The Republican Blood Pact With Trump

Trump and Ryan have gone from adversaries to being as close as Blade and Striker

I have been saying for awhile, but today's Senate hearings confirmed it yet again: the Republicans have signed a blood pact with Donald Trump.

If you remember at this time last year, there was a great feeling of trepidation by the party leadership towards the Tangerine Terror. Few were willing to endorse him, many seemed to think him a threat to the party. At the Republican Convention last summer, however, the blood pact was signed. The Republicans realized that their philosophy of rapacious capitalism was not going to win them the White House, and that Trump's nationalism (don't you dare call it populism) would be their ticket to ride.

So we had the insane scenes of Ted Cruz, a man whose father and wife Trump had grievously insulted, carrying water for the Donald. In fact, when faced by evidence of Trump's wrongdoing in regards to Russia and Michael Flynn today, he preferred to grill Sally Yates about her unwillingness to enforce the Muslim ban. Trump insulted Lindsey Graham, and even gave out his private phone number, so people would harass him. He attacked John McCain over his years in a POW camp. While McCain has sometimes been critical of Trump, he still consistently votes with him. Reince Priebus went from having a testy relationship with Trump to being one of his biggest toadies. For the most part the conflict between Paul Ryan and Trump has disappeared.

Both Trump and the Republican leadership cannot survive without each other. Look at France and Le Pen and see what happens to a nationalist authoritarian when they don't have the support of a conservative party. Look at the 2012 election and see what happens when a Republican runs on supply-side economics. Their current relationship is one of mutual dependency. The Republicans need Trump to rubber stamp their horrible agenda, from destroying health care to ripping apart environmental legislation. Trump needs the Republicans to cover for this grifting.

He has not divested from his businesses. He takes many trips to his properties where the government essentially pays him for protecting him. He has brought his awful family in to feed at the trough. He has extremely troubling connections to the Russian government. While Trump is there to be the front man for conservatives, they in turn are honor-bound by their blood pact to defend him. They did their job today, and will continue to do so. Anyone who thinks that there's a smoking gun that will someone get Republicans to go along with impeachment is out of their minds. Without a win in 2018 for the Democrats, Trump could indeed shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without consequence.

What's A Congress For, Anyway?

As I mentioned last week, I've gone down a bit of a LBJ rabbit hole. My visit to his presidential library has prompted me to tackle Robert Caro's famous multipart biography. Reading about Johnson's work as a staffer for a House member in Washington in the 1930s while Trump's attempt to get the AHCA through Congress crashed and burned was quite a contrast. In the section I was reading with CSPAN on in the background, Caro's book discusses Sam Rayburn's ability in getting legislation through committee, a reminder that those who sought power in Congress once actually had a clue about how to exercise it.

I was very excited that the AHCA failed so miserably. I experienced levels of Schadenfreude on par with watching Duke lose in the tournament or that time that Fox News reporter got waterboarded on TV. However, I am beginning to wonder how long our country can continue to have its highest levels of government be such an unmitigated shit show. In the case of the presidency, this is a new thing, but Congress has been on this path since 2010, and shows no sign of changing.

Since the Tea Party wave in 2010, Congress has been dominated by a gang of right wing Bolsheviks who hate the very government they're supposed to be managing. President Obama was able to pass legislation during the first two years of his presidency despite unprecedented opposition, after 2010 that opposition had the numbers to bring everything to a halt. These ideologues used the debt ceiling to hold the country hostage, and voted several times to repeal Obamacare.

Today it is obvious that those votes were made without a single clue as to what was going to replace Obamacare. Once they actually had to come up with something they were like the student who's been skipping class all semester who thinks they can handle an intense written final test, and hand in the test after about twenty minutes because they know they have no clue and just want to go home.

A majority of the Republican congressional delegation has come in since Obama's election, meaning that a majority of House Republicans have no memory of a time when they were actually passing legislation. I don't suspect they will ever learn how to do it, since their main path to holding onto power is to get positive coverage from Fox News. Paul Ryan is the avatar of this new political modus operandi. He was never someone who successfully passed important legislation, but a corporately feted ideologue whom the media has been inexplicably fawning over.

Back in early 1964, after he had come to power after Kennedy's assassination, Johnson discussed with his advisors his desire to get the long delayed and filibustered civil rights bill through Congress. They were a bit taken aback by this, knowing what a minefield it could be. Johnson's retort was "What's a presidency for, anyway?" And for all of that man's many, many faults, he understood his fundamental job was to get power and then use it.

Congressional Republicans have proven very adept at getting power, but very maladroit at using it constructively. A lot of this has to do with ideological rifts within the party, for sure. I also think that the dynamics of Congress' relation to its constituents have changed in significant ways. The number of representatives has been frozen at 435, meaning that members must represent larger and larger constituencies, with much less time for contact with their voters. (The need for politicians to spend all of their time fundraising has compounded this.) As local media across America has been hollowed out, representatives don't need to answer tough questions from local reporters, and if they are conservative, can get a bigger platform by playing to Fox News and talk radio. (Gerrymandering has also made such a media strategy effective.) They don't need to deliver the goods to their constituents, who are increasingly alienated from what their representatives are doing. What they can do effectively is block their opponents from using power.

I know I have said this before, but it really is time to reform our out of date, failing model of government. While we often think of the Senate's two Senators per state rule as the prime example of this issue, the House has a lot to answer for, too. It's supposed to be the "people's house," the one part of the national government where voters can actually be heard. After all, that's the point of the two year election cycle, which in today's environment only increases the focus on fund raising. I would love a system where the number of representatives in the House was tripled and the Senate was done based on population where each state has several at large seats chosen through proportional representation. That's never going to happen, so I guess we'll just have to persist with a completely dysfunctional Congress until sanity or collapse happens.

Old King Trump

Trump recalls an aged Henry VIII in my book

Perhaps because Hilary Clinton was very close in age to him, there has been precious little discussion of the fact that Donald Trump was the oldest president on the day of his inauguration in history. Considering that our last aged president, Ronald Reagan, seemed pretty senile in the last two years of presidency, you'd think we talk about this more. Trump's recent behavior signals to me that his age is having an impact on his performance, and it is something that his advisors and the Republican leadership are exploiting.

