Now He Perks Up

Finally, President Obama has had enough- he's not going to take it anymore! This advocacy for the middle, and working, classes has to end. Therefore, in his typically low-key fashion, on Tuesday, President Obama claimed "I love Elizabeth. We're allies on a whole host of issues, but she's wrong on this... When you hear folks make a lot of suggestions about how bad this trade deal is, when you dig into the facts, they are wrong."

You'd hardly expect the cheerleader for the jobs-destroying Trans-Pacific Partnership to concede the Senator is "right on this."  Still, it was a little disconcerting when Barack on Thursday whined

The one that gets on my nerves the most is the notion that this is a ‘secret’ deal. Every single one of the critics who I hear saying, ‘this is a secret deal,’ or send out emails to their fundraising base saying they’re working to prevent this secret deal, can walk over today and read the text of the agreement. There’s nothing secret about it.

If "the truth shall set you free," Barack stands chained in a 4' x 8' cell.  Too polite to call him a liar, Charlie Pierce comments

In fact, there's been a lot that's secret about it ever since the negotiations began. It was negotiated behind closed doors, and for reasons that benefited nobody except large corporations and the politicians, dictators, and provincial satraps who do their bidding. (The fact we know much of anything at all is because the good folks at WikiLeaks threw some of the treaty out into the world, which is hardly a proof that the TPP isn't a "secret" deal. WikiLeaks doesn't do a lot of work with stuff that's in the public domain.) 

On Friday, Barack added to his earlier remarks

Every single one of the critics saying this is a secret deal, or send out e-mails to their fundraising base that they're working to stop a secret deal, could walk over and see the text of the agreement. When I just keep on hearing people repeating this notion that it's secret -- I gotta say, it's dishonest. And it's a little concerning when I see friends of mine resorting to those sort of tactics.

Of course, it's not secret- not to the people who really count to Barack. Jim Hightower explains

Top executives, lawyers, and lobbyists of 500-some major corporations who serve on 16 Industry Trade Advisory Committees do have access to the secret texts and to the negotiators themselves. They get to review and amend official proposals, submit their own drafts, and generally look after their own very special interests.

Practicing his stand-up routine, Barack maintained "The notion that corporate America is going to be able to use this provision to eliminate our financial regulations and our food safety regulations and our consumer regulations -- that's just bunk, It's not true."

That would not be so funny had the Senate Finance Committee (which ended up approving the fast track bill) not voted on two measures, approving one and defeating the other). They were aimed at deterring currency manipulation and the Administration so concerned about financial regulations opposed both. At the White House Correspondence Dinners, the President kills with his jokes. When ostensibly serious, he's even better.

Finally, flush with a deal which is a veritable wish list for multi-national corporations, Barack turns into a tough guy, discovering his inner Incredible Hulk (below). An exasperated Sherrod Brown of Ohio, according to the Huffington Post, called it "maddening" and

told reporters that the Obama administration was putting on a full-court press unlike anything Democrats have ever seen in his presidency in order to win the authority to fast track enormous trade deals.

"I think if you could get my colleagues to be honest, on the Democratic side, with you -- and I think you can mostly -- they will say they've been talked to, approached, lobbied and maybe cajoled by more cabinet members on this issue than any issue since Barack Obama's been president," Brown said...

"I wish they put the same effort into minimum wage. I wish they put the same effort into Medicare at 55. I wish they put the same effort into some consumer strengthening on Dodd-Frank," Brown said.

Evidently, Barack would have, were he interested in truly universal health care or regulating the financial sector. Alas, we finally have found out who the real Barack Obama is, and it's not pretty.









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He Knows Which Side The Bread Is Buttered On. But He Doesn't Like Bread.

This donor primary," Digby observes

is likely to get a little bit frantic with all the candidates jockeying for the role of the Republican party’s leading man. Will it be the Wisconsin cheesecake Scott Walker, the Texas beefcake Ted Cruz or the spicy Cuban manwich Marco Rubio? And don’t forget the rest of the chorus line. There’s the B-Actor Jeb Bush who could turn in a credible, if not transcendent, performance, or the Wild Arkansas Preacher Mike Huckabee, along with a whole crew of character actors who could be in a position to step up if they are given the chance. It’s wide open. If nothing else the contest should be wildly entertaining for the rest of us.

