama's programs are designed to harm this country. You have to ask yourself a question: Why in the world suspend cash for clunkers after four days?

Perhaps, Rush, the program was suspended because it ran out of money. And it ran out of money because, far from "a public sector disaster," the effort has been a tremendous success. As the News-Star in Louisiana put it on Saturday,

For Toyota dealers in the five-state region — Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas and Oklahoma — customer traffic is up 47 percent and sales up 27 percent since the program kicked off last week, according to the company.

Up north, the Philadelphia Inquirer describes the reaction of a general sales manager of a Ford dealership in nearby Cherry Hill, New Jersey:

Rucci began requesting additional orders -- about 20 percent more than usual, he said -- six months ago with Ford Motor Co. in anticipation of the start of "Cash for Clunkers."

But even his expectations have been exceeded, he said.

To handle the extra customers, he has extended the workday for five managers and a sales staff of 17 by an average of four hours a day since the program began July 24.

Experts say demand generated by the clunkers program may have pushed U.S. auto sales to a 2009 high last month, possibly signaling a bottom in the car-buying market's worst slump since at least 1976.

An increase in demand, increase in sales, happy customers, dealership profits increased. It's enough to rile Limbaugh up. But wait- there is more, according to the owner of two Dodge dealerships in the Philadelphia, Pa. area:

"I really think it will jump-start the industry," he said. "We were looking at another six months of doldrums. . . . Now it's speeding up our recovery by six months. A lot of guys didn't have that six months in them."

Or as the general sales manager for a Toyota dealership in the area summarized

"It's been a fantastic program for the industry and for the customers taking advantage of it."

That man's name: Glenn Beck (not that Glenn Beck).

Rush gasped

Just expand the program. But they cancel it? Or suspend it? On the theory that they were overwhelmed? What the hell do they think is going to happen when they're the only people you can go to for health insurance?

He spoke too quickly. The House on Friday promptly voted an additional $2 billion for the program, with the Senate expected to act similarly this week. That is, the federal government has expanded the program, as Limbaugh argued it should. And if a public option for health care is adopted, perhaps this is "what is going to happen when the're the only people you can go for health insurance." Quick, decisive action to respond to the needs of the American people, apparently. (Of course, Rush made up the part about "the only people you can go to for health insurance- unless he knows of a plan to eliminate the private health insurance industry- be still, my beating heart.)

Will Rush on Monday applaud the federal government's decision to expand the "cars for clunkers" program, as he advocated? Will he then acknowledge that reform of the health care industry will be as successful? Hmmm.... probably not.

Next Rush: "Cash for Clunkers" is no more than a tax cut, which I'm always in favor of, but not this program.