Old ideas from young Republicans

By Frank Moraes

The other night on Colbert Report, there was Reihan Salam explaining how the Republicans are going to win the hearts of the working class. And he had the book he wrote with Ross Douthat, Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream. Ah yes, the Grand New Party. The book is described as, "Two of the Right's rising young thinkers call upon the GOP to focus on the interests and needs of working-class voters." The basic idea is simple: the Republican Party should reinvent itself as the party of the working class and focus on making the base of the party the married heterosexual couple.

There is a fundamental problem here: this is already what the party claims to stand for. All Salam and Douthat are calling for is a continuation of the same except that Republicans should stop getting us into wars all the time. While I admit that this would be an improvement, I doubt that it would do much to make the Republican Party more appealing to working class Americans. This comes back to the issue I talk about over and over again: it's the poor, stupid. The problem with the Republicans is not cosmetic nor is it focus. The American people didn't vote for Obama while thinking, "You know, if it weren't for Romney's hateful rhetoric and terrible foreign policy, I'd vote for him!" The Republican economic policies are toxic.

But this doesn't stop the mainstream media from going all gaga over young Republicans offering up a vision of a Republican Party that doesn't seem quite so horrible.


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The ennobling populism of John Mellencamp: "Small Town" and "Our Country"

Music on Saturday @ The Reaction

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As we're doing fairly long NFL picks/analysis posts each Sunday (up at 11 am), we've moved Music on Sunday to Music on Saturday for the duration of the NFL season.

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No reason for this clip today other than that I really like John Mellencamp. Yes, I know, that whole "This is Our Country" thing for Chevy was annoying, mainly because the gratuitous, manipulative ad seemed to be everywhere and because it seemed like Mellencamp was selling out, but actually "Our Country," while schmaltzy, is pretty good. Besides, what's wrong with that sort of "up-with-all-the-people" populism? This is our country -- the country of ordinary folk, not the country of the Wall Street plutocrats, not the country of some ordinary folk, as Republicans would have us believe, a country united, not divided. That's a simple message, perhaps, but it's one that resonates, or should, particularly at a time when the right, as it usually does, wages relentless, class and moral/religious warfare, seeking to divide the country into "us" and "them."

By way of comparison, Springsteen has generally espoused a more complex populism, and his songs are more complex, but Mellencamp has always been admirably direct with his politics. There is a tendency, I think, to write Mellencamp off as too '80s, but I've always found his appeal much broader, with music and social commentary that transcended that generally horrible decade. And his great run through the '80s -- American Fool (1982), Uh-Huh (1983), the wonderful Scarecrow (1985), and The Lonesome Jubilee (1987) -- was pretty impressive. That's some of the best American music of the decade, music that holds up still. And his music since has been strong as well, with stand-out songs like "Human Wheels" (1993), "Dance Naked" (1994), "Peaceful World" (2001), and, yes, "Our Country" (2007) proving that he's still on top of his game after all these years.

Here are the videos for "Small Town" (off Scarecrow) and "Our Town." They're somewhat similar, though made many years apart, and they showcase, I think, what John Mellencamp is all about.

Lou Dobbs leaves CNN

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Lou Dobbs, nativist xenophobe extraordinaire (if still less noxious than Pat Buchanan), announced tonight that he will be leaving CNN, effective immediately.

As far as I'm concerned, it should have been effective years ago, long before he became an icon of fearmongering, back when he was still a newsman. (He was actually one of CNN's original anchors.)

Not that I care all that much about CNN, as I wrote a couple of weeks ago in a post on how even Geraldo Rivera and John Stossel think Dobbs is crazy, but it has been rather troubling that Dobbs has been able to call a major cable news network, ratings woes aside, his home, and even more troubling that that home, which is supposed to be, or at least claims to be, a news network that actually cares about reporting the news and not just about spewing partisan, ideological spin, that is, something other than Fox News, provided him with such a prominent platform, and with a bullhorn, for so long. Shame on CNN, though we should have learned a long time ago not to expect much from it.

But what does it matter? We haven't heard the last of Dobbs.

This move may boost CNN's credibility, but, in the grand scheme of things, not much will change. Dobbs will just find a new home with a similar platform, a similar bullhorn, and outrageous pay. However much we may wish it were otherwise, after all, his brand of right-wing, protectionist populism with an independent twist still plays well. Where a fascist like Pat Buchanan talks up the Nazis, Dobbs at least seems to care about jobs and the plight of the American working class. Beyond his extremist niche, Buchanan is widely reviled, or at least seen as an insignificant fool not worth paying much attention to. Dobbs holds repugnant views on immigration, but his populism is generally palatable to a wide swathe of the American people, more so than ever given the current economic climate.