Wildly entertaining it will be, and wide open among the three leading contenders. Scott Walker, as the candidate most energized by demonizing workers, and Marco Rubio (now making headway with Sheldon Adelson) are starting to round up the big donors. It will be no problem (and already has not been) for John Ellis Bush in part because, as Buzzfeed's McKay Coppins wrote two months ago

When Bush officially launches his presidential bid later this year, he will likely do so with a campaign manager who has urged the Republican Party to adopt a pro-gay agenda; a chief strategist who signed a Supreme Court amicus brief arguing for marriage equality in California; a longtime adviser who once encouraged her minister to stick to his guns in preaching equality for same-sex couples; and a communications director who is openly gay.

To an extent that would have been unthinkable in past elections, one of the leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination has stocked his inner circle with advisers who are vocal proponents of gay rights. And while the Bush camp says his platform will not be shaped by his lieutenants’ personal beliefs, many in the monied, moderate, corporate wing of the GOP — including pragmatic donors, secular politicos, and other members of the establishment — are cheering the early hires as a sign that Bush will position himself as the gay-friendly Republican in the 2016 field.

Bush obviously needs to walk the gay rights tightrope, with the nod and wink to wealthy gay donors while repeating the "religious conscience" mantra to the GOP popular base, hoping all along that the donor base recognizes his support for rights begins and ends with marriage- and might not include even that.

While Bush, Rubio, and Walker are fully committed to being the next President (though only the Florida senator thus far has announced), it is doubtful that all of the Repub aspirants are determined to obtain the Party's nomination, let alone win a general election.  Charlie Pierce is not the only pundit highly skeptical of Carly Fiorina, "a spectacularly failed business executive (and) a spectacularly failed senatorial candidate," who is set to declare on May 4.

And then there is the curious case of Mike Huckabee.  Ironically,  Salon's Simon Maloy singles out the former Arkansas governor as "at best" a "scam artist" and" at worst" "monster." To the contrary: Huckabee is at worst, even more extremist than most of the prospective GOP field; at best, more earnest than most, perhaps all, of the possible candidates.

"The biggest gap," Chris Hayes has noted, between the donor base and the GOP public "is on marriage equality." Rubio contends (video commentary, below) he would attend a gay wedding. and Bush maintains marriage should be "a local decision."  If the former governor isn't slippery enough, we have Walker (video beneath the other) admitting "I and our family have already had a family member who’s had a reception. I haven’t been at a wedding...for someone I love, we've been at a  reception."  Pierce responds "Is he only in it for the open bar and the bratwurst? Stay tuned."














Huckabee, though, will not be at the reception, for the open bar, the bratwurst, or for show. He contends  

If the courts rule that people have a civil right not only to be a homosexual but a civil right to have a homosexual marriage, then a homosexual couple coming to a pastor who believes in biblical marriage who says ‘I can’t perform that wedding’ will now be breaking the law. Let me make clear: It’s not just saying, ‘I’m sorry you have a preference.’ No, you will be breaking the law subject to civil, for sure, and possibly criminal penalties for violating the law, depending on how the law is written in communities, states and in the nation.

The man from Hope never has claimed to be a lawyer and never should attempt to be one. According to Politico's Nick Gass, he also "said that the government is telling chaplains that they cannot help people 'seek assistance' for a 'homosexual lifestyle' and to 'put their Bibles away, no longer pray in Jesus’ name.'" He has crossed into the point of no return.

Someone did not get the memo.   John Ellis Bush got it, opposing same-sex marriage while urging "respect for the good people on all sides of the gay and lesbian marriage issue — including couples making lifetime commitments." Adopting the "gay and lesbian" and "lifetime commitments" lexicon no doubt reassured those donors Bush has been courting.

Scott Walker got it, threading the marriage equality needle by noting he might be asked to attend a marriage of "someone I love," love being a fairly uncontroversial concept. Even Ted Cruz played it safe, largely punting on the issue.