Now I want to be clear, I am not assuming that old age in itself makes someone unfit for high office. Konrad Adenauer became chancellor of West Germany at the age of 73 and served until he was 87, and today may well be the most admired political figure in that nation's history. I've known plenty of folks who were sharp as a tack into their 90s. But as we know from life, some people age faster than others. The mind is a muscle, and if you don't use it, it atrophies. In the case of Donald Trump, we are seeing the effects of neglect.

He has done quite a job in his recent political career of maintaining his old image as an energetic, virile man. Like everything else with him, it's a lie. His suits hide what his golf shirts can't: the man is very overweight. His lax working hours reveal something else: low energy. (Remember, his insults are usually projections.) At the end of last week it appeared that the rigors of the job were getting to him. On Friday he seemed to talk in a halting, feeble way. People have interpreted his unwillingness to shake hands with Merkel as petulance, but at that moment he looked a little lost to me.

Of course, he still has his moments of forcefulness, such as at his rally last night. But if you've ever actually watched one of his rallies he just kind of rants and rambles like a professor who should have retired five years ago. In his senile years Reagan could still get up and give a speech, that kind of thing was second nature to him. But away from his comfortable environments, he looked as lost as Trump did on Friday.

I think the Republicans have so far very deftly exploited this situation. Trump does not want to be a president, he wants to be king; he does not want to govern, he wants to rule. But like a king, he has no interest in the day to day grind of politics, that's for mere commoners. He said whatever bullshit he needed to say to working and middle class whites to get elected, but now that he's in office, he's outsourced the health care issue to the congressional Republicans, who have taken the opportunity to try to get their radical agenda pushed through. As old man Trump lounges in his throne, holds court at his winter palace, and thunders down his pronouncements on Twitter, the Republican party controls the actual legislative agenda. His feckless ministers and privy council are left to incompetently write the travel bans that the courts reject while the king, like all monarchs, is most concerned about his image. I would guarantee you that he has spent more time analyzing Sean Spicer's press briefings than he has reading intelligence reports.

Having old king Trump around is a godsend for the GOP. They signed a blood pact with him at the convention last year, but whenever anything goes bad, they can blame him, and not themselves. The myth that Trump is somehow apart from Republicans is an extremely useful one for the party, which must know that there's a good chance this thing will crash and burn. While he's still going, they get to exploit his populist aura and pretend they are not soulless servants of the wealthy. Old king Trump won't ever want to know the details, old king Trump won't ever get in the way of anything, since that would require effort. As long as Republicans remain loyal, old king Trump will be happy, even if he can't remember where is he is.

Exclusive: A Second RNC Leaked Phone Call

[Editor's Note: My sources were able to procure most of a RNC conference call three weeks back. They have come back to me with another one recorded sometime last week.]

*static*

REINCE PREIBUS: We're all here? Good. I just wanted to check in, gentlemen, and hear how things are going.

PAUL RYAN: Not well, Reince, not well. That asshole Boehner is probably on some golf course right now sipping a Natural Ice and smoking a Marlboro and laughing his orange ass off right now. We knew Trump was a maverick, but this is getting ridiculous.

CHARLES KOCH: The goddamn plane has crashed into the mountain!

PREIBUS: I know hiring Bannon took us all by surprise, but isn't it good that Trump is actually speaking instead of ranting? Remember, we want him to lose, but to lose in a way that doesn't make us look bad. I see potential for him to gain back some points.

KOCH: Are you kidding me? I'm putting all my money into the Congressional races, but a landslide for Hillary will wipe out our money advantage. We are in a bad position here. I told you that we should have moved mountains to get Cruz the nomination.

RYAN: Mr Koch, you know that my colleagues in Washington hate Cruz more than Trump. He's of more use to as someone to shut down the government to hamstring the presidency.

KARL ROVE: If I may interject, we are in a dangerous position. We all know that your average voter could give a fuck about the inheritance tax and actually likes the entitlements they get. That's why we win with other issues. Back in '04 we rode the gay marriage issue to victory. The alt-right shit that Trump is parroting has the same effect, but it alienates too many people in the middle. If we can't get more Hispanics to vote for the GOP then we are fucked.

KOCH: Karl, have you gone soft? You and I both know we have been very successful in making it harder for many of our opponents' voters to be able to vote. It doesn't matter what their opinions are if it's harder to get to the polls.

ROVE: I'm with you all the way on this, Mr. Koch. But we are seeing backlash against it, and the voter restrictions are causing major blowback. It might cost us more than it gains.

KOCH: This from the friend of the Bush family. Where's your dynasty now?

PREIBUS: Gentlemen! This kind of fighting is exactly what our enemies want!

ROVE: Sorry Mr. Koch.

RYAN: Don't forget: we will still at least have the House. I will be able to keep my troops in line, no worries about that. McConnell gets on my nerves, but even if he won't have the majority, he will get the votes he needs to filibuster everything. We will not let a liberal Supreme Court nominee go forward no matter what.

PREIBUS: We need to get that message out to the Bible thumpers and gun humpers. They always put us over the top in close races. They will come out and vote if they think the 2nd Amendment is threatened or abortion less restricted.

ROVE: Maybe, but if you look at the demographics the younger people are not as engaged on those issues. In ten years we won't be able to do this. I fear that we are fucked.

PREIBUS: So the alt-right stuff is the best we've got right now?

ROVE: 'fraid so, and it's killing us with nonwhite voters.

RYAN: I for one think our conservative message of free markets transcends racial and age barriers.

ROVE: That sounds great, but our voters vote with hate and resentment, not with the values of the University of Chicago's economics department.

KOCH: Which is why we double down on voter IDs. That will actually get results.

RYAN: Ok, but what the hell do we do with Trump? He doesn't listen to us and he hires people like Bannon. The man is out of control.

ROVE: We have to staunch the bleeding somehow. I think we need to keep leaning on the media, and any time they call out his lies start a huge campaign alleging media "bias." If we muddy the waters enough it will blunt his tendency towards self-destruction.

KOCH: Well, I'll give a call to Murdoch and see what he can do....
*static*

What Is Trump's Game?