Where will he go? Fox News makes the most sense, even if Rivera admirably continues to campaign against him. No, he is neither Christianist theocrat nor Ayn Rand disciple, the two types that rule the right these days, but his populism fits in well there, and there will be an audience for him. If not there, though, somewhere else, for some media outlet will decide that, whether it agrees with him or not, he's worth it.

Regardless, Dobbs went out tonight in a blaze of bullshit:

Over the past six months, it has become increasingly clear that strong winds of change have begun buffeting this country and affecting all of us, and some leaders in media, politics and business have been urging me to go beyond the role here at CNN and to engage in constructive problem-solving as well as to contribute positively to a better understanding of the great issues of our day and to continue to do so in the most honest and direct language possible.

Yes, I suppose there is the possibility that Dobbs will throw his hat into the political arena, and I'm sure he'd find a good deal of support there.

I would only point out that those "strong winds of change" aren't exactly blowing at his back. Dobbs plays to the darker part of America, the part where fear and hatred rule, where nativism is a leading virtue, and where "constructive problem-solving" involves targeting Mexicans and other foreigners and blaming the Other, both internal and external, as the cause of all ills.

Call me a naive optimist, but I just don't think the world is going in that direction. Some of it is, yes, without doubt -- just watch Fox News or listen to the Republican Party -- but as long as Dobbs and those like him continue to be given prominent positions on the media and political landscape, all they'll be are obstacles to progress.

(Photo: MSNBC.)

Sarah Palin and the politics of resentment

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Here's our Quote of the Day, from Frank Rich's excellent Sunday NYT column on Palin, Palinism, and the GOP:

No less than 71 percent of Republicans said they would vote for her for president. That overwhelming majority isn’t just the “base” of the Republican Party that liberals and conservatives alike tend to ghettoize as a rump backwater minority. It is the party, or pretty much what remains of it in the Barack Obama era.

That’s why Palin won’t go gently into the good night, much as some Republicans in Washington might wish. She is not just the party’s biggest star and most charismatic television performer; she is its only star and charismatic performer. Most important, she stands for a genuine movement: a dwindling white nonurban America that is aflame with grievances and awash in self-pity as the country hurtles into the 21st century and leaves it behind. Palin gives this movement a major party brand and political plausibility that its open-throated media auxiliary, exemplified by Glenn Beck, cannot. She loves the spotlight, can raise millions of dollars and has no discernible reason to go fishing now except for self-promotional photo ops.

The essence of Palinism is emotional, not ideological. Yes, she is of the religious right, even if she winks literally and figuratively at her own daughter’s flagrant disregard of abstinence and marriage. But family-values politics, now more devalued than the dollar by the philandering of ostentatiously Christian Republican politicians, can only take her so far. The real wave she’s riding is a loud, resonant surge of resentment and victimization that’s larger than issues like abortion and gay civil rights.

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It’s more likely that she will never get anywhere near the White House, and not just because of her own limitations. The Palinist “real America” is demographically doomed to keep shrinking. But the emotion it represents is disproportionately powerful for its numbers. It’s an anger that Palin enjoyed stoking during her “palling around with terrorists” crusade against Obama on the campaign trail. It’s an anger that’s curdled into self-martyrdom since Inauguration Day.

Brilliantly put -- Rich at his finest. (Make sure to read the whole thing.) And, as of right now, it is true, I think, that Palin is the Republicans' "last presidential candidate standing":

Such would-be competitors as Mark Sanford, John Ensign and Newt Gingrich are too carnally compromised for the un-Clinton party. Mike Huckabee is Palin-lite. Tim Pawlenty, Bobby Jindal — really? That leaves the charisma-challenged Mitt Romney, precisely the kind of card-carrying Ivy League elitist Palinists loathe, no matter how hard he tries to cosmetically alter his history as a socially liberal fat-cat banker. Palin would crush him like a bug.

I would just caution that the 2012 election is still a long way off. It's Obama's to lose, of course, but there's ample time for the Republicans to regroup -- if not for that election, then certainly for 2016. (It could be Jeb by then, or perhaps Cantor, or another who isn't currently on the presidential radar.)

