Used teabags

By Carl

I wrote a few weeks ago that the Tea Party was a drying wart on the American political landscape, a view cinched last night:

Tactically, the Republican establishment is routing the Tea Party. The insurgency's backslide has been apparent all year, as its handpicked challengers to GOP incumbents failed to gain traction, groups representing it in Washington overreached, and the deficit concerns stoking its base waned. But yesterday, the "backslide" slid right back off a cliff. Tea Party-backed candidates in three key primary races suffered decisive losses in Kentucky, Georgia, and Idaho.

With the handwriting on the wall, deep-pocketed conservative sponsors huddled last Thursday and stewed over how to force the GOP to double down on hard-right policy positions. Those include opposition to a big immigration deal, same-sex marriage, and abortion rights -- issues toxic to the imperative of broadening the party's demographic coalition. But the movement's electoral drubbing suggests its grip on the Republican agenda may finally be breaking.

The question is what will replace it. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, one of the big victors in yesterday's contests, was explicit with Fortune earlier this year that Senate Republicans will not unify behind a governing vision before the November midterms. And even if a more moderate brand of Republicanism is ascendant, the term itself remains relative -- and murky.

McConnell himself ducked the Teabaggers, as Fortune points out, but he still has to deal with the herd of cats in the Senate (and the House) that have managed to survive the apocalypse.

The Teabaggers rose as a result of (ginned up) anger at escalating deficits and government debt, both of which President Obama has reined in. Indeed, the 2012 election showed that Teabaggers were desperately looking for good electoral news and find precious little to rally behind, Obama had done such a good job of mastering the economy and re-energizing the debt reduction machinery.

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The end of the Teabaggers?

By Carl 

You may have blinked and missed it. At any rate, tomorrow will be a bellwether for this November, and 2016:

The race has been cast as yet another skirmish in the ongoing GOP civil war, pitting the establishment-backed Tillis against seven tea party challengers. It's true that Tillis has the support of prominent national Republicans -- including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell -- and the Chamber of Commerce.

But it would be too easy to frame a Tuesday victory for Tillis, if it happens, as a clean win for the newly emboldened Republican establishment. Tillis hasn't been forced to beat back a tea party challenge, because his opponents haven't put up much of a fight. They've also splintered conservative support.

He has two serious rivals for the nomination: Greg Brannon, a staunch libertarian tea party activist who wants to put U.S. currency back on the gold standard, and Mark Harris, a prominent Baptist pastor from Charlotte who spearheaded the 2012 passage of a constitutional amendment that strengthened the state's same-sex marriage ban. Like other insurgent Republican candidacies around the country this year, neither campaign has managed to stir the kind of grassroots passion that propelled so many tea party victories in 2010.

With memories of Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock marked indelibly in the consciousness of the Republican Party – along with the "what if?" of two winnable Senate seats thrown away – the GOP establishment must be taking comfort in the fact that they've managed to ostracize and minimize the Teabaggers on this go around.

The follow up question, then, is "quo vadis?" Where are they going? [ed. note: I know, technically it's "quo eunt?" but...]

There's no place in the Democratic Party for them, and any third party bid will be doomed to irrelevance, as Duverger's Law comes into play, even with Koch and Adelson shoveling money into a Tea Party engine, at least at the beginning. They're businessmen. They'll stop the minute it becomes unprofitable.

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The view from 90

Guest post by Robert Stein

Ed. note: A couple of months ago, my friend and fellow blogger Bob Stein turned 90. I meant to publish this wonderful post at the time, but, well, time got away from me and it's been a sporadic couple of months of blogging for me anyway.

It is, in any event, a timeless post, and I'm very happy to publish it today, belatedly. Bob has led an incredibly interesting life and he's seen some incredibly interesting things. What is truly encouraging (and amazing) is that as he looks not just back at America's and the world's messy history but out at the crazy world around him now, he retains a sense of hope and optimism that overrides doubt and despair. He sees the good, that is, even when it is hard to find.

I wish him all the best, and a (belated) happy birthday, from all of us here.