I see a lot of Trump in Georges Boulanger, a French populist general of the late 1880s who was the face of broader discontent, but ultimately unable and unwilling to seize power

I have been taking a wait and see approach to Donald Trump in regards of the viability of his presidential campaign.  Yes, he has been leading the polls for months now, but this kind of polling is often inaccurate, and in the last debate he looked disinterested and tired.  I have also wondered about what kinds of ground campaigns he has in the early states, since primaries can be won and lost by doing a slightly better job than others of getting people to the polls, since the number of voters is so small.  Now that we are hitting Thanksgiving and Trump has rebounded after his lackluster debate performance, I am inclined to think, for the first time, that he stands a decent chance of being the Republican nominee.  

What I can’t figure out is what Trump’s game actually is.  Early on I didn’t think he was acting like a serious candidate. I wondered if he had in fact been aiming only for a sideline hobby, then blundered into being the front-runner of the Republican Party by accident. I’ve wondered whether he is trying to start a fascist movement, or if his hateful words are merely a cynical attempt to get support, rather than expressions of his deeply held beliefs.

In any case, Trump has benefitted by breaking a rule that Republicans have followed since the 1960s, a rule I would like to call the Atwater Directive.  As Lee Atwater famously discussed once in an interview, to whip up white resentment in the aftermath of the civil rights era politicians have to avoid racial slurs and direct racist appeals. Instead they have to use dog whistles and make it clear that they want to cut the government in ways that disproportionately hurts people of color.  Trump understands that a large portion of the conservative base has grown tired of this, and longs for racism to be expressed straight, no chaser.

Trump has given them that by breaking a taboo that appears to not apply anymore.  I’ve long thought that at least 15% of Americans are essentially fascist in their political outlook.  If the military overthrew president Obama, made Christianity the official religion, deported millions of undocumented immigrants, and banned Muslims, about that percentage of the population would rejoice. Another 15% would have misgivings, but generally prefer it over the status quo. Trump knows this, and he is exploiting it.  I am still not sure to what end.  I get the feeling that he is a man who enjoys power, and that his goal is less to be president of the United States, but to amass power and get adulation.  He does not seem interested in starting a fascist movement, but a lot of the people who listen to him seem to be.

This does make me wonder what will happen.  Here’s a list of predictions, with my current odds.  I plan on revisiting them in the future.

1. Trump flames out fast

If Trump isn’t super serious about all of this, he just might flame out, unwilling to do the hard work necessary to run for president. If this was all some kind of whim turned into reality, this is the most likely option.

Current Odds: Possible, but not likely

2. Trump wins the Republican nomination

Trump is leading the polls right now, but Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich were in the lead at one time in the last election cycle as well.  I really wonder what percentage of the voters who will actually turn out for a primary vote will cast their vote for Trump.  His appeal is very broad, but is it deep? Trump has benefited thus far from a highly fragmented Republican field.  If the GOP establishment goes all in for Rubio and gives Christie, Kasich, Fiorina, et al an offer they can’t refuse, all while allowing Cruz to appeal to the bark at the moon crowd and thus steal the Donald's votes, Trump’s goose is cooked.  I could even see a brokered convention at this point, crazy as that sounds.  

Current Odds: Very possible but not likely

3. Trump loses in the primaries and runs as an independent

If Trump loses the nomination, does he make a third party run?  This would allow him to be the ultimate troll and take a dump in everybody’s punch bowl.  The Perot run in 1992 just might an inspiration for him.  This is the Republican Party’s worst nightmare, and Trump being the spiteful shit that he is just might go throw with it to give the GOP the middle finger.  On the other hand, he likes winning and hates losing, and a third party run would almost guarantee not winning.

Current odds: highly unlikely

4. Trump wins the presidency.

Of course, he would have to get the nomination first, or put together a third party run.  While Trump has a broad base of support, he also has an even bigger base of opponents.  Unless some crazy scandal would befall Hillary that would actually be true, there’s no way Trump could win a general election.  (Please let this not tempt the fates.)

Current odds: Not impossible but extremely unlikely

Basically I think Trump might win some early victories, but once the Republican establishment gets their act together, he will lose. This prediction is, of course, subject to change. And even if he loses, he has forced others to copy his nationalism and xenophobia, which will be very prominent in next year's election.

What We Learned From Last Night's Debate

Last night I decided to subject myself to the Republican debate, mostly because I'd spent the last one watching the Mets game and was missing my favorite reality TV show.  This election has already entered surreal territory, and last night took it even further.  Here's what we learned:

Rubio is slick in the Dubya mold
Watching the debate I'd have to say that Rubio "won." I don't mean that he made the best arguments or anything, only that by the standards of what Republicans want, he did the most to get their support.  Above all, Rubio is slick.  He knows exactly the right lines to mouth to get the crowd going. I could actually see him as a new Dubya, and that scares me.  He is smooth enough to fool your garden variety moron "undecided" voter into thinking he's on their side. He comes across as "likeable" in a way that would play into sexism in a debate against Hilary. Like Dubya, the media seems to have an obsession with playing nice with him.  Speaking of...

Fox has gone all in for Rubio
Rubio got a succession of softball questions so easy that one of them caused him to chuckle to himself. The debate was on Fox Business, and as we know, Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes have a history of using their media voice to promote politicians that they want in power.  Obviously Carson and Trump are unacceptable to them, but Jeb! has floundered as the establishment favorite. Now that Rubio has jumped up in the polls, it looks like Murdoch and Ailes have made their choice.

Jeb's desperation broke Trump's spell on deportation
As much as I mock Jeb!, he was actually responsible for a moment of human decency last night. He took Trump to task for his deportation plan, calling it both ridiculously impractical and inhumane to immigrant families. Back during the summer the candidates were too chickenshit to dare defy Trump, but Jeb!, desperate for a boost, attacked him head on.  Trump seemed deflated and tired, perhaps a bit bored. I get the feeling that he just wants to go play golf now that his campaign is going to require actual commitment. I doubt he will be a factor come Iowa.

Magical Reagan thinking still exists on taxes and spending
One of my favorite moments of the night was when Rubio was actually questioned in his budget plan, since he wants to cut taxes while drastically increasing military spending.  Showing his smoothness, Rubio completely dodged the question by beating his chest and saying that America will never be weak.  Of course, he pretended that doesn't have a cost.  That reminds me:

Rand Paul brings up good points but is there to be a foil
Rand Paul really pushed Rubio on this as the one Republican who acknowledges the reality of America's imperial overreach and the price that comes with it. Rubio relished this, since it allowed him to show strength against the one naysayer on stage.  The other Republicans seemed to use Paul as a punching bag, proclaiming that America would not relinquish its leadership role. They love having him around to burnish their love of the military industrial complex. It almost makes me feel bad for him.