Gass writes that Huckabee told Politico "that opponents of gay marriage are 'pariahs”' among the 'ruling class' and donors. He also noted that 'supposedly conservative donors and conservative office holders are running away from the issue.'" Mike Huckabee knows the score- he just doesn't want to play the game.

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A Game They Will Not Play

In January, the American Family Association issued a news release which- in the unlikely event it would be successful- would give opponents of same-sex marriage a fighting chance when the matter hits the High Court this summer. In part, it read (italics the organization's)




In light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s announcement that it will hear the issue, American Family Association (AFA,www.afa.net) says Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan and Ruth Bader Ginsburg should recuse themselves from making any same-sex marriage decisions because they have both conducted same-sex marriage ceremonies.

“Both of these justices’ personal and private actions that actively endorse gay marriage clearly indicate how they would vote on same-sex marriage cases before the Supreme Court,” said AFA President Tim Wildmon. “Congress has directed that federal judicial officers must disqualify themselves from hearing cases in specified circumstances. Both Kagan and Ginsburg have not only been partial to same-sex marriage but they have also proven themselves to be activists in favor of it. In order to ensure the Court’s integrity and impartiality, both should recuse themselves from same-sex marriage cases. Congress has an obligation to Americans to see that members of the Supreme Court are held to the highest standards of integrity. The law demands it, and the people deserve it"....

Kagan performed a September 21, 2014, same-sex marriage ceremony for her former law clerk and his partner in Maryland. And Ginsburg performed a same-sex marriage ceremony at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C., in August 2013.

*********************************************************************************

Bill O'Reilly emphatically agrees. However, the District of Columbia legalized same-sex marriage in 2009, as did the State of Maryland in November, 2012. It is not unprecedented for Supreme Court justices to perform wedding ceremonies and the ceremonies cited by the AFA were as legal as opposite-sex marriages. Ian Millhiser persuasively argues

If mere participation in a legal institution was grounds for recusal, then it would be difficult to find judges or justices who weren’t recused from many cases. The speed limit in the state of Colorado, for example, is 75 mph, while other states have lower speed limits. Yet, if a litigant were to challenge one of these lower speed limits in court, a judge would not be required to recuse themselves simply because they once drove on Colorado’s roads and took advantage of its higher speed limits.

It's not only that Kagan and Ginsburg have done nothing wrong.  From 1976 to 1979 Clarence Thomas was a lawyer for Monsanto Corporation and as an Associate Justice has taken substantial money- as gifts or speaking engagements- from organizations advocating the interests of agribusiness.  Yet (or maybe therefore) he still sat when the US Supreme Court decided Monsanto Co. v. Geertson Seed Farms in 2010 and Bowman v. Monsanto Co. in 2013.

Moreover, shortly before the Supreme Court ruled on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, in June 2012 Elizabeth Flock of US News & World Report explained that Justice Thomas' wife Ginni

has been a vocal critic of the Affordable Care Act, and she has certainly made money off of that criticism. In 2009, she founded the Tea Party nonprofit lobbying group Liberty Central, which lobbied against the law. There, she made a salary of $120,000, according to the group's 2010 tax filing.

A startup donation to Liberty Central to the tune of $500,000 came from Harlan Crow, a Dallas real estate investor, Republican donor, and friend of Justice Thomas, Politico reported in 2011. Crow declined to comment to the New York Times about whether he was the source of the money.

Ginni Thomas later stepped down as CEO and president of Liberty Central, but started Liberty Consulting in 2010, which also did anti-healthcare reform lobbying, according to the liberal site Mother Jones.

And in January 2011, it came to light that Justice Thomas had "inadvertently" left out information about his wife's employment over the last 13 years—where her earnings added up to as much as $1.6 million, the Huffington Post reported.

One of her former employers: the Heritage Foundation, where Ginni Thomas made hundreds of thousands of dollars between 2003 and 2007, according to a letter from Thomas to the Committee on Financial Disclosure. The foundation has also been a vocal opponent of the healthcare reform law.