I'm hoping the Republican Party continues to embrace Palin -- if not Palinism, a far more noxious and malevolent phenomenon, a genuinely dangerous political movement -- for a good long time. The reality, though, is that it will eventually emerge from its Palin obsession, perhaps sooner rather than later, and, when it does, it will be stronger and more of an electoral threat to the Democrats than it is now (or may be in 2012).

Let's enjoy the GOP's Palin Era while it lasts, but let's not forget to look with sober anticipation to its successor, whatever and whomever it may be.

Here we go: Fox News actively promoting tea parties

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I blogged yesterday about the corporate greed and ideological extremism behind the so-called "tea parties" that are being held around the country. They're not expressions of some populist grassroots uprising, they're partisan political events supported by right-wing media outlets, think tanks, and other such organizations. And one of the main promoters of these manufactured events is, of course, Fox News. Think Progress:

Fox News host Neil Cavuto regularly claims that when he aggressively advocates for the anti-Obama "tea party" protests on air, he is simply covering them as a journalist. But Stuart Varney, Cavuto's fill-in host, admitted this afternoon that the the network is actually promoting the right-wing protests. After telling a guest that the tea parties were in protest to President Obama's policies, Varney closed a segment by saying, "It's now my great duty to promote the tea parties. Here we go!"

Yes, indeed, here we go.

None of this is surprising -- the network's political leanings are hardly a mystery -- but it's nice to see at least one "news" host dropping the whole "fair and balanced" bullshit and explicitly declaring his, and Fox's, agenda on air.

It's the network of Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly, after all -- that is, the network of the very corporate greed and ideological extremism behind the tea parties.

Corporate greed and ideological extremism: What's really behind the right-wing, taxpayer-revolt tea parties

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds may see the taxpayer-revolt tea parties as "real grassroots," but he and others on the right are either irrationally optimistic or cynically dishonest, or perhaps a bit of both. As I put it the other day, the tea parties are nothing more than contrived outlets for manufactured right-wing populist rage promoted by the likes of Fox News and various other right-wing organizations. That some bloggers have been involved, that some of the promotion has been done via Twitter, and that the tea parties have, to an extent (if not nearly to the historic extent believed by some), become viral, arousing the right into froth-mouthed anger, none of that changes the fact that, as Jane Hamsher notes, they are being backed by corporate lobbyists and Republican insiders and bigwigs. In other words, they're partisan political events. They aren't so much about taxpayer revolt as they are about corporate greed and ideological extremism.

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For more on how the tea parties reflect "the current state of the G.O.P" (and "how little has really changed" over the years), see Paul Krugman in today's Times:

[I]t turns out that the tea parties don't represent a spontaneous outpouring of public sentiment. They're AstroTurf (fake grass roots) events, manufactured by the usual suspects. In particular, a key role is being played by FreedomWorks, an organization run by Richard Armey, the former House majority leader, and supported by the usual group of right-wing billionaires. And the parties are, of course, being promoted heavily by Fox News.

But that's nothing new, and AstroTurf has worked well for Republicans in the past. The most notable example was the "spontaneous" riot back in 2000 — actually orchestrated by G.O.P. strategists — that shut down the presidential vote recount in Florida's Miami-Dade County.

In other words, it's the same old Republican Party behind the tea parties. They're not signs of a massive popular uprising but rather of right-wing politics as usual -- and of the usual craziness of the GOP. The problem is, as Krugman points out, that "usual" has won in the past -- and may win again soon "if the Democrats stumble."

The tea parties deserve to be "the subject of considerable mockery," but, given its successes over the past few decades, the Republican Party (and the conservative machine that drives it) can be dismissed as a joke only at our own peril.

(I'm more or less with Krugman on this. Still, there's nothing wrong with having some fun with, and laughing at, Republicans. They may or may not be crazier than ever, but, well, they're still crazy -- from Boehner and Steele to Bachmann and McConnell to Beck and Coulter to Gingrich, Kristol, and, of course, Dear Leader Rush. Yes, we need to take them seriously, as well as to prepare for their eventual resurgence, not least at a time of historic economic crisis, even with Obama in the White House and solid Democratic majorities in Congress, but we can't ignore all the great material they provide us day after day. And the tea parties, as phony as they are, fit right in.)

About those tea parties

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Andrew Sullivan is absolutely right about those Fox News-promoted right-wing mobfests known as "tea parties":

These are not tea-parties. They are tea-tantrums. And the adolescent, unserious hysteria is a function not of a movement regrouping and refinding itself. It's a function of a movement's intellectual collapse and a party's fast-accelerating nervous breakdown.