Ted Cruz is a classic bullshit artist college debater
Of course, I'll never feel bad for Ted Cruz. Something about him sets me on edge more than the average person, and last night I finally figured it out. Much has been made of Cruz's past as a college debater. I used to be one too, in fact I once competed at the same tournament as him (the world championship of parliamentary style debate at Princeton in 1995). Cruz's debate style is bullshit artistry. He can make all the garbage that comes out of his mouth sound smart because he speaks with absolute conviction. The weak minded mistake this for intelligence.  I remember a lot of debaters like this, and they would drive me nuts when I had to go against them. They never ceded ground, they never broke their mask, and they loved developing straw man arguments. They could say shit that just wasn't true, but made it sound good. Cruz's know-it-all superior tone is familiar to me and now that I know where I've heard it before it is especially annoying. Speaking of bullshit:

Republicans get away with saying some insane shit
Despite the absence of Huckabee, there were some crazy ass assertions.  Speaking of Cruz, he discussed he economic plan, and like a lot of bullshit artist debaters, used evidence that wasn't actually evidence.  He cited other times that his economic approach had worked, including under Calvin Coolidge! Never mind that those policies generated massive inequality and ended in a horrific Depression. Nobody called him out on it, not even the moderators.  Trump had his own howler when he defended deportations by recalling those that took place under Eisenhower.  Of course, he didn't mention the name of that initiative, which was named "Operation Wetback." As the name implies, it was cruelly violent to undocumented immigrants, based in the assumption that they were less than fully human. At least Trump's deportation scheme was challenged.  This was not the case for Carly Fiorina, who actually had the gall to say that she had "fought to protect jobs" as a CEO. Yes that's right, the same CEO who fired 30,000 workers. Not only did she have the chutzpah to say those words, nobody, not even Trump bothered to point out the ridiculousness of such a statement. It's all more proof of the funhouse mirror world of the Republican party, which would be hilarious if it wasn't so frightening.

Ben Carson, Iowa Nice, and Bob Roberts

Pat freakin' Robertson came in a strong 2nd place in the 1988 Iowa caucus. Ben Carson just might take it in 2016.

The political world gets increasingly more surreal with each passing day.  I guess it makes sense that if an empire like America's is going to die, it is going to die in the flashiest, most over the top and tasteless way possible.

Yesterday saw the spectacle of Hillary Clinton being grilled for 11 (!) hours on Benghazi, and effectively parrying her opponents' thrusts while making them look feeble and silly.  It was the greatest ad her campaign could have advised.  It was also another way for the public to see that garden variety morons are regularly elected to seats in Congress.  While making the Senate might require a certain degree of savvy and slickness, the House is full of machine hacks, back-slapping good old boys, bubble-headed ex-beauty queens, and grandstanding ideologues who wouldn't know their ass from a hole in the ground.  It's a good thing that the Democrats have Elijah Cummings on the committee, since his honesty and gravitas make the clowns surrounding him look that much worse.

But today is another day, as they say, and maybe feeling threatened by Clinton's turn in the spotlight, Ben Carson opened his mouth again.  He said that he feels threatened and needs a Secret Service detail.  Now that in itself is understandable, especially for a presidential candidate, and more especially for a black man running for president, even if Carson is running the right of Attila the Hun.  However, that was not the whole substance of what Carson said.  He framed it this way: "I'm in great danger because I challenge the secular progressive movement to the very core."  Yes, that's right, he's saying that there is a bloodthirsty cabal of "secular progressives" out there who want to kill him.  And that's where the crazy comes in, because he is implying that people like yours truly and many others are actually members of a nefarious "movement" out to destroy the country.  This kind of paranoia is playing with political fire, much like Carson's predilection for comparing people he doesn't like to Nazis.  I actually think he really believes this.

His statement also reminded me powerfully of the satire film Bob Roberts, which was made in the early 1990s but which has a lot to say about the current state of conservative politics.  Roberts (played by Tim Robbins) is a conservative politician/folk singer who wraps his extreme right wing ideology in songs that follow the structure of 60s protest broadsides, but which extoll hatred against progressives.  (Examples are "I'm a Bleeding Heart" and "Retake America.")  Near the end of the film it appears that someone has attempted to kill Roberts, but he manages to survive, although it becomes apparent that the whole thing was faked to gain sympathy.  Now I don't quite expect Carson ever to do something like that (although I wouldn't put it past Trump.)  Both Carson and Trump have, however, singled out people they don't like as dangerous internal enemies to be destroyed, immigrants in the case of Trump, and "secular progressives" in the case of Carson.  The fact that these two men lead the Republican field while engaging in paranoid fever dreams of false accusations ought to frighten us.

Last but not least, Carson has now passed Trump in the Iowa polls.  This is not a surprise to me, nor do I think that Carson's momentum will be temporary.  As a child of Nebraska and longtime adult resident of the Midwest, I can tell you that Iowans put a big premium on being "nice."  Trump is not nice, he has the typical swagger and meanness of a tri-state area asshole amped up to 11.  I was surprised that such an attitude was playing well in Iowa, and I guess it has finally worn thin.  While Carson says completely outrageous things, he delivers them in a kind of sonorous tone with a smile, perfectly in tune with Iowan notions of niceness.  Comparing his opponents to Nazis is still "nice" if he does it in his amiable way.  This, by the way, is why Midwestern Nice cannot be trusted.

Of course, if Carson wins Iowa, it may not really mean a whole helluva lot.  Remember who won the Republican primary in Iowa last time? That's right, it was Rick Santorum.  That win didn't exactly propel him to national victory.  The same goes for Mike Huckabee in 2008.  Iowa is a caucus state, and its Republicans are disproportionately of the Christian conservative variety, going back to Pat Robertson's strong showing in 1988.  The Republican caucus (as opposed to the Democratic one in that state) is pretty much useless as a predictor of anything outside of that particular state, since the candidate who thumps the Bible the hardest wins every time.  If anything, I hope Carson wins Iowa so we can stop paying so much damn attention to it.