That's (relatively) small potatoes, admittedly. Monsanto won both its cases overwhelmingly and the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the ACA,  though it rejected its Medicaid provision. Of far more consequence, however, was Bush v. Gore (1st cartoon from slideshare.net, 2nd from Ann Telnaes), handed down a little over 14 years ago. Most famously, then- Chief Justice Rehnquist and Associate Justice O'Connor had stated their intention to step down if the Republican became President.

More significantly, however, Ginni Thomas- yes, she again- was at the time working at the Heritage Foundation drawing up a list of potential appointees in a Bush Administration. And Justice Scalia's son Eugene was employed at the law firm of Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher, one of whose partners was Theodore Olson, lead attorney for the former Texas governor in the Supreme Court litigation.  and later Solicitor General in the Bush Administration. (Scalia's son John worked for the firm representing the ticket in the Florida courts.)

When it really counted- when the presidency of the United States and the integrity of the electoral process were at stake- Repub justices decided personal interests came before morality and ethics. Being Democrats, Kagan and Ginsburg probably would recuse themselves were there an actual conflict.  But there isn't, and they won't.

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D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R

Poor Chris Christie.  Last week, he held several events in New Hampshire. This week, he already has "done lunch" with a St. Louis financier, a Repub donor and August Busch, the former chairperson of Anheuser-Busch, as well as addressing the 45th annual Conference on the Americas in Washington.

The guy who whines "my wife and I, who are not wealthy by current standards..." (because it's hard to get by on an adjusted gross income which falls just south of $600,000) still thinks he has a chance to have a chance to be the GOP presidential nominee.   But while he travels around the country to try to prove to GOP donors that he hates unions, workers, and the middle class more than does Scott Walker (formidable competition, there), New Jersey still is feeling the effects of having a singularly ineffective governor.   David Sirota (with charts from International Business Times/Hanna Sender), who should be famous for more than having known the late Murray Goldberg, writes

It was 2010, and Christie had just installed a longtime private equity executive, Robert Grady, to manage the state's pension money. Grady promoted a plan to put more of those funds into riskier investments managed by Wall Street firms. Though this would entail higher fees, Grady said the strategy would "maximize returns while appropriately managing risk."

Four years later, New Jersey has secured only half the promised results. The state has sent more pension money to big-name Wall Street firms like Blackstone, Third Point, Omega Advisors, Elliott Associates and Grady's old firm, The Carlyle Group. Additionally, the amount of fees the state pays financial managers has more than tripled since Christie assumed office. New Jersey is now one of America’s largest investors in hedge funds.

The “maximized returns” have yet to materialize.

Between fiscal year 2011 and 2014, the state’s pension trailed the median returns for similarly sized public pension systems throughout the country, according to data from the financial analysis firm, Wilshire Associates. That below-median performance has cost New Jersey taxpayers billions in unrealized gains and has left the pension system on shaky ground. Meanwhile, New Jersey is now paying a quarter-billion dollars in additional annual fees to Wall Street firms -- many of whose employees have financially supported Republican groups backing Christie’s reelection campaign.

This scheme was seen as dubious even when introduced. Sirota continues

Those who originally opposed the state's shifting of pension funds into hedge funds, private equity, venture capital, real estate and other “alternative investments” see the below-average returns as no accident but an inevitable byproduct of the strategy: The Christie administration has effectively taken money from retired state workers and delivered the cash to Wall Street money managers.

“All the leading players on the [New Jersey State Investment Council] were from the alternative universe and all of their decisions were driven by a political agenda and an investment ideology which had no relationship to facts on the ground. And the facts were that you simply couldn’t justify these investments on the basis of what they cost in fees to generate a dollar of new returns,” Jim Marketti, one of the few State Investment Council members to vote against the Christie administration’s transfer of pension money into alternative investments, told International Business Times. In 2011, Marketti warned the council that such investments would be “a roller coaster ride on which only the Wall Street professionals and insiders are the winners.”

