GOP Loser-Heroes and the Conservative Cult of Victimhood

One of the more overlooked hurdles to the big Republican Party rebranding project is the fact that the base loves victims. Sarah Palin perfected cashing in on this tendency, making a career out of being a victim of the "lamestream media." And their love of victims necessarily makes them lovers of losers. Anyone who can play the victim card while saying, "I just might've won if it wasn't for..." is a hero. As is the case with Mike Huckabee, you can even get a show on Fox News. This isn't universally true, of course -- neither John McCain nor Mitt Romney are too beloved by the base these days -- but that's more a case of taking their losses with a measure of dignity and grace than anything. To be a rightwing loser-hero, you have to complain and gripe and whine and basically throw a child's "It's not fair!" sort of tantrum. For whatever reason, poor losers are winners in wingnuts' eyes. Graceful losers are RINOs.

But how constructive is it to continually refight the last battle? No matter how much she complains and whines, the 2008 election isn't going to be overturned somehow and Sarah Palin made vice president. Nursing grievances serves no useful purpose -- especially when you seem completely unwilling to learn a damned thing from your loss. At heart, the rightwing loser-hero represents as big a hindrance to the GOP as their runaway racism, sexism, homophobia, and Christian supremacism. When you're trying to win elections, it probably is a good idea to listen to losers -- provided the purpose is to learn from mistakes. But it's a bad idea to listen to losers who blame everyone in the world but themselves. The belief that your campaign was perfect and the media, voters, and opposition was flawed is no way to get ahead in politics. Which means this tendency among Republican voters to idolize losers is a tendency Democrats should applaud.

Behold the stupid:


[[NationalJournal:]

Since Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus introduced the “Growth and Opportunity Project” in mid-March, the party has proven over and over and over again that it just isn’t ready to change.

The latest example of the GOP being intellectually and politically stuck in the 2012 presidential primaries comes courtesy of one of the stars of those disastrous contests: former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum. According to Santorum, the Republican Party’s path to revitalization is not a new round of engagement with women, young voters, and other groups that delivered an electoral landslide to President Barack Obama in November. No, Santorum has a different plan for saving the GOP: defunding Planned Parenthood.

The Raw Story reports that Santorum presented his three-point plan to save the party in a fundraising email over the weekend: mobilizing “pro-family conservatives,” “refuting the lies and half-truths that our detractors in the GOP are spreading about us,” and attacking the women’s’ health care provider.


Yes, let's go with Rick Santorum's ideas, seeing as how they worked so well the last time. He's got the plan to win over those lady voters.

Also joining in on the fun is former GOP Rep. Jeff Landry of Louisiana, who announced with much fanfare that he was starting a SuperPAC called Restore Our Republic. ROR will, according to Politico, "give conservatives aligned with the GOP’s activist base the same outside support that establishment-side Republicans get from independent expenditure groups." Without saying so explicitly, Landry makes it clear that his group is basically a RINO hunting safari, with establishment incumbents as the prey.

"Incumbents who are out there who are conservatives will never have to worry about us," Landry said. "And if you’re a Republican, you’re supposed to be conservative." Landry's effort will be co-helmed by Republican strategist Nachama Soloveichik, a former spokesperson for the Club For Growth, another RINO hunting camp. The end effect of all of this is that ROR would promote the sort of candidates that makes rebranding impossible.

Did I mention that Landry lost reelection n 2012? Yeah, the guy who just lost an election has the magic formula for winning elections. And people take these guys seriously.

Maybe the conservative movement shouldn't have been so accepting of the "help" offered by self-serving grifters like Sarah Palin. Because somewhere along the line, they've taught their base to believe that it's the losers who hold the keys to winning elections. This reasoning has it that -- for example -- immigrant bashing isn't the problem, the problem is that they aren't bashing immigrants enough. And it's the same on down the line: the War on Women, scapegoating minorities, the homophobia, the Islamophobia, etc. The problem isn't that there's too much of this in the GOP -- the problem is that there isn't enough. Turn on talk radio or Fox News and you'll hear it over and over and over -- people didn't vote Republican because they didn't see "true" conservatism. The old Republican rule comes back: if what you're doing isn't working, you just need to do more of it. You need to hate more and smear more and scapegoat more, because that's what voters really like.

If the GOP rebranding effort is going to work, they're going to need to take these regressive loser-heroes head on. They need to realize that, by pushing incredibly unpopular stances in the name of "true conservatism," these victimhood-mongers are actively working against the party. Because these people practice the politics of exclusion -- and they've excluded so many voters that they can't possibly win national office. Exclusion and alienation are, after all, practically the same thing.