Twilight of the Governors

It's been interesting to see Perry and Walker be the first GOP candidates to bite the dust, months and months before the first actual primary.  Arguably, their bona fides trump those of all of their opponents (pun intended.)  Walker has won election three times in a state that has voted twice for Barack Obama, and survived a recall drive in the bargain.  He broke the public unions in Wisconsin and in the process emboldened other governors to do the same in other states.  Perry was the longest serving governor in the history of Texas, currently the second most populous state in the nation.  He claimed to have effected a "Texas miracle" whereby that state's economy grew in the face of strong national headwinds.  Perry swaggered as he went to other states to poach their jobs.

Now both are effectively on the ash heap of history.  Of course, Perry's fate was sealed four years ago with his infamous "oops" comment.  Walker is out for similar reasons, namely that he is a friggin' idiot.  His inability to answer basic policy questions was pretty embarrassing, and during the last debate he was sweating like Gil from the Simpsons.  This has been a vindication for people who have lived in those states who have tried to warn others that their governors are, indeed, goddamned morons.  (My time in Texas made that apparent to me pretty fast.)

This has got me thinking, and I see what looks to be a larger trend when in comes to governors running for president.  Time was when conventional wisdom held that governors made strong candidates.  They were de facto Washington "outsiders" and had executive experience.  This was only reinforced by the electoral success of Reagan, Clinton, and Dubya, the only presidential candidates to get elected twice between Eisenhower and Obama.  In this election, however, the governors are doing poorly, with perhaps the exception of Jeb(!).  Walker and Perry are out, Huckabee is a fringe candidate, Jindal is in asterisk territory and Christie will likely join him there.  Jeb! is the only relevant governor in the race, and he is in fourth place in the newest CNN poll.

How to explain this?  I think a lot it has to do with the changing nature of state-level politics in this country.  The massive wave of money has had a bigger effect there, where it can buy a lot more.  The Kochs buoyed Walker in Wisconsin, for instance.  With groups like ALEC set up, the right wing moneymen can put out the money to get a patsy in office and have an organization there to write up all the legislation for them.  On top of that, local newspapers and tv stations have been cutting back on reporting staff, meaning that the new wave of governors is getting a lot less scrutiny and are less practiced in dealing with a hostile press.  The Republicans have been pleased with taking over statehouses and governors mansions in places like New Jersey, Michigan, and Wisconsin, but it's really all about the structure and not about the people in it, in most places.  That structure is set up to get a particular ideological agenda advanced, no matter who holds the position.  It should hardly surprise us that the talking heads assigned by their financiers as their political functionaries wilt before the bright national spotlight.

This is at least the case for me as far as Perry, Jindal, and Walker are concerned.  Christie is a little different, in that he seems like a more forceful, independent personality.  However, he presents another problem for governors wanting to be the presidential nominee of the Republican party: the need to compromise.  When Sandy wrecked New Jersey, it would have been too craven for even Chris Christie to attack the president rather than embrace him in order to get national Republican support at the expense of his constituents.  Those Republicans in Congress have had it easy on this score.  They just sit back and oppose each and every thing that Barack Obama does, never having to sully their ideological purity.  While this behavior is horrible for the nation, it is great for maintaining the good graces of hardcore conservatives.

Jeb! was governor at a different time, so this stuff does not quite apply to him.  But based on what I'm seeing, at this point I would be willing to be that Rubio is more likely to be the nominee than him.  What all of this shows us, yet again, is that the Republican Party has long ceased to be a broad-based center-right party, but is now merely the vehicle for an extreme right wing ideology.  It does not care about governing or putting people forward who can govern, but only about advancing its agenda, whatever the cost.  A lot of regular people's frustration with the failures and gridlock in our system boils down to this basic fact, one you'll never hear mainstream news organizations name.

What Last Night's Debate Says About The GOP

In a feat of stupidity, boredom, or perhaps fun making quips with my beloved wife, I watched almost all of the Republican debate last night.  As I wrote in my last debate post mortem, I am much less interested in the horse race aspect than in the larger, deeper things the debate illuminates.

At the very least, it revealed, yet again, the negative orientation of the conservative movement.  The candidates were practically frothing at the mouth over things they were against and wanted to destroy: Barack Obama, Planned Parenthood, the Iran nuclear deal, the Affordable Care Act, etc. They were all pilloried mercilessly, and there were many repeated promises to attack these things on "the first day in office."  Ted Cruz in particular seemed obsessed with "forcing" the president to bend to his will in a way that speaks to some really deep seated hatred on his part.  Cruz also outdid everyone by going after John Roberts, a conservative who orchestrated the destruction of the Voting Rights Act, which apparently wasn't good enough for old Teddy boy.  Perhaps he would prefer to resurrect the corpse of Roger Taney so the court could once again have a "true conservative" as chief justice.

Speaking of resurrecting corpses, the debate further illuminated the transformation of Reagan into the Lenin of the Right, a secular god or saint who must constantly be praised and bowed down to.  Every candidate tried to associate themselves with the Gipper, which was ironic considering that: 1. They gnashed their teeth over amnesty, which god Reagan himself had granted, 2. Many proclaimed the War on Drugs to be a failure, a war Saint Ronnie had prosecuted to the utmost 3. They talked about Social Security as something in need of replacement when Reagan had raised taxes (treason!) to keep it solvent.  Reagan's actual historical record has now become completely meaningless.

I may have said this before, but the debates have shown that the current Republican party has maintained its neocon footing when it comes to foreign policy, with Rand Paul the rule-proving exception.  The others were enthusiastic about going to war in Syria, antagonizing Iran, escalating with Russia, building up the military, and "projecting strength."  Of course, the assorted chickenhawks were too chickenshit to actually come out and say they wanted war, even if that would be the inevitable result of their policies.  I do really wonder what all this bluster is for.  When a bully like Chris Christie snorts and declares with such passion in his voice about being a "strong leader" I get the fear.  If there is a new Republican presidency expect the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz agenda to be back in full force, even if its authors are too disgraced to hold any of the cabinet positions.