This is Bob's third guest post here at The Reaction, and the first since his reflections on the anniversary of JFK's assassination last November. (His first post for us was "A life in black and white: Personal reflections on race in America.") -- MJWS

Robert Stein has had a long career as an editor, publisher, media critic, and journalism teacher. A former chair of the American Society of Magazine Editors, he currently blogs at Connecting the Dots. 

**********

On March 4, 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated. It was my ninth birthday.

In April 1945, I was a 21-year-old foot soldier on the floor of a German farmhouse when someone shook me awake to whisper that FDR had died. 

Now, at 90, I am inevitably shaped by those years after a working lifetime as writer, editor and publisher trying to explain the world to others -- and myself.

The scenes around me today are filled with human folly, selfishness and shameless behavior, but that’s far from the whole story. My so-called Greatest Generation, which survived a Depression and World War, does not in retrospect seem so morally superior to those that succeeded it but only more limited in education, experience of the world and outlook.

Many of our virtues were rooted in ignorance: no TV, cable, computers, Internet, no electronics of any kind, only radios with music, soap operas and swatches of evening news lifted from newspapers (as a teenage copy boy, I wrote some of them.)

As a nation we were united, but in an innocence that also had its dark side -- racial ghettos, religious prejudice, rural isolation -- where only unseen white men, all Protestant, held power over our lives in government and business.

Women then lived no fuller a life than those in Nazi Germany: Kinder, Küche, Kirche (children, kitchen, church). Our mothers patrolled homes in house dresses, with only one exception.

Although we knew her as Mrs. Goldstein, nothing went with that matronly name, not the shimmer of clothes clinging to her trim body, or the beauty-parlor hair, the high-heeled shoes and face painted with makeup even in daytime, or the sweet perfume cloud that came into the living room in late afternoons when she kissed her son goodnight and dazzled the rest of us playing there with a cupid's bow smile on her way out.

She always seemed on the move to someplace exciting or, if my mother's mutterings could be believed, sinful. I had no idea what nafka meant, but Mrs. Goldstein gave our pre-teen senses a whiff of hope that the night life on movie screens existed somewhere in the real world.

Jump cut through decades: a World War; prosperous but Man-in-the-Grey-Flannel-Suit Fifties; JFK, the Youthquake, Civil Rights awakening and Women's Lib of the televised Sixties; a backlash of the Silent Majority and Watergate in the Nixon years; Reagan's "Morning in America" to paper over growing economic and political gulfs followed by Clinton's centrism and self-centeredness barely surviving Gingrich's loopy Contract with America; and then almost a decade of W's preemptive war and mindless tax cuts to bring us into the Obama years of almost total Tea Party collapse of the civility that held us together all that time, with racism showing its naked face.

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Somebody has issues

By Mustang Bobby

It's Freud 101 that people who talk all the time about something they say they hate are secretly longing for it. So it must be that Tea Party leader Judson Phillips has a huge, uh, interest in what gay people do when they’re not living their lives like everyone else:

"Tyranny is on the march," Phillips declares in a piece on the TPN website that he also emailed to members of the group, adding that business owners who are not allowed to discriminate against gays and lesbians are "slaves" to the "great liberal state," aided by "French Republicans" like Brewer.

"The left and the homosexual lobby are both pushing slavery using the Orwellian concepts of 'tolerance' and 'inclusiveness,'" he writes.

Phillips then wonders if business owners will be forced to "create a cake for a homosexual wedding that has a giant phallic symbol on it," "create pastries for a homosexual wedding in the shape of genitallia [sic]," or "photograph a homosexual wedding where the participants decide they want to be nude or engage in sexual behavior."

Why in the world would any balanced person hear about a same-sex wedding and immediately jump to a fevered vision of a wedding cake with a giant penis on it?

A word of advice to Mr. Phillips: Google Manhunt.net and get it over with. You and the rest of us who are tired of hearing about your hormonally-charged love/hate relationship with gayness will be glad you did.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Proactive patoot-smooching

By Mustang Bobby

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) tried to keep the family feud civil and suck up to his base overlords.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), one of the budget deal negotiators, on Sunday defended conservative groups criticized by House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) for coming out against the budget agreement this week.