Chris Christie knows where his bread is buttered. Anything but stupid, the governor knows how to leverage his influence. Sirota finds

As previously reported by IBTimes, campaign finance records show that employees and others affiliated with firms managing New Jersey pension money made $167,000 worth of donations to New Jersey Republicans since 2009. Employees of those firms have also donated more than $11 million to the Republican Governors Association and the Republican National Committee. Christie is the chairman of the RGA and both organizations spent heavily to support his 2013 reelection campaign.

It's pretty slick, but evidently the governor is playing fast-and-loose with the law, given that

Despite federal and state pay-to-play rules restricting campaign contributions from employees of firms doing business with public pension funds, many of the donations were made around the time that pension investment contracts were awarded by Grady's State Investment Council. At least one of thosecontracts went to a venture capital firm after one of the firm’s partners made a $10,000 contribution to the New Jersey Republican Party. That sequence of transactions is now under investigation by New Jersey officials.

State workers (and women in need of preventive care) aren't the only people getting the shaft from Governor Christie. Now

NJ Transit wants to boost bus and rail fares by an average of 9 percent, starting Oct. 1, and eliminate some routes beginning in September, the agency said Monday.

The moves are designed to close a $60 million budget gap, the statewide transit agency said.

Fares were increased five years ago.  

 In 1988, Anthony Kennedy joined the Supreme Court; the St. Louis Cardinals became the Phoenix (now Arizona) Cardinals; the first night game was played in Wrigley Field; the awful ET was released to home video; Hussein won the Boston Marathon (look it up- April 18) Pan Am Flight 103 was downed over Lockerbie, Scotland; Michael Dukakis was tragically filmed in a tank. That was the year in which the gas tax was last raised in the state, which has the second lowest gas tax in the nation. As a result, transit riders have been called upon to repair New jersey's broken Transportation fund.  Thus

Since 2002, there have been four fare increases," said Janna Chernetz, Tri-State Transportation Campaign senior New Jersey analyst. "Meanwhile, a key source of revenue to replenish the TTF, the gas tax, has not been increased in 27 years. NJ's transportation funding structure is unsustainable and broken. It needs a solution now."

Assemblyman John Wisniewski, D-Middlesex, criticized Gov. Chris Christie's administration about the TTF, relying on borrowing and a decline in support for NJT operating expenses from the general fund for NJT operating expenses.

It's essentially a shell game being run by Chris Christie- and the  results were predictable. A year ago, Mark Magyar of NJ Spotlight explained

Despite his promise to increase pay-as-you-go financing for the Transportation Trust Fund, Gov. Chris Christie has relied so heavily on debt for four years that the program will run out of borrowing capacity a year early, leaving the Christie administration without the funding it needs to pay for highway, bridge, and mass transit construction fifteen months from now.

Christie, who complained during his budget speech about the rising cost of debt payments, not only increased transportation debt by $1 billion more than expected during his first four budgets, but also borrowed money at above-market interest rates in order to generate an extra $250 million in up-front bond premium payments to replace New Jersey Turnpike toll money he used to balance his budget.

Really, calling this character a "bully" is too kind. Far from the truth-teller he still is portrayed as in some centrist and center-right circles, Christie has run his administration first to pander to the moneybags in the Repub Party, and secondarily to the anti-tax fervor in the base. Early on, he eliminated the millionaires' tax and has subsequently consistently cut services while giving handouts to corporations as fast at a dizzying pace.  The sooner John Ellis Bush, Scott Walker, and Marco Rubio finish him off as a presidential contender, the better off his constituents will be.







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Whatever It Is, It's Not Courage

It was bad enough when Joe Scarborough on his "Morning Joe" on April 20  said " I wonder whether Chris Christie’s problems have put him in position where he has to go for broke and do what all the other candidates are not doing — and that is tell the truth about our fiscal house."  Recognizing the lack of substance of the governor's proposal,  Charles  Pierce five days earlier had noticed

The really hilarious part is that Christie is pitching his personal form of granny-starving as a boon to younger Americans, because what is a more obvious solution to the problem of unemployed American youth than to propose a policy that guarantees that American workers will stay on the job until they are nearly 70, and that only works if you assume that every human-resources department in the country will be raptured off to cost-cutting heaven and not notice the line of septuagenarians working on the factory floor? 