Their big advice for winning more election is basically to actively drive more voters away. If they had any brains at all, Republican leadership would treat these fools like political lepers. Instead, they put them in their Hall of Heroes.

-Wisco

[photo by Gage Skidmore]

Harry Reid Needs to Put Up or Shut Up on Filibuster Reform

File under "I wouldn't get my hopes up"; ThinkProgress' Ian Millhiser reports that Senate majority leader Harry Reid is talking filibuster reform again, after the last stab at it turned out to be a completely inadequate joke. In an interview with a public radio station, Reid threatened once again to bring democracy to the US Senate.


“All within the sound of my voice, including my Democratic senators and the Republican senators who I serve with, should understand that we as a body have the power on any given day to change the rules with a simple majority, and I will do that if necessary,” Reid said on Nevada Public Radio.

...“I’m a very patient man. Last Congress and this Congress, we had the opportunity to make some big changes. We made changes, but the time will tell whether they’re big enough. I’m going to wait and build a case,” Reid said. “If the Republicans in the Senate don’t start approving some judges and don’t start helping get some of these nominations done, then we’re going to have to take more action.”


 Yes, Harry Reid is a "very patient man." In fact, on the issue of Republican obstructionism, Harry Reid has been far too patient.


[Greg Sargent:]

By my count, this is at least the third time a Dem Senate leader has threatened to revisit rules reform. Yet the obstructionism continues with no action on Reid’s part.

Reid needs to stop threatening to revisit the filibuster unless he actually means it. Empty threats accomplish nothing. Indeed, they’re counterproductive. They make Dems look weak. They inflate expectations among Dem base voters — and supporters who worked hard to reelect Obama and Dems to Congress — that we may soon enjoy a functional Senate.


I couldn't agree more. Something needs to be done. And talking about doing it is counterproductive. GOP filibustering over the past decade has gotten so bad that the media has taken to reporting failures to break one as if the filibuster didn't even exist. "The Senate failed to reach the 60-vote threshold today..." has become a routine opening sentence, as if this is all so very normal and democracy in the Senate is supposed to be a sham. As if the filibuster were some grand constitutional design -- part of the founders' "checks and balances" -- instead a mere obstructionist tactic that could easily be reformed or even done away with.

I understand the concern very well: if Democrats lose the Senate and there's no filibuster, things could get ugly. Take it from a guy from a state where Democrats can only offer token resistance at the moment.

But that's only a real worry if there's a Republican president who won't veto crazy GOP bills and who'll nominate terrible candidates to courts, cabinet positions, and ambassadorships. And that doesn't seem very likely for the foreseeable future. Demographically, the major qualification required to become president right now is that the candidate not be a Republican. So if dems own the White House, they own the veto. It takes a 2/3 majority to override a veto, so that's virtually the same as overcoming a filibuster in the Senate, plus the additional hurdle of a 2/3 majority in the House; i.e., a "super-filibuster" of sorts.

In fact, the current political landscape makes this the perfect time to reform the filibuster. Personally, I'm torn on whether or not to do away with it altogether (leaning toward no, the minority party should never be completely powerless) . But there's no reason just to leave it as it is. Washington is deeply, deeply broken and dysfunctional and the Senate filibuster has a lot to do with that. If there's one thing I'm not torn about, it's that the current version of the filibuster must die -- preferably painfully and with a stake through its heart.

Harry Reid should stop with the threats and grab up a hammer and that stake.

-Wisco

[photo by Steve A Johnson]

The Holy Threats and Sacred Lies of the Anti-Choice Movement

The "pro-life" side of the abortion argument always claims the moral upper hand. Mostly Christian, they cite their religion as the sole measure of their moral and ethical beliefs and wave the Bible around as proof of their righteousness. But, as is so often the case with fanatics, they don't actually follow their religion, so much as twist it and pervert it in order to force it to follow them. Their moral upper hand never stays up for long before it comes to slap the crap out of benighted unbeliever. These people are Bible-thumpers, sure. But when they thump that Bible of theirs, it's generally over someone's head.


[Raw Story:]

The life of a Latina assemblywoman in Nevada has been threatened after she used a story about her own personal abortion experience at age 16 to make a point about the importance of sex education.

“I’m going to say something I’ve never said publicly before, because — Why not? I’ve been open about everything else?” Democratic Assemblywoman Lucy Flores reportedly told the state Assembly Education Committee on Monday. “I had six other sisters, all of them became pregnant in their teens — all of them. One was 14 years old when she got pregnant with twins. That is what I had to learn from.”