This from "a fiscal conservative who actually believed in those principles when the Republicans were in power." (Read his entire post -- it's an excellent attempt to figure out what the hell the "tea parties" are all about. He's "still befuddled.")

And Think Progress, in a similarly valuable post, is also right that these "tea parties" aren't grassroots events "rising up spontaneously":

Fox News isn't the only right-wing organization involved in building up these so-called "grassroots" events. The tea parties have been heavily backed by corporate lobbyists. The principle organizers of many of the local events are actually the lobbyist-run think tanks Americans for Prosperity, Freedom Works, and Newt Gingrich's American Solutions. The groups are heavily staffed and well funded, and are providing all the logistical and public relations work necessary for planning coast-to-coast protests.

The tea partiers and their cheerleaders would have us believe that what is happening now is as revolutionary as what happened way back when in Boston. Which is, of course, sheer nonsense. Today's tea parties are nothing more than contrived outlets for manufactured right-wing populist rage. To suggest otherwise, and to buy into the right-wing spin, on Fox and elsewhere, is to diminish the significance of the American Revolution and to sully the very purpose of America as an experiment in democratic self-rule and as a bulwark against tyranny.

Once again, as we see so often on the right, those supposedly fighting for America, these "patriots," are actually, unwittingly or not, working to undermine it.

Glenn Beck attacks Obama over immigration, sinks to another new low

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Another day, another level of crazy for Glenn Beck.

As C&L's David Neiwert reports, Beck, in response to President Obama's coming efforts to address the illegal immigration problem, put on a little show yesterday. Playing Obama, Beck doused a guest, who was supposed to be "the average American," in water, which was supposed to be gasoline, and lit a match.

Do I even need to explain what Beck was getting at? Basically, in supporting immigration reform, Obama wants to destroy America. It was yet more right-wing populist fearmongering from one of the worst perpetrators in the business.

As David points out, what Obama actually supports is not amnesty but, quoting the NYT:

[L]egislation that would bring illegal immigrants into the legal system by recognizing that they violated the law, and imposing fines and other penalties to fit the offense. The legislation would seek to prevent future illegal immigration by strengthening border enforcement and cracking down on employers who hire illegal immigrants, while creating a national system for verifying the legal immigration status of new workers.

That's pretty tough. There would be a path to citizenship for those already in the country, but there would also be an emphasis on preventing illegal immigration through heightened, and tightened, security. I realize that might not be enough for Beck, but it's not exactly the most "sweet" and "sensitive" approach to the problem.

No matter to Beck, though, the populist showman, for whom not getting it has never stopped him from espousing right-wing madness and pandering to the nativist bigotry of his audience. "And then he wonders why people think he's promoting a violent and paranoid right-wing worldview that is bereft of anything approaching reality."

There's no greater glennbeck than Glenn Beck himself.

Frank Rich on Obama's "Katrina moment"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Frank Rich, yesterday:

A CHARMING visit with Jay Leno won't fix it. A 90 percent tax on bankers' bonuses won't fix it. Firing Timothy Geithner won't fix it. Unless and until Barack Obama addresses the full depth of Americans' anger with his full arsenal of policy smarts and political gifts, his presidency and, worse, our economy will be paralyzed. It would be foolish to dismiss as hyperbole the stark warning delivered by Paulette Altmaier of Cupertino, Calif., in a letter to the editor published by The Times last week: "President Obama may not realize it yet, but his Katrina moment has arrived."

Point taken, but Ms. Altmaier's assessment of the current situation is hyperbole. And misrepresentation. Katrina was a different sort of crisis, a natural disaster that required swift and decisive action. Bush failed to provide any such action, and his failure came to define his presidency, alongside the Iraq War and Occupation -- but at least, looking back, it was pretty clear what needed to be done and what wasn't. As horrific as Katrina was, and who was not horrified, it was, relatively speaking, a fairly limited crisis, to take nothing away from the suffering of the people of New Orleans and surroundings. In contrast, what we're talking about here is a global economic crisis, a historic economic crisis, perhaps a Great Depression II, an existential crisis that is rocking the very foundations of our capitalist way of life at a time of paradigmatic economic change around the world.