Following the display of ignorance by the program's host, Nicole Wallace (video below) made matters worse when she commented "I hate the term finding his voice, but he knows his voice and he knows his mind, He’s already helping the race by being the adult in the room. Entitlement reform is a huge issue. It’s not the sexiest issue. But New Hampshire voters can handle the straight talk.”  Pierce, five days earlier, had written

Bold! Again! There is something entirely sick about the desire among our political elites to make the lives of the poor and elderly worse so as to demonstrate how important and serious those elites are. There is a consensus here that exists some place outside the world in which most people live.








Hanging out with GOP presidential hopefuls at the First in the Nation Republican Leadership Summit in New Hampshire, Jim Newell reports

Another plank of Christie’s big plan is to reform Social Security disability benefits. There are too many working-age people out there falsely claiming disability and we need to get them back in the workforce. Grr! During his Q&A segment, a woman took issue with this part of the plan. She told him that she has a 24-year-old son with Asperger’s syndrome and he can’t keep a job, so he really needs disability benefits. Christie assures her that her son’s case is legitimate and he has no intention of harming him

The woman, having secured a pledge from Christie to protect her son’s bennies, then asked Christie what he’s going to do about all the illegals immigrants coming to take our jobs. Near the end of his answer Christie acknowledged, in another one of his hard truths, that the 11 or 12 million undocumented immigrants in the country cannot be relied upon to all “self-deport.” (Poor Mitt Romney.) Was this the part where humanity’s truthiest truth-teller was going to go all-in for amnesty? Not quite. He merely suggested that leaders of both parties are going to have to come together to find a solution for that. The reason it hasn’t happened already, according to Christie, is that there’s been “no leadership from the White House.” You might think that pushing with its political might a bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill would count as some kind of leadership on this issue, but apparently not. That’s just another hard truth from Chris Christie.

There is a difference between straight talk and pandering to Ken Langone, Pete Peterson, and investment bankers. There is, too, a difference between telling the truth and being unwilling to tell a mother with a disabled son that that he's targeting the young man's benefits. Some people call Chris Christie a bully. He should be thankful- that wins votes in a Repub primary. Cowardly is more like it.





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In A Short Line Of Heretics

Don't look for Mike Huckabee any time soon to advocate increasing Social Security benefits, cutting the age of eligibility for the program, or removing the cap on income taxable for Social Security. However

"I don't know why Republicans want to insult Americans by pretending they don't understand what their Social Security program and Medicare program is," Huckabee said in response to a question about Christie's proposal to gradually raise the retirement age and implement a means test. 

Huckabee said his response to such proposals is "not just no, it's you-know-what no."

"I'm not being just specifically critical of Christie but that's not a reform," he said. "That's not some kind of proposal that Republicans need to embrace because what we are really embracing at that point is we are embracing a government that lied to its people--that took money from its people under one pretense and then took it away at the time when they started wanting to actually get what they have paid for all these years."

Huckabee also said he wouldn't sign congressman Paul Ryan's plan to reform Medicare for Americans who are 55 years old and younger. "At 55, that still means if I started working, started paying in when I was 14, so for me that would be 51 years [sic] that I'd be paying in and suddenly you're telling me they're going to be changing the rules for you here."

Digby recognizes

This is very unusual for a Republican. They may not want to take that vote for cutting the program, especially since their base is very much among those who benefit from it, but they are never this unequivocal about it. It’s extremely rare for them not to issue any disclaimer about The Deficit and The Government Spending Too Much, etc, etc. To come right out and take the retirement age and means testing off the table — that actually is the “bold” and “authentic” breaking-with-conventional-wisdom for which the beltway media had already Christie all the credit.

Departing from conservative, neo-liberal, and Beltway wisdom on earned benefits is unusual, and laudable-  but not unprecedented- for Republicans. In the summer of 1998 William Saletan explained how in January of 1997 cultural warrior Gary

Bauer opened fire on the corporatists. In a New York Times op-ed, he argued that schemes to privatize Social Security would strip stay-at-home mothers of federally guaranteed benefits designed to reward them for raising children. "Why do we think the nation will be better off," Bauer asked, "by forcing workers to put their money into stock rather than, say, spending it on rearing children?"