Last, but perhaps most importantly, last night revealed why neophytes and demagogues like Carson, Fiorina, and Trump are doing so well in the polls.  This has less to do with voters being "fed up" than with the fact that their options within the ranks of established politicians are a bunch of uninspired dolts.  They seem incapable of saying anything that doesn't come out as some kind of garbled talking point.  Paul is a haughty pedant, Christie hated in his own state, Bush looks like his mommy made him be there, Ted Cruz is the guy you walk across the street to avoid in real life, Rubio often has deer in headlights moments, Kasich is about as exciting as tapioca pudding, Huckabee a Bible thumping bigot, and Walker is both disliked in his own state and comes across as a feckin' idiot.  The reason Carly Fiorina, a failed CEO with zero political experience, looked so good is that despite her complete lack of time in office she is actually a smart person and not a goddamned moron.  (The same goes for Trump and Carson.  They are pretty ignorant, but they are not dumb, which in Carson's case goes without saying.)

Sure, Trump appeals to certain issues that matter to the base like immigration while exploiting some economic populism.  However, I think his main appeal (like that of Fiorina and Carson) is that he seems like someone who is not either a dolt or a failure, and is capable of speaking like a human being, as awful and hateful a human being he is.  I wish I could have laughed at last night's clown show, but the knowledge that one of those people could very easily be the next president makes me choke on my laughter.

Jeb And "Moderate" Republicans

As I am sure you've heard, Jeb Bush pulled a Mitt Romney this week, accidentally letting his true thoughts out in public by saying that the solution to America's economic woes is to work more hours.  Considering that American workers put in many more hours than their peers in other affluent nations, such a statement would be a joke if some random moron on the street said it.  In this case, however, Jeb Bush is not only running for president, he is the son and brother of former presidents, born with a silver spoon in his mouth.  He is basically the last person that the majority of Americans want lecturing them on their work habits.

Mitt Romney's comments about the 47% of Americans who were "takers" (which he thought were private) did a lot to lose him the election in 2012.  What he said, as obnoxious as it sounded to most people, was actually a common talking point among conservatives well before he made it public.  Conservatives also think that regular working people need to be working more hours, but they won't come out and say it in those terms.  Instead they just let their policies do the talking: blocking family leave, trying to eliminate the weekend, undermining overtime pay, etc.  It takes someone as maladroit and gaffe-prone as Jeb Bush to make the intent of all of this much more visible.

Bush has also illustrated the problem with the "moderate Republican" brand.  Anymore a "moderate conservative" is someone who opposes gay marriage but doesn't spew hate about it, who is opposed to meaningful immigration reform but not xenophobic, but in economic matters supports policies that funnel more money into the hands of the wealthy and squeeze those at the bottom and the middle until their pips squeak.  The supposed "respectable" Republicans in the race for president (Jeb, Walker, Christie) are all servants of corporate America dedicated to slashing workers' rights and protections.  When it comes to economic and labor policy, there are no moderates in the Republican party, and the toffs to the manner born like Jeb and Mitt are too clumsy to hide their true intentions.  If anything, Bush's slip-up might open a door for Christie, a man with a true contempt for the working class who masks it behind a bloviating wall of fake populist bullshit.  In any case, the desire of the monied puppet masters behind the GOP not to have a repeat of 2012 just might seal Bush's doom.

Scalise and a Peak Behind the GOP Curtain

With all of the crazy and violent events going on in the world right now, it's easy to forget the news that House Majority Whip Steve Scalise once spoke to a meeting of out and out white supremacists.  Despite the calls for "minority outreach" by the likes of Rand Paul, it appears that Scalise will retain his position after the bigwigs rushed to his defense.  In the aftermath of it all David Duke even declared that he isn't a racist, thus proving the observation many archly have made that there are no longer any "racists" left in 21st century America, even among Klansmen.  And yet racism still persists.  Hmm.

Scalise's real crime in all of this was that he was stupid enough to try to appeal to white racists directly instead of cloaking his appeals in thick rhetoric and deploying dog whistles rather than trumpets.  Since the days of Nixon's "Southern Strategy" in 1968, the Republican Party has masterfully deployed white racial resentment in order to garner the votes of conservative Dixiecrats in the South and the denizens of white flight suburbs in the North.  Fifty years later, the former Solid South stronghold for the Democrats has become the Republican heartland, and with the defeat of Mary Landrieu, no white Democrats from the South remain in Congress.

The effects of all of this are obvious in Scalise's home state of Louisiana.  According to one report, the ideas put forward by David Duke in his infamous 1991 campaign are now broadly accepted in that state.  Duke himself even understood that he could go far by chucking the white sheets and assailing welfare recipients and affirmative action.  It is hardly a mistake or coincidence that such policies slashing social funding and building prisons are disproportionately harmful to people of color.  These policies do the work of white supremacy under the cover of "smaller government" and "law and order."

I am not surprised that the Republicans refused to dump Scalise, mostly since they have profited from a policy of never admitting that they are wrong. Our compliant media turns it into a case of "he said-she said" and forgets about it the next week.  Trent Lott's political demise is an exception, but his enemies in the party had been sharpening their knives before his gaffe.  Speaking of Lott, he committed much the same crime as Scalise by openly praising Thurmond's segregationist campaign of 1948 when to that point he had been subtly advancing its ideals under the cover of the usual conservative slogans.  He paid for his stupidity with his job, but his party kept hitting the bong of white racial resentment.

Low level Republican officials typically lack the discretion and care of their Capitol Hill counterparts when it comes to advancing a white supremacist agenda without making it too explicit.  These bush leaguers often get caught sending racist cartoons of the president and watermelon-themed emails about the White House.  Scalise's scandal is proof that their more sophisticated and powerful counterparts in the party are pretty much cut from the same cloth.  Don't worry though, the Scalise affair is already forgotten, and the game of promoting white supremacy and profiting from it at the polls by Republicans will continue on unabated.  With all of the white fear, backlash, and reaction against the protests in Ferguson and New York, conservatives will have plenty to work with.

The Republican Strategy of Pretending the 2012 Election Never Happened Continues

Less than two weeks after the election, I wrote about how it seemed that Republicans had decided not to acknowledge that contest had actually happened.  The election was not only a referendum on the president they hate so much, but also on GOP policies of austerity and supply side economics.  Obama won, and they lost.