“I had an abortion because I didn’t have access to birth control, or even an understanding of what that meant,” she explained. “I didn’t even understand that my worth did not come from men, or sex with men, trying to fill up a hole in me from so much pain.”

 So yeah. Followers of the "Prince of Peace." If these people are so pro-life, then why doesn't the fact that Flores is getting death threats surprise anyone?

Flores was testifying as to the stunning (and entirely predictable) failure of her state's abstinence-only education policy. Her personal story is a story that's been repeated over and over in Nevada and other states, where the educational system has failed kids by leaving them almost entirely ignorant about reproductive health. She wants to reduce teen pregnancy -- and with it, rates of abortion -- through honest education and access to birth control. For the most part, she's actually on the pro-lifer's side. They merely disagree about the method.

And for that, the heretic must die.

It's the movement itself that tries to stoke up this level over anger over things like this. Shameless spin went immediately into gear, with "conservative websites like Life News [getting] the message out to anti-abortion activists with headlines like: 'Democratic Legislator: I Don’t Regret Killing My Baby in Abortion.'"

Of course, that's not what she said at all, but the morally superior anti-choicers have never had any qualms about lying. In fact, that's not the only lie Life News would tell about the incident.


“Unlike Flores, most women regret their abortions and tell painful stories of how they are often unable to come to grips with taking the life of their child,” Life News’ Steven Ertelt wrote.


This is an old lie of the anti-choice movement. The fact is that women abort because they feel it's necessary (proven by the fact that when abortion is illegal, women die) -- in fact, it's hard to think of another reason why someone would have an elective abortion. People tend not to regret doing necessary things. In fact, most women report feeling relieved. But the truth doesn't serve the cause, so the truth is of no use to them.

So much for their moral superiority.

-Wisco

[photo by DaveFayram]

Griper Blade: Stolen Seats, Unresponsive Government

Good news, at least one poll shows that Democrats are poised to take the House of Representatives and with it John Boehner's gavel. In an eight point landslide. There are few outcomes that would be better for America. After all, it's Boehner and his willingness to be led around by the nose by Tea Party Republicans that most stands in the way of progress in America. It's they who believe that up is down, that black is white, and that undermining demand at every opportunity is good for the economy. No wonder Americans reject them.

There's one little hitch: the poll is a bit optimistic and even if it's merely close to being correct, Republicans have so rigged House elections that it wouldn't be enough.


[ThinkProgress:]

According to a Quinnipiac poll released today, if the election were held today 43 percent of the electorate would support a Democratic U.S. House candidate, as opposed to just 35 percent who would back a Republican. That 8 point lead for Democrats is significantly more than the GOP’s margin of victory during the 2010 Republican wave election (6.6 percent) and even more that the Democratic margin of victory during the 2006 wave (7.9 percent) — when Democrats were bolstered by both an unpopular Republican president and a failing war in Iraq.

And yet, if Democrats succeed in maintaining this substantial lead through next year’s congressional election, they will likely emerge with a tiny majority of just 5 seats.
Last January, the Republican Party published a triumphant report bragging that “Republicans enjoy a 33-seat margin in the U.S. House seated yesterday in the 113th Congress, having endured Democratic successes atop the ticket and over one million more votes cast for Democratic House candidates than Republicans.” The report touts the role GOP gerrymandering played in enabling Republicans to keep the House despite losing the popular vote, citing states like Michigan, where “Michiganders cast over 240,000 more votes for Democratic congressional candidates than Republicans, but still elected a 9-5 Republican delegation to Congress.”


See, that's why I always call Republicans shameless. When you're actually bragging about how great a job you did of stealing elections, no other description fits quite so well.

"Indeed, Republican gerrymandering was so successful during the last redistricting cycle that Democrats would likely need to win the national popular vote by more than 7 points in order to win the barest of majorities in the House," the report tells us. So that eight point popular vote landslide Quinnipiac predicts? In practice, that would be a squeaker. Gerrymandering is like a filibuster launched against the will of the American people and it is profoundly undemocratic.

There's a consequence to this sort of election shenanigans, beyond just having the voters cheated at the polls. When people vote for candidates, they're actually voting for things (and perhaps more often against them). These things are policies, proposals, ideas, and values. And if the person you voted for gets robbed of victory by election rigging, then the things you voted for are robbed as well. For example:


[MSNBC:]

Strong majorities of Americans say they favor stricter gun laws, including an assault-weapons ban and universal background checks for private gun sales, according to a new national Morning Joe/Marist poll.