 In April the next year, the Republican outlier spoke at the Harvard University Institute of Politics when

A student in the back of the room challenged Bauer to extend his critique of capitalism to domestic issues. He noted that Bauer had criticized advocates of Social Security privatization for undermining the nation's commitment to dependent spouses and children. Was there a "potential for realignment," the student asked, "between social conservatives and a more progressive strand of economic thinking?" Bauer smiled. "A lot of realignments are possible," he replied.

Unfortunately, Bauer never went much further, perhaps because shortly thereafter he embarked on a (inevitably doomed) effort to steal the GOP nomination for President. At the time, Bill Kristol found "The business wing of the party wants social conservatives to vote Republican, but doesn't like the idea that social conservatives might have ideas about foreign policy or tax policy. "

Kristol noted Ralph Reed "was willing to abide by that bargain. Gary isn't." Bauer economic advisor Jeff Bell added "Gary is testing the hypothesis that the pro-family movement is ready to break out. It's ready to have an economics and a foreign policy of its own."

It never was; the pro-family movement failed that test.  In retrospect, it wasn't at all surprising that "In 1995, when Bell and his colleagues presented their ideas to a Republican tax-reform commission, they found themselves outgunned by 'corporatists' who preferred tax breaks for businesses."

Saletan observed "Bauer's economic ideas flow from three principles: virtue, family, and human capital." Creating a PAC called the Campaign for Working Families, Bauer stated "I was trying to send a signal that this wouldn't be a PAC concerned about capital gains tax cuts as opposed to decent wages."

It isn't terribly surprising, either, that Mike Huckabee would be one of the two Repub presidential aspirants (the other: Lindsey Graham) to blow the whistle on Chris Christie's assault on the elderly. Bauer, whose primary causes were anti-gay rights and abortion, was nonetheless at least as interested in "decent wages" as capital gains tax cuts, unlike the GOP donor base and the vast majority of its elected officials and strategists.

Similarly, Huckabee, himself a cultural warrior who targets same-sex marriage and abortion, once referred to the Club for Growth (excerpts from its anti-Huckabee ads, below) as the Club for Greed and on a later date remarked

I kind of have a standing philosophy: If the Club for Growth hates you, I like you.

When they’re against a candidate, I’ve got to figure out — there must be a reason I will like that candidate, and most likely will go help them, because I’m just so disgusted and frustrated and tired of the mind-set of the Club for Growth.








Huckabee remains an anti-abortion extremist, ludicrously and offensively in November offensively maintaining “If you felt something incredibly powerful at Auschwitz and Birkenau over the 11 million killed worldwide and the 1.5 million killed on those grounds, cannot we feel something extraordinary about 55 million murdered in our own country in the wombs of their mothers?” Asking Christians to accept same-sex marriage, he has said, is "like asking someone who’s Jewish to start serving bacon-wrapped shrimp in their deli."

The people who run the Repub Party like their candidates to oppose abortion. but not too strenuously, and they're even more uncomfortable with resistance to same-sex marriage.   (Their voters, likewise, are to oppose abortion, then move on quickly to complain about taxes on the wealthy and benefits for poor people.) They're not partial to anyone focused on virtue, family, and human capital, however they're defined.  As with the Beltway insider crowd, they're far more enthusiastic about candidates who want to undermine the social safety net.  Digby realizes

So, Chris Christie is probably very smart to be playing to the beltway crowd on this one. There’s nothing they love more than to see some loudmouth bully “tell it like it is” to most vulnerable people in our society. And, needless to say, he won’t be alone. The GOP was stung by Bush’s failure to cut the programs, and the Tea Party has not been willing to let them try it again as long as a Democrat is proposing it. Most of the other 2016 candidates are being careful, but it’s unlikely they won’t go along with a program like Paul Ryan’s latest, which is nothing more than warmed-over privatization. It’s in the Republican DNA.