Despite that fact, the original dead-eyed granny killer himself, Paul Ryan, has essentially re-submitted his old budget.  Never mind that the electorate roundly rejected his ideas in the last election, or that he and others are pushing to end health care reform, which was more than validated by the president's victory in November.  During the sequester fiasco, Republicans were willing to shoot the hostage, since it meant slashing the budget without doing anything to raise revenues.  Despite the fact that their policy of keeping taxes on the wealthy low was roundly rejected by the voters, they keep trotting out the same tired old trickle-down war horse.

There are two ways of explaining this phenomenon, where we have a democracy yet the popular will is being completely ignored.  The first is that the GOP is simply gaming a faulty system where they can use gerrymandering to hold onto the House (where their candidates collectively failed to win a majority of the electorate's vote) and use the filibuster in the Senate to stop anything that displeases them.  A second explanation, and one I find to be more compelling, is that conservatives think that the people who voted for Obama don't count as real Americans.  In their eyes, these voters are the 47% excoriated by Romney, the "takers" who are looking for a handout.  They also happen to be mostly people of color, as compared with the majority of white voters who went for Romney in the last election.

The behavior at CPAC this week, along with the perennial and rabid Tea Party cries of "we want to take our country back" speaks to a movement that has a fairly narrow definition of who an American is.  Furthermore, movement conservatives feel free to ignore the last election because they view most Obama voters as unfit for citizenship, and needing to be put back in their places.  In the meantime the Republicans will obstruct and spew hatred at every opportunity, biding their time until the political pendulum swings right, and many unassuming moderates cast ballots for what they think is a center-right alternative to the Democrats, which in truth is a vehicle for Rightist fanaticism.  That fanatics are now considered respectable people in our political system at the same time that the electorate's express preferences are totally ignored is a sign of a truly dysfunctional system.

The Sequester Just About Sums Up Our Political System's Dysfunction

I've said it before, and I will keep saying it: the Republican party is no longer a political party in the traditional American sense, but has become a vehicle for a movement of radical conservative ideologues.  Like all fanatics, they are bent on following their ideological dictates no matter the cost, since any price should be paid for purity.  Their fanaticism is the dominant force in American politics, and all positive change is paralyzed because they will throw their bodies on the gears of our democratic system if it means they can get their way.

The sequester is a perfect example of this.  The whole thing was set up by president Obama to force the GOP congress to negotiate with him, since everybody knows that the kind of broad, untargeted cuts it calls for will damage the economy and make it difficult for the government to operate.  Despite those obvious facts, John Boehner gleefully refused budge, and declined negotiation because he rejected any increase in revenues out of hand (even the old standby beloved of conservatives to "close loopholes.")

Never mind the fact that we just had a presidential election where the candidate who supported a combination of cuts and tax increases won handily, or the his party won a majority of the voters' ballots in both the Senate and House races.  Gerrymandering and the luck of the draw gave Boehner his power, not the will of the people, who in opinion polls favor the president's approach over that of the conservative fanatics.

The gang of ideologues does not care that the sequester will have harmful effects, or that they are going against the stated will of the people.  They want two things too badly to care about real world consequences: to embarrass the president who they hate so zealously, and to limit government spending, no matter how inappropriate it may be at the current time.

Each and every month we seem to be stuck in yet another political hostage crisis.  Perhaps it's all well and good that Boehner refused to talk with the president.  After all, we know it's best not to negotiate with terrorists.

The Real Reasons Behind the Roadblock of Chuck Hagel

As usual, our nation's fatuous news media is covering a major war over an important issue without actually talking about it.  Republicans in the Senate are blocking the nomination of Chuck Hagel, who as a former conservative Republican senator from my home state of Nebraska, is hardly some kind of Leftist pacifist.  Having served on the front lines in Vietnam and taken shrapnel for his troubles, he has a much more intimate relationship with war and the military than most other Secretaries of Defense.  So why all the opposition, to the point of an unprecedented filibuster?

Most media sources either take the Republicans at face value, and see legitimate concerns over Hagel's past in their attacks, or portray this all as some kind of personal revenge for Hagel's criticisms of the way George W. Bush conducted the war in Iraq.  Neither one of these interpretations is true.

They want to stop Hagel because the Republican party is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the military industrial complex.  The War on Terror has boosted military spending to old Cold War levels, and the big contractors have made out like bandits.  Hagel is publicly in favor of president Obama's long-term plan to draw down the size of the military, and that's why he is considered such a danger.

For all of their talk about "small government" and cutting "waste," conservatives love dumping trillions of dollars into our war machine.  They're even known for funding stuff that the military doesn't even want (but that those contractors do.)  They attack welfare recipients as lazy, but are more than happy to give sweetheart, no-bid contracts worth billions to the likes of KBR, no matter how bad their performance.

For over the past decade, we really haven't had a debate in this country over whether our metastasized military ought to be maintained at its current, megasized level.  Now that military cuts are in the offing after years of wild spending, Republicans want to do anything they can, including throwing themselves on the wheels of the democratic process, to stop any change from happening.  That's what's really going on here, and it's a sign of their success in manipulating national media narratives that hardly anyone is talking about it.

The New Republican Strategy: Pretend the Election Never Happened

Back in 2009, conservatives made their political goals pretty obvious: do anything in their power to make the Obama administration fail and thus limit it to one term.  This was not some kind of secret conspiracy, everyone from Mitch McConnell on down to Rush Limbaugh said it out loud straight into the microphone.  After four years of unprecedented filibusters, Tea Party histrionics, and wild accusations that the president is a foreign-born imposter hell-bent on destroying America's very essence, the American public rejected this irresponsible gambit at the polls.

If you've been paying attention to the political news since last Tuesday, you might think that Republicans are unaware that we just had an election where the president was re-elected, and Republicans lost seats in both houses of Congresses.  Not only that, their Tea Party Senate candidates in Indiana and Missouri -states Romney won- went down in defeat, and the GOP maintained the House largely because of gerrymandering.  By any rational measure, the Republican party and the ideas it stands for were clearly repudiated.

Despite these facts, John McCain continues to rant about Benghazi in a conspiratorial fashion that voters just don't buy.  Worse still, he is doing so in a blatant attempt to smear Susan Rice, one of the likely replacements for Hilary Clinton as Secretary of State.  (His insulting remarks about her "not being too bright" are rather reminiscent of John Sununu's infamous denunciation of our law professor president's intellect.)  These shenanigans are an obvious shot across the bow to the president, sending the message that even though he just won re-election, Republicans will continue to obstruct and libel just as they did before.

