In a recent Washington Post article titled “A Good Time to be a Conservative”; Mr. Kristol made a bold assumption, claiming the “center of gravity” within the Republican Party would shift farther to the right, propelled in that direction by a collection of conservative personalities from beyond the Beltway. Indicating a lack of faith in the G.O.P.’s elected leadership, Kristol says: “Even if Republicans pick up the House in 2010, the party's big ideas and themes for the 2012 presidential race will probably not emanate from Capitol Hill. The center of gravity, I suspect, will instead lie with individuals such as Palin and Huckabee and Gingrich, media personalities like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and activists at town halls and tea parties. Some will lament this -- but over the past year, as those voices have dominated, conservatism has done pretty well in the body politic, and Republicans have narrowed the gap with Democrats in test ballots.” Kristol’s logic is derived from two polls. First, the Gallup Poll of October 26, 2009 that puts the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as conservatives at 40 percent, and an earlier Rasmussen Poll indicating that the only 2012 Republican presidential prospects polling double digits are Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. When one looks inside the numbers, it would appear that there are more than a few flaws in Mr. Kristol’s math and intuitive reasoning.
The Gallup results show that the net increase in the percentage of people identifying as conservatives had taken place within that subset of the electorate classified as independents. Quoting Gallup: “Changes among political independents appear to be the main reason the percentage of conservatives has increased nationally over the past year: the 35% of independents describing their views as conservative in 2009 is up from 29% in 2008. By contrast, among Republicans and Democrats, the percentage who are "conservative" has increased by one point each.” In spite of the shift in independents identifying as conservatives, the actual percentage of voters who identify with the G.O.P., which is the defacto conservative party, has fallen to historical lows. The latest political identification polling results available on Pollster.com reveals that just 25 percent of those polled identify themselves as Republicans. That percentage improves when registered and likely voters are polled, but the G.O.P. still trails the Democrats here as well. To date, had independents firmly embraced the principles of the conservative movement generally or the G.O.P. in particular, the percentage of voters identifying as Republicans would show a marked increase and so far that is not the case. I would argue that the shift to the right among independent voters is far from solid and is conditional, being subject to a set of factors that will likely change by the time of the 2012 election. In fact an even newer Gallup Poll reveals just how transient independent political attitudes actually are. That poll: “Race for 2010 Remains Close; Democrats Recover Slight Lead”, which came out on December 14 states: “The current generic-ballot results are similar to those Gallup found in July and October of this year, and indicate that the Republican gain observed just after the Nov. 3 elections was not sustained. Shifts in candidate preference for Congress typically occur primarily among independents, whose "unanchored" status makes them much more vulnerable to short-term events in the political environment than are those who claim allegiance to either major party.” I would go beyond the latest Gallup findings to suggest that the number of independents identifying as conservatives will decrease proportionately to the degree to which the G.O.P. moves to the right, especially if the Republican Party finds its public image welded to the personalities of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin or the Tea Party crowd.
In his reliance on the results of the above cited Rasmussen Poll, Mr. Kristol is in effect betting the house on a collection of would be candidates that, in spite of polling in the double digits, leave much to be desired when it actually comes to getting elected. Kristol is one of Sarah Palin’s most passionate cheerleaders, but in suggesting that the future of the conservative movement might lie in the fortunes of Ms. Palin, he seems to be gambling on a horse not worth the wager. Mid-December poll results from both Pollster.com and Polling Report.com show Palin registering an unfavorable rating of 48 percent. An ABC poll of November 15th showed that 53 percent of respondents would not vote for Palin with 60 percent saying she was not qualified to be president. More damaging still is a CBS poll of November 15, which revealed that 62 percent of those Republicans polled felt that Palin lacked the ability to be an effective president. At the time of Palin’s resignation from elected office, Republican strategist Mike Murphy opined: “If the Sarah Palin we perceive today wins the nomination in 2012, the G.O.P. will lose. Most Americans don’t think Palin is ready to be President. The base loving you is not enough to get you elected.” Conservative columnist Michael Gerson, reflecting on Palin’s resignation said: “She really alienated women and the college educated on both coasts and that is not how you rebuild the Republican Party.” The reality is that the Republican Party cannot hope to win without the support of independent voters, whom Palin clearly alienates and whose ranks are, according to Pew Research, now at a seventy-year high. Recently, two Republican heavyweights: Haley Barbour, former Chairman of the RNC, and Congressman Eric Cantor (R-VA) both declined to endorse a 2012 Palin presidential bid when they appeared on MSNBC and Fox News.
In spite of the fact that Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have double-digit support among Republicans, none of them breaks a 40 percent favorability rating among voters generally, except Huckabee. However, Huckabee’s 40 percent approval rating was registered before Maurice Clemmons, an inmate pardoned by Huckabee, gunned down four police officers in late November. That said, we might see a decline in Huckabee’s overall standing in the polls. Poll numbers aside, in the 2008 Republican primaries, Huckabee was only able to win in the south and thus his viability as a national candidate is questionable. Furthermore, Huckabee’s past equivocation on the topic of evolution works to his detriment when it comes to appealing to that large segment of the population that believes in science as well as religion. Mitt Romney, as a result of his Mormon faith, had problems with the evangelical base of the G.O.P., which plays a crucial role in the early primary states of Iowa and South Carolina. Moreover, Romney may well run into formidable headwinds from the far right as a result of his relatively moderate approach to politics and policy positions. Newt Gingrich, who’s favorable ratings are the lowest, at 14 percent, has a closet full of skeletons of his own which led in 1998 to his stepping down as the Speaker of the House and his departure from Congress altogether. Needless to say these issues will surely be resurrected and they will be in the forefront of the debate in the event that Gingrich becomes a serious presidential contender.
It is in his rather absurd suggestion that the G.O.P.’s center of gravity might travel further to the right as a function of the influence of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or the Tea Party Movement, that Kristol, having slipped his moorings to reality, has embarked on what can only be considered a voyage of political fantasy. Neither Limbaugh nor Beck are particularly compelling personalities beyond the realm of their audience. Both traffic in the sensational, often blurring the lines between fact and fiction with their primary purpose being incendiary commentary rather than legitimate hard news analysis. The media watchdog, Media Matters for America has compiled fifty-three pages of citations detailing Limbaugh’s distortion of facts or their deliberate misrepresentation for political purposes. For Glenn Beck there are forty-two pages. The latest NBC/WSJ poll (June 2009), which I was able to find on Limbaugh’s popularity, showed that 50 percent of those responding viewed him in a negative light. A similar poll in September showed Glenn Beck registering a positive rating of just 25 percent. In spite of the fact that both Limbaugh and Beck have a committed following, accurately measuring the true size and composition of their respective audiences and the extent to which they actually reflect more than a thin slice of this country’s political spectrum is almost impossible. Paul Farhi of the Washington Post attempted to plumb the length and breadth of Limbaugh’s audience and therefore his influence, in a March 2009 article: “Limbaugh's Audience Size? It's Largely Up in the Air.” Relying on interviews with media industry sources, Farhi claims that Limbaugh’s audience fluctuates between 14 to 30 million, depending on the issues of the day. Quoting Michael Harrison of “