“I think these groups are valuable,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”"They’re part of our conservative family. I’d prefer to keep these conversations within our family.”
Ryan did say that he was not pleased that groups opposed the deal so quickly, but still said that the Tea Party is valuable.

“John was frustrated because they came out against our agreement before we even reached an agreement,” he said. “I was frustrated as well. But I see the Tea Party as indispensable.”

Because he knows he will need to call on them when he makes his attempt to run for the presidency in 2016, following in the footsteps of all those vice presidential candidates from losing tickets that came back to win the next time around like President Dan Quayle, President Joe Lieberman, and President John Edwards.

Sycophancy only works if you don’t mean it.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

You want a Republican civil war? Here's your Republican civil war.

By Michael J.W. Stickings

A liberal? Really?

It didn't just start. It was in the making for a long time, and it got underway a while ago, at least in formal terms. Actually, it just sort of started happening, but it was also pretty much inevitable. And now, well, the word "war" has come to the fore:

Tea Party Patriots said Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has "declared war on the Tea Party" with his "smug and pretentious rant" against certain right-wing organizations.

The group made the charge in a fundraising email to supporters, seeking to win donations over the public feuding.

In the past two days, Boehner has repeatedly attacked the conservative groups that championed the October effort to defund ObamaCare and are now opposed to the recent budget deal negotiated by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.).

He has criticized the groups for being more interested in raising money than actually solving problems.

The letter quotes Boehner's statement that "outside groups" were "using our members and... the American people for their own goals."

"The last time we checked, we are the American people," the letter said.

The letter goes on to refer to Boehner as a "ruling class politician" who only pretends to be conservative while remaining a "tax-and-spend liberal" at heart.

Of course, that's all complete nonsense. Boehner has been critical of right-wing Republican groups that threaten the party's position in Congress, if not also nationally, but that's about it. If anyone or anything has declared war, it's the Tea Party itself, which is obstinate in its ideological extremism, dismissive of the realities of politics, and confrontational regarding the rest of the GOP, throwing primary challenges even at hardcore conservatives.

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The Tea Party has always existed

By Frank Moraes

Captain Fogg over at Human Voices wrote a very compelling contrast between the way the far right treats Obama versus how they treated Kennedy, Remembering the Hero. Even though today Kennedy has an approval rating that tops 90%, while he was in office, he received the same kind over-the-top rhetoric about how he was discarding the Constitution and how he was a traitor.

Let me take it a bit further. Basically, since at least World War II, there has always been about 20% of the population that thinks that the commies are taking control of the nation. That's not just me, that's the conclusion of Change They Can't Believe In.

Ever since 2009, I've been amused and outraged that the Tea Party is treated as some legitimate political movement. The mainstream press just loved the idea of middle class people finally organizing. But that's not what was happening at all! These were the McCarthyites who knew that 81 communists worked in the State Department. These were the Birchers who ranted about the communist plot of water fluoridation in 1960. And of course, these were the people with the "treason" signs on the parade route in Dallas.

I think our country would be a good deal better off if we knew more about John Wilkes Booth. He wasn't crazy. It was just that in the circles he ran, it was a given that Lincoln was a tyrant. In his mind, he was Brutus in Julius Caesar—not an assassin but a hero of the people.

No one thinks themselves greater patriots than the Tea Party. But they aren't patriots to the United States. They are patriots to some kind of vague notion of what they think America once was. And most sadly, that usually means an America where only whites had power.

I don't think most of these people really wanted armed revolt and political assassination. But Captain Fogg is right that these people are sowing it. But whenever there is a tragedy that they helped create—whether it is Dallas or Oklahoma City—they slink away. For a while. When they come back, they don't slink. They stride proudly back with their signs, "Obama's Plan: White Slavery!"