I've also been puzzled and irritated by the fact that Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney are still in the news.  One of the best things about Obama winning was that I thought I could be sure not to have to hear Mitt Romney's smirky, asshole boss voice over my radio ever again, and that his dead-eyed granny killer sidekick would take a low profile for the time being.  Instead, I am hearing all about Romney's self-serving narrative about why he lost the election, which boils down to "Obama did a dirty deal by giving away freebies to those lazy black and brown people, and by enabling slatternly young women to engage in immorality."  This makers vs. takers bullshit heavily tinged with racial animus and misogyny is the same kind of garbage the right subjected us to for the past election year.  I can't recall a time when a defeated presidential candidate was this far out into the public eye and making such flagrantly divisive statements so soon after an election.  He's almost acting as if the campaign is still going, and the election that he lost wasn't real or legitimate.

I guess the right's willingness to forget the election ever happened is consistent with their behavior before the election and on election night itself, when Republicans refused to believe the poll numbers were true and Karl Rove had his famous meltdown on live television.  Both Mitch McConnell and John Boehner wouldn't get out of bed to talk to the president when he called their homes that night, a childish act of denial.  Conservatives think they are the "real America," and thus it is simply impossible and against the laws of the universe that they would not be commanding it.  If a liberal black Democrat is in charge, no matter if he beat them twice, it is an unacceptable state of affairs.  A poll out today shows that a majority of Republicans do not think that the party ought to cooperate with the president, despite the oncoming "fiscal cliff" and the fact that their party has just lost an election.

I had hope that this election would be a wake-up call, especially after Chris Christie's willingness to put his animus against the president aside and act like an adult for once.  It seems that my hopes were misplaced, and that the GOP will remain the ideologically extreme death cult that it has become in recent years.  I can only shudder to think about the implications of this on our country's need to solve some pressing problems.

My Favorite Reality Show Is Over: Why I'll Miss the Republican Primaries

I tend not to like reality television, mostly because it's exploitative, stupid, and full of moronic fame whores.  That said, I finally found a reality program full of the worst kind of fame-mongering jerks the world has to offer that I could watch: the Republican presidential primary.  Each day I would eat in the faculty lounge with one of my fellow teachers, and gab about what was happening in our favorite show.  We were sad to see Bachmann, Perry, and Cain voted off the island, but ecstatic once it was apparent just how crazy Frothy McSweatervest would act just to get attention.  I especially enjoyed how the primary let the conservative id run loose, perhaps forever letting the public see conservatism's true colors.  Guys like Reagan and Shrub had managed to wrap legalized torture and cold hearted supply side economics in the warm trappings of folksiness and charisma.  For  years conservatives did an impressive job of finding likable men to front rather unlikable ideas, but their luck seems to have run out.

The warmest candidate in the bunch was Herman Cain, a former lobbyist and fast food pizza executive who demanded not to be taken seriously until his penchant for sexually harassing co-workers went public.  Their second folksiest candidate in this race is Ron Paul, a man whose ideas normally require a tinfoil hat accessory.  Apart from those two they had a crazy church lady (Bachmann), a fatuous know it all forced to leave office in disgrace (Gingrich), a lame-brain Texas governor who accomplished the impossible feat of making George W. Bush look smart (Perry), a snarly-lipped modern day Savnorola with even less of a sense of humor named after anal leakage (Santorum), and a pandering robot who reminds most Americans of their clueless boss (Romney.)  Watching these clowns in action falling all over themselves to say the most outrageous things to curry favor with the bitter clingy crowd made me wonder if I had stepped into an Evelyn Waugh novel.  I will miss the show.

Since the media focus moves so fast today, I'd like to remember some of my favorite moments from the campaign, since they are already vanishing into the ether.  Please add your own in the comments if I've missed any.

The debate crowd yelling "let him die."  So I guess the party preferred by the Army of God thinks Jesus was misquoted when he told his followers to heal the sick?

Every single time Bachman opened her mouth.  Remember when this woman won the Iowa straw poll, and people were actually listening to what she had to say?  I cannot think of any greater indictment of our entire political system.

Rick Perry can't remember what federal departments he wants to eliminate.  As a former resident of Texas, I relished watching Governor Goodhair reveal to the world the true extent of his chuckleheadedness.  This man was once the presumptive front runner!

Mitt Romney declares himself a "severely conservative" governor.  He makes it sound like he had some kind of disease, like a severe case of the measles.

Herman Cain joking about killing immigrants.  This man was a front-runner for a major party presidential nomination?

Mitt Romney generally acting like a rich plutocrat out of a comic book.  He casually tried to make a ten thousand dollar bet, acted like his wife's two Cadillacs were something every family would own, and bonded with NASCAR fans by laughing at their cheap ponchos and letting them know he knew NASCAR owners.

Newt Gingrich claiming he was paid by Fannie Mae to be a historian.  Yep, a historian who has never produced a single peer-reviewed publication.

Robo-Romney telling Michiganders "the trees are the right height" and awkwardly trying to guess facts about complete strangers since he seems incapable of actual human conversation.

Debate crowd cheers Perry's record number of executions.  Perry himself appears pretty non-plussed about the possibility that he killed an innocent man to boot in this debate.

Santorum denigrates "blah people."  There are too many hateful things to choose from, but this statement is the worst, and his lying attempt to walk it back the most deceitful.

Three degree holding Rick Santorum calling the president a snob for wanting more students to go to college. My God the resentment of these people is crazy.

Herman Cain quotes Pokemon to add gravity to his farewell speech.  Words fail.

Pope Santorum attacks birth control.  Oh yeah, he also supported the Blunt Amendment.  And Republicans wonder why women prefer to vote for Obama by such a large margin.

Newt's moon colony.  As Colbert says, Gingrich wasn't running for president, but trying out for Bond villain.  Don't forget, he was once the front runner, too.

****
Let's be serious for a moment, folks.  Look at the list of stupidity, hatred, and buffoonery I've laid out above, and tell me how the Republican party has not become an ideologically extreme movement that would be a sad joke if it did not hold so much power.