Mike Huckabee, as he no doubt understands (whether or not he enters the race), will never be the GOP presidential nominee.. Even though his reason for opposing the conservative/neo-liberal anti-elderly consensus on earned benefits is less than rigorous, he is, almost as much as Gary Bauer in the last century, a man without a party.







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Now, Let's Deny That Sacrament To Some People

"Bartender, a double Prestone, and see what the pundits in the backroom will have," periodically states one of America's most colorful bloggers, which is Piercian for "I feel like my head is going to explode."

The saying came to mind as I skimmed Ted Cruz's announcement at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia in March that he was running for President and found him declaring "imagine a president who says 'I will honor the Constitution, and under no circumstances will Iran be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon.'"

Ignore the non sequitur that Iran being allowed to acquire, or prohibited from acquiring, a nuclear weapon has anything to do with the United States Constitution. Presumably, Cruz was talking about something like the Affordable Care Act, which he vowed for the 457th time he would abolish upon being elected President. Legislation that has granted millions of Americans health insurance, millions more preventive care, and blocked insurance companies from throwing sick people off their insurance presents a grave threat to the Republic.

But it was in that same speech Cruz declared "Instead of a federal government that works to undermine our values, imagine a federal government that works to defend the sanctity of human life... and to uphold the sacrament of marriage."

Cruz was interrupted both after his reference (or what the activists rightly assume is a reference) to abortion and after his reference (or what the activists accurately believe is a reference) to same-sex marriage. Were the lights not guaranteed to evoke applause, one could only come to the conclusion that the senator from Texas is confused.

I am not referring to "the sanctity of  human life," which is broken when a woman's pregnancy is ended between fertilization and implantation, for it would be a little much to expect a conservative to admonish God (or even  nature) for ending human life, or its potential.  Rather, it's "to uphold the sacrament of marriage."

Cruz, who says "I’m Cuban, Irish and Italian, and yet somehow I ended up Southern Baptist.” is the son of an outspoken evangelical pastor in Texas, and has proclaimed "We have never seen an administration with such hostility toward religious faith." Perhaps he ought to be less concerned with the faith of others and more concerned with his own, given that

The cornerstone of Reformation theology developed by Martin Luther, then adapted by John Calvin on its way to the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, was the idea that human beings could not ourselves determine what God had marked as sure indicators of God’s grace in us. Rather, Luther argued that scripture alone (sola scriptura) pointed to what God has ordained as the holy rites essential to the salvation of every Christian—these being Baptism and Eucharist only.

If Ted Cruz believes, contrary to his (Protestant) faith, that marriage is a sacrament, he ought at least to acknowledge that he departs from his religion in that matter. So, too, should he not continue to con his followers by implying that same-sex marriage should be resisted because it is a sacrament. (Below, Cruz talks about the issue.)

The closest secular equivalent to a "sacrament" would be "fundamental right." According to Ted Olson (albeit not a disinterested observer), the United States Supreme Court has on 15 occasions found marriage to be a fundamental right- and it probably has thus claimed more often than that. Into this breach steps Senator Ted Cruz, who tells evangelical Christians marriage is a "sacrament" and that sanctioning same-sex marriage would be "rampant judicial activism. It will be lawlessness, it will be fundamentally illegitimate.”

(Of course, if it were not for Ted Olson, George W. Bush probably would not have been installed as President in the December, 2000/ January, 2001 coup. Heckuva job, Teddie.)

A law curtailing a fundamental right is to be subject to the "strict scrutiny" ssm bans cannot withstand and the US Supreme Court this summer probably will strike down all such state laws. It may do so on equal protection or on due process (citing "liberty interests") grounds or both, but it will be predicated on the basis of the Fourteenth Amendment- of that United States Constitution Cruz believes President Obama is destroying but which Cruz says he "will honor."

If any Justice has a sense of irony (doubtful), he or she will note in the majority or concurring opinion that most same-sex marriage critics (however ludicrously) believe marriage to be a sacrament, perhaps even a God-given right. With friends like the Texas senator- and those of similar beliefs- gay marriage opponents need no enemies.












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