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Uncivil war: Tea Party radicalism and the deepening divide in the Republican Party

By Michael J.W. Stickings

You gotta love it when the Tea Party, a movement largely co-opted by an increasingly extremist Republican Party (as it was largely a creation of opportunistic right-wing Republican interests), comes out and calls Republicans traitors for not being extremist enough and for daring to work with Democrats to address the country's problems, subjecting them to primary challenges from the even further right and otherwise driving the wedge deeper into the party's disease-ridden carcass:

A tea party group has launched a campaign to support primary challenges against all 87 Republicans who voted for the deal in late October to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling. 

The Tea Party Leadership Fund, a PAC affiliated with the group TheTeaParty.net, began a fundraising push — dubbed the "Primaries for Traitors Fund" — shortly after the shutdown deal passed in the House, and they are now ramping up efforts to find "credible candidates" in each of the districts, said the fund's treasurer, Dan Backer.

"From our perspective, we see this as a signature vote. You can't be a conservative and vote to raise the debt ceiling," Backer said. "I recognize there are some places where voters may actually think that was the right vote. And there may be places where you have an incumbent who wins with 90% of the vote every time and there's not a credible challenger. I recognize that, but we're certainly going to do our best."

Backer says the group has honed in on a few specific members to start: Illinois Rep. Rodney Davis, New York Rep. Peter King, North Carolina Rep. Robert Pittenger, Louisiana Rep. Charles Boustany, and most importantly, Backer said, House Speaker John Boehner in Ohio. 

Of course, even Ronald Reagan, like every Republican president, supported debt ceiling raises, but, oh, no matter. These are crazed ideologues long divorced from reality.

And for Republicans like Boehner and so many others, this is what is called making your bed and having to lie in it. Or playing with fire. Or being hoisted with your own petard. Or getting bitten in the ass.

Not that I think it's a great thing that this is what American conservatism has come to -- it's awfully dangerous, given that this is one of the country's two main political parties -- but this is one of those times when you may want to grab some popcorn and settle in for what is sure to be an entertaining ride.

Why the Tea Party loves Rand Paul

By Frank Moraes 

Last night I read a bit of Parker and Barreto's Change They Can't Believe In. It looks at the Tea Party movement from a political science standpoint. It is a dense book and I've only read a small amount of it. But the base conclusion is that what makes the Tea Party movement distinct is a shared racial animosity -- specifically toward President Obama. This isn't to say that all Tea Party members are racist. But what distinguishes the group from a conservative who does not associate himself with it is racism. 

This conclusion is freeing. I've long felt that the base of Republican appeal was racism. A very large percentage of those who vote Republican do so not because of the policies that politicians talk about, but rather because it is understood they favor policies that will do the "right" thing, "Screw the darkies!" And look at who is in the Tea Party. Mostly it is older white people who directly benefit from the two most costly government programs: Social Security and Medicare. So clearly they aren't for small government except in the sense that they define it as ending programs for the poor, who they see as our darker-skinned neighbours.

The conclusion also explains something that has long bothered me. Why is Rand Paul a star of the Tea Party? After all, he's an isolationist who wants to gut the military. Most people in the Tea Party are freakishly pro-military. They want a strong military, a strong dollar, and a strong rendition of "You're a Grand Ol' Flag" at all sporting events! But again: that's true of all conservatives. So in that regard, Rand Paul is outside the mainstream of conservatism, including the Tea Party. So why is he a Tea Party favorite? 

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The Tea Party and the Mafia

By Richard K. Barry

Upon considering what has been going on in Washington with the so-called civil war between Tea Party radicals and more mainstream Republicans, a thought has occurred to me. It's more of an analogy really. 

Consider this as reported by Bloomberg:

“We are going to get engaged,” said Scott Reed, senior political strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “The need is now more than ever to elect people who understand the free market and not silliness.” The chamber spent $35.7 million on federal elections in 2012, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based group that tracks campaign spending.