[...]

What’s more, the Morning Joe/Marist poll finds that 87 percent of Americans support background checks for private gun sales and sales at gun shows, and 59 percent favor legislation that would ban the sale of assault weapons.


But of course, if that support of common sense gun regulation is influencing voters in the 2014 election cycle, those lopsided numbers likely won't be lopsided enough.

The poll also found that most people are more interested in creating jobs than cutting the deficit -- the opposite of Republican priorities.There again, GOP gerrymandering will probably screw you.

So Americans keep voting on certain ideas and then wind up getting the opposite ideas jammed in their face by a party with absolutely no respect or reverence for democracy. In other words, the result is non-responsive government. No matter how you vote, you're getting what the GOP wants, since we still live in a largely Republican-constructed status quo. By obstructing everything and impeding any progress, House Republicans can get most of what they want, because most of what they want is the status quo -- loose gun laws, an unaccountable Wall Street, staggering wealth inequality, ignoring climate change, etc. They've even gotten drastic and foolhardy spending cuts, by obstructing all efforts to avoid sequestration. Washington may be mostly Democrats, but they're Democrats unable to change anything, because Republicans block their every move from stolen House seats. 

-Wisco

[photo by Vox Efx]

On Sequester, GOP Beginning to Regret Believing the GOP

One of the dangers of a long campaign of BS is that you stand a real danger of beginning to believe your own lies. Especially when that long campaign is carried out by an institution, not individuals. People who believe the lie will join the organization to support the lie and the whole thing just snowballs. What began as spin or propaganda for political advantage becomes a guiding principle. And when you go to war against your imaginary enemy, firing blindly into the dark because you know it's there someplace, you're going to have real casualties.

In this case, the lie is the GOP claim to runaway government waste. That was why Republicans pushed the supposed "nothing-burger nature of the sequester," in the words of Ed Kilgore. The GOP ran around parading the sequester as a war trophy because "of course there’s so much waste, fraud and abuse that big cuts can be absorbed without pain."

But of course, there is not. Kilgore's commentary is in reaction to a report by two of the Huffington Post's best political journalists: Amanda Terkel and Sam Stein. Terkel and Stein took a look at sequester cuts and found them to be much more severe than they'd imagined.


The Huffington Post set out to do an extensive review of sequestration stories from the past week, with the goal of finding 100. What seemed like a daunting task was completed in hours. No one region of the country has been immune. Rural towns in Alaska, missile test sites in the Marshall Islands, military bases in Virginia, university towns across the country, and housing agencies in inner cities are all beginning to feel the cuts.


It's a disturbing list of hits to essential programs, of job losses, of decreasing demand. The only person in America who could believe this was good news is Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, whose love of European-style austerity and stick-it-to-the-worker policies has dropped his state's level of job creation from 11th in the nation to 44th -- in just two years. Finally, Walker will have more competition way down there at the bottom, as state after state is forced to emulate his idiotic and destructive economic policies. When everyone is forced to suck as hard as he does, maybe he won't look so bad.

European-style austerity is here, there isn't a huge buffer of government waste that can soften the blow, and Republicans have greeted it all with an enthusiastic round of applause, because they've bought their own lie.

So how is this all going to work out for America? Well, it's called "European-style" for a reason, so there's a place look to answer that question.


[ThinkProgress:]

The 17-nation Eurozone set another dubious record in the opening months of 2013, as its unemployment rate continued to climb from its already record-high rate. The jobless rate also rose for the European Union as a whole as austerity efforts continue to plague the continent’s recovery from the Great Recession:

The jobless rate reached 12 percent in both January and February, the highest since the creation of the euro in 1999, Eurostat, the statistical agency of the European Union, reported from Luxembourg.

The January jobless rate for the 17-nation currency union was revised upward from the previously reported 11.9 percent.

For the overall European Union, the February jobless rate rose to 10.9 percent from 10.8 percent in January, Eurostat said, with more than 26 million people without work across the 27-nation bloc.


Not well. It's not going to work out well. Already, Republicans are starting to feel the sequester's pinch and beginning to get cold feet about it.

That whole thing about billions in waste that can easily and painlessly be cut from federal spending is turning out to be a fairy tale. You hope enough Republicans realize they've bought a bill of goods before their chumpishness does too much lasting damage.

Hoping they learn a lesson about believing their own propaganda, however, is probably too much to ask.

-Wisco

[photo from Wikimedia Commons]