And, at home, what we're talking about is mass populist anger, a far more challenging surge to contain than even the devastating floodwaters of the Gulf. "Six weeks ago I wrote in this space that the country's surge of populist rage could devour the president's best-laid plans," writes Rich, who is right that Obama and even more his team, notably Geithner and Summers, do not quite seem to grasp the enormity of that rage, nor the justification for it. I would rather not lump Obama in with Geithner and Summers, for I do think Obama understands, but there have been moments of inadequacy on his part, too, and, of course, the buck stops with him. (For more on this, see John Judis's piece "The Geithner Disaster" at TNR.)

What made Jon Stewart's takedown of Jim Cramer resonate was less his specific brief against CNBC's cheerleading for bad stocks than his larger indictment of the gaping economic inequality that defined the bubble. As Stewart said, there were "two markets" -- the long-term market that Americans earnestly thought would sustain their 401(k)'s, and the fast-moving, short-term "real market" in the back room where high-rolling insiders wagered "giant piles of money" and brought down everyone with them.

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As the nation's anger rose last week, the president took responsibility for what's happening on his watch -- more than he needed to, given the disaster he inherited. But in the credit mess, action must match words. To fall short would be to deliver us into the catastrophic hands of a Republican opposition whose only known economic program is to reject job-creating stimulus spending and root for Obama and, by extension, the country to fail. With all due deference to Ponzi schemers from Madoff to A.I.G., this would be the biggest outrage of them all.

The problem isn't so much Geithner and Summers (though both have long been part of the problem -- see here for my pre-confirmation take on the former) as it is the very system, the American capitalist system (and I am a capitalist, one who understands, though, that capitalism must be effectively regulated if it is to survive, and if it is to be beneficial to a free and democratic people), that allowed all this to happen for so long: "The 'dirty little secret,' Obama told Leno on Thursday, is that 'most of the stuff that got us into trouble was perfectly legal.'"

To succeed, to respond effectively to a massive global and historical crisis that is not of his own making and that did not begin on his watch, Obama must not just stimulate the economy and keep the banks afloat but delve into the very heart of the system, reforming it so as to protect it from itself.

And, with Republicans recklessly sniping at him with ideological extremism from behind their partisan barricades, he must do so at a time of massive populist rage directed against the system (and its two markets) and even more so against the abusers of the system. The think about populist rage, though, is that it is often indisciminate in terms of its focus. So far, the rage has not been directed at him personally, as he remains remarkably popular, but some of it has been directed at him indirectly, notably at Geithner and his economic team, and if things do not improve -- or, more accurately, if public perceptions of the state of things do not improve -- Obama may soon find himself to be one of the targets. Whether he deserve to be or not is another, and separate, matter. Populist rage is usually directed at the powers-that-be without much in the way of context or nuance, and, well, Obama is the power that is, or at least the most prominent one. At the moment, most of the rage is being directed at the likes of AIG for its bonuses, and rightly so, but Obama will be subjected to it as well if it is perceived that he is not doing enough, or, worse, if it is perceived that he and his team are part of the problem, real or perceived.

(Let me be clear about something: While I am generally critical of populism, I do not think that the rage has been misplaced here. Indeed, while populism can often take the form of a mob uprising, a raging of the masses without much in the way of intelligence (that is, when it's right-wing populism), it has often served the useful and necessary purpose of bringing down the corrupt and the unjust and stimulating long-term reform for the better. This, I think, is one of those times. What worries me, though, is not Jon Stewart, whom I love and who has become one of the country's leading spokesmen against corruption and injustice, but the more indiscriminate rage that has taken hold in some parts and that could ultimately be Obama's undoing. For more on this, see Walter Shapiro's piece "Long Shadow" at TNR.)

So is this Obama's "Katrina moment"? Again, no. The current crisis -- which, remember, Obama inherited -- is simply too complex to be reduced to a "Katrina" construct. Furthermore, Obama has already passed a sizable, if not nearly sizable enough, economic stimulus package over and against Republican opposition. While there is no doubt that there has been, and is, much room for improvement (notably with respect to Geithner's deeply flawed bank bailout plan (an effective plan would include temporary nationalization), while Obama and his team need to do a better job of showing they "get it" (which is more a communications effort than anything else), and while, as Rich puts it, there is a need for much greater transparency and accountability, Obama hasn't exactly been fiddling away his time and energy.

Bush failed his "Katrina moment" by failing to respond effectively to Hurricane Katrina. Obama's response to the economic crisis hasn't been perfect, to be sure, but he's no Bush.