The point I would make is that the relationship of big-business conservatism to the Tea Party is a little like the relationship of the Mafia to elements within it that draw too much attention. The "free market system" as it runs, runs best for those who already have most of the money. Shutting the government down and the debt ceiling fight only disrupts the relatively smooth functioning that allows those who have to get more. Similarly, the Mafia never likes actions that drew attention to it and disrupt the business-as-usual grind that make its success possible. 

When the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says that the goal should be to elect people who "understand the free market and not silliness," by silliness they mean anything that disrupts the rules of a game already rigged to ensure that the rich get richer and the poor get screwed. 

Fucking idiots converge on Washington to protest government shutdown

By Michael J.W. Stickings

A group of mostly Tea Party protesters waving the Confederate flag, saying stupid bigoted things, and otherwise pushing their extremist right-wing agenda were in the nation's capital today, forcing open the World War II memorial and taking their loud-mouthed ignorance to the White House to blame President Obama, who also happens to be a black man, for the government shutdown, as if they have any fucking clue what's really going on.

Don't get me wrong, not everyone involved in this "Million Vet March" is a right-wing wacko. It's just that the whole thing was grossly misguided and then taken over by the same old Republican interests that so often hide behind patriotism and use veterans and active-duty personnel alike as pawns in their political game:

Members of the Million Vet March planned on gathering at the World War II Memorial on Sunday despite the memorial being closed due to the government shutdown.

According to a statement on the group's website, they feel military personnel and veterans are "being used a political pawns in the ongoing government shutdown and budget crisis." Organizers say they are not a political leaning group, but call the shutting down of memorials "a despicable act of cowardice."

However, conservative political commentator Sarah Palin and Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) arrived and spoke to the people gathered at the memorial.

"This is the people's memorial," Palin said. "Our veterans should be above politics."

Yeah, sure. When Palin and Cruz emerge as the leading voices of your protest, you know you're way out of touch with the rest of America and that you're no longer non-partisan. And if veterans should really be above politics, then Palin, one of the most shameless partisan self-promoters around, should just get the fuck out of the way.

Oh, and if these people are serious about protesting the shutdown, they should have taken their march over to Capitol Hill, where Tea Party-dominated Republicans who have taken the country hostage are the ones responsible for the whole damn mess.

Behind the Ad: Stand up to the Tea Party

By Richard K. Barry

(Another installment in our extensive "Behind the Ad" series.) 

Who: Organizing for Action

Where: Nationally on cable news programs.

What's going on: Organizing for America is President Obama's former campaign arm.

MSNBC:

Charging that "Tea Party Republicans are threatening an economic shutdown," the ad says that "refusing to pay our nation's bill" would "endanger American jobs" if the country defaults. "Tell them to stand up to the Tea Party," says the ad's narrator. "Enough already."

Presumably the "them" are more reasonable Republicans, whoever they might be.

Stillbirth

By Mustang Bobby

Josh Marshall makes the case that it’s pointless to go after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) over the question of whether or not he’s eligible to run for president: the law is pretty clear that he’s a natural-born U.S. citizen.

Yes, it’s nice to see Tea Partiers discomfited that their guy really was born outside the United States (he was born in Calgary). But that schadenfreude doesn’t change the fact that he’s natural born and thus eligible. As he told ABC News a month ago, “My mother was born in Wilmington, Delaware. She’s a U.S. citizen, so I’m a U.S. citizen … “I can tell you where I was born and who my parents were.” And he’s right. That settles it.

By every historical and legal standard, “natural born” in the Constitution simply means that you were born an American citizen. The fact of your birth made you an American citizen.

It is well-established that being born on American soil makes you an American citizen. And being born to an American citizen, no matter where you were born, makes you an American citizen. At the time of his birth, Cruz was born to a mother who was an American citizen. That clinches it. The fact that his father was then not yet an American citizen is not relevant. Just as the location of Cruz’s own birth is not relevant. The Congressional Research Service actually did a study of this a couple years ago and after lengthy research and documentation, they basically came up with what I said above.

Over the last half dozen years, in addition to coming up with numerous conspiracy theories that allege specific factual inaccuracies about President Obama’s birth, the ‘birther’ community has developed all sorts of harebrained interpretations of what ‘natural born’ mean. They’re all wrong. It simply means, did you become an American citizen by the fact of your birth – whether that mean your parentage or geography?

Still thinking of pressing this point? Nope. Zip it. It’s done.

The only reason I’ve ever brought it up in the past was to tweak the noses of the birthers who have been using President Obama’s birth certificate as a thin veil for their racism. And if they keep insisting on bringing it up when Mr. Cruz runs — and he will — then it will be fun to hear them pretzelize themselves to explain how “that’s different!” Yeah, how?

The other reason Mr. Cruz’s circumstances of birth are pointless is because of the simple fact that it will not matter. He will never be elected President of the United States, so it’s a waste of time to think about it.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

There's no Tea Party rift

By Frank Moraes 

Ed Kilgore reflected yesterday on the fact that the only real ideological divide in the Republican Party is over national security. That is true, although even Rand Paul has shown himself to be nothing is not malleable when it comes to ideology. But it is true that a large bipartisan minority voted for an amendment to the half-trillion-dollar defense authorization to restrict the NSA's ability to collect telephone metadata on U.S. calls. The final vote was 205-217, so it only barely lost.

Kilgore speculated that there would have been more Democratic votes for the amendment if a Republican had been in the White House. Of course that's true. Even still, I'm pretty happy with the party; they voted in favor of the amendment 111-83 -- that's 57% of the caucus on a bill where the leadership and the White House were very vocal about how it would mean the end of free society and would effectively mean the terrorists won.

On the Republican side, Kilgore is less certain about how the White House control affected the vote. As it was, while Republicans voted for the amendment in large numbers, they did not have a majority. The vote was 94-134 -- that's just 41%. I suspect that had a Republican been in the White House, that number would have gone down to perhaps 30%.

The main question is why some Republicans care about privacy issues while others do not. Kilgore noted, "I certainly haven't figured out any consistent principle... that makes it possible to predict which fire-eating Tea Party conservative these days is frothing for an immediate war with Iran and perhaps domestic profiling of Muslims, and which is worried about excessive overseas commitments or domestic surveillance." For example, Michele Bachmann and Steve King both voted against the amendment.

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So about those conservative groups supposedly being "targeted" by the IRS...

By Michael J.W. Stickings

See, this is how it happens. Republicans create a faux scandal without any grasp, or even any regard for, the facts, the media, both smelling blood to caving in easily to Republican pressure (when they're not in the bag for Republicans already), play right along, enabling the Republicans and providing them credence and a platform, reporting on the faux scandal they themselves are helping create, without any grasp of the facts themselves, and then, much later, the facts come out, slowly, but by then no one's really paying attention anymore and the damage has largely been done.

So Republicans, with their willing media enablers, created a faux scandal out of a report that the IRS had investigated conservative groups with regard to their tax-exempt status, a report that suggested that the investigating of those groups had been somewhat inappropriately conducted, specifically that they had been targeted, that the IRS had tagged certain groups because of their names, and, well, hell broke loose, as you know. Republicans freaked out, whether they knew better or not, feigning outrage and suggesting, stupidly, that Obama wasn't in control, as if the president micro-manages every facet of the federal government, Democats had no clue what to do, and President Obama even got involved, calling what the IRS did "inexcusable" and scapegoating the acting director of the IRS, Steven Miller, who was forced to resign (i.e., fired) even though it's pretty clear this all happened well below him in the organization.

Yes, the faux scandal swept through Washington and the president's knees jerked right along with the Republican / media faux outrage.

But that was all so... two weeks ago.

Even at the time, it was pretty clear what had happened. IRS investigators in Cincinnati may have handled their investigation with less-than-stellar tact, but there was no pressure on them from the White House, or from any outside organization, and they did not act with partisan malice towards conservative groups.

Let me repeat that: There is no evidence conservative groups were targeted for political reasons.

And so really there is no scandal at all.

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Tea Partier: Louder-shouting Republican

By Frank Moraes

Yesterday, Ed Kilgore wrote, "Please Listen Up, Political Reporters: What Ted Cruz Means When He Says He Mistrusts Both Parties." In it, he took on Ted Cruz and his habit of claiming that he doesn't trust either political party. As Kilgore noted, "Does it mean, as political reporters often blandly repeat, that 'Tea Party' pols like Cruz are hardy independents who care about principle rather than about the GOP, and represent a constituency that is up in the air?" He provided two answers: "No" and "Hell no!"

This is an issue that I've been hammering on for a while. The only difference between the Tea Party and the Republican Party is that the Tea Party is only made up of the stronger Republicans. So it makes no sense to even have a different name for the Tea Party; they are just the base of the Republican Party. What's interesting is that the Democratic Party has a progressive base too but no one labels it as a separate party. And that's strange when you consider that the this base is far more likely to abandon its party than the Tea Party is.

As you all know, I am constantly disappointed in the Democratic Party. Yet when someone asks me, I tell them I am a Democrat. I think it is disingenuous to say otherwise. This comes from my many conversations with conservatives who claim to be "independent." (This doesn't tend to happen with liberals; the independents who tend toward the Democrats really are in the muddled middle.) You aren't an independent if you agree with everything the Republicans say but think they aren't quite pure enough. And that is exactly what Ted Cruz is all about.

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What IRS scandal?

By Frank Moraes

I hate to find myself in the position of being an apologist for the government. But there is an important issue: by focusing on minor and even meaningless stories, we distract from very real issues. We have yet more news about our government's attempts to keep the public ignorant and intimidate government whistleblowers. But what do we get?More coverage on the Inspector General's report on the IRS: what did the president know and when did he know it?! Truly, the way the media are dealing with these scandals makes me think that the only training they're received was a screening of All the President's Men. 

Think about this IRS scandal. Imagine that you were in charge of deciding which 501(c)(4) applications were approved. In order to be approved, the group must be primarily concerned with social welfare. And one year, you get deluged with applications with "Republican" in the names of the groups. "Republicans for Tax Fairness." And "Republicans Against the Estate Tax." And "Republicans for Barefoot and Pregnant Women." You might think, maybe I should pay a little extra attention to these "Republican" groups. 

As I wrote in "Tea Party Myth," there is no Tea Party. There is just the Republican base that has managed to get the entire media system to accept its branding as though it were something distinct from the Republican Party. Everyone knows that the Democratic Party has a left wing. But no one goes around calling it the "Progressive Party." Because that would be wrong: it isn't the Progressive Party; it is the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Just the same, there is no Tea Party, there is just the Republican Party. (It isn't the conservative wing; the Republican Party is the Tea Party.) 

So until I get far more information on the IRS scandal, I'm assuming there is nothing there. As Norm Scheiber brilliantly noted, "The only real sin the IRS committed in its ostensible targeting of conservatives is the sin of political incorrectness—that is, of not pretending it needed to vet all the new groups that wanted tax-exempt status, even though it mostly just needed to vet right-wing groups." It is certainly possible that these IRS agents were thinking, "Let's get those conservatives!" But it seems unlikely. 

Meanwhile, there is no surveillance scandal. That's because the Democrats and Republicans are on the same side. There are no Republican operatives to funnel Jonathan Karl misinformation against the president. Since both parties want to ship the Constitution down the river, the Fourth Estate will just allow it. After all, pushing back would require real investigation. And all these bozos know about that is what they learned watching Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman.
 

Afterword

There is a bit of a paradox. Supposedly, a group with "tea party" in its name isn't necessarily just a conservative political group. If that's the case -- if Tea Party groups really do have Democrats and Republicans -- then they aren't conservative groups. Thus, the IRS wasn't targeting "conservative" groups. On the other hand, if groups with "tea party" in their names are in general conservative political groups, then they shouldn't be applying for 501(c)(4) status. I'm sure the IRS agents must have confronted this paradox. 

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

The IRS scandal

By Richard K. Barry

There should be little doubt that the IRS targeting conservative groups is totally unacceptable. I agree with Joe Klein that those responsible should be shown the door quickly.

Whether he is right on other arguments, I'm not sure, but it's worth considering. What I do know is that whatever explanations can be provided, whatever apologies can be given, the appearance of using the government apparatus to silence political enemies could be a big problem at the ballot box, and it should be.

Joe Klein:

Yet again, we have an example of Democrats simply not managing the government properly and with discipline. This is just poisonous at a time of skepticism about the efficacy of government. And the President should know this: the absence of scandal is not the presence of competence. His unwillingness to concentrate–and I mean concentrate obsessively–on making sure that government is managed efficiently will be part of his legacy.

Previous Presidents, including great ones like Roosevelt, have used the IRS against their enemies. But I don’t think Barack Obama ever wanted to be on the same page as Richard Nixon. In this specific case, he now is.

(Cross-posted at Phantom Public.) 

Digging for nuts: The IRS and the Tea Party probe

By Mustang Bobby

Whoever it was in the IRS who came up with the idea of looking deeply into Tea Party groups probably thought they were doing the right thing. After all, once Citizens United came down from the Supreme Court, political action groups — both liberal and conservative and under any number of names and disguises — were going to pop up like mushrooms. And they did. But going after just the right-wingers — where there were bound to be more groups — was dumb, if only from a political-fallout perspective. After all, everybody knows that no one screams louder and carries on like a banshee than bullies who get hit back.

Juliet Eilperin at the Washington Post has a good summation on the story so far and points out that when it came to light that investigators were looking only in the Tea Party groups, they were told to stop. They then broadened the scope to look at any group that might fall under the “political action” umbrella from both the left and the right.

On June 29, 2011, according to the documents, IRS staffers held a briefing with Lerner in which they described giving special attention to instances where “statements in the case file criticize how the country is being run.” She raised an objection, and the agency adopted a more general set of standards. Lerner, who is a Democrat, is not a political appointee.

But six months later, the IRS applied a new political test to social welfare groups, the document says. On Jan. 15, 2012, the agency decided to look at “political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform movement,” according to the appendix in the IG’s report.

The agency did not appear to adopt a more neutral test for 501(c)(4) groups until May 17, 2012, according to the timeline in the report. At that point, the IRS again updated its criteria to focus on “organizations with indicators of significant amounts of political campaign intervention (raising questions as to exempt purpose and/or excess private benefit.)”

Read more »

The Koch brothers may be in the market for some newspapers

By Richard K. Barry

The New York Times is reporting that the Koch brothers, financial backers of various right-wing causes, may be interested in buying a group of newspapers owned by the Tribune Company. Tribune came out of bankruptcy on Dec. 31 and has recently been looking to sell off its print properties.

The official statement by Koch Industries is that they are an entrepreneurial company always on the lookout for profitable enterprises, which, they say, means it is natural their name would come up in such a conservation.

Politically, however, the papers could serve as a broader platform for the Kochs’ laissez-faire ideas. The Los Angeles Times is the fourth-largest paper in the country, and The Tribune is No. 9, and others are in several battleground states, including two of the largest newspapers in Florida, The Orlando Sentinel and The Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale. A deal could include Hoy, the second-largest Spanish-language daily newspaper, which speaks to the pivotal Hispanic demographic. 

The cluster of papers have a value of $623 million, which would appear to be a number that would not scare off Koch Industries, a business with annual revenue of around $115 billion. 

Among the recipients of their largesse in the past has been the conservative think tank the Cato Institute in Washington and Americans for Progress, a group that helped in the formation of the Tea Party. 

Supporters of the Kochs will, and have, argued that such a deal would be "an investment opportunity, [to be] viewed as entirely separate from Charles and David Koch’s lifelong mission to shrink the size of government."

Yes, well...

I would assume that many things would have to fall in place before such a deal was done, but the thought of David and Charles Koch doing for print media in America what Rupert Murdoch has done for broadcast media is a chilling thought. 

(Cross-posted at Phantom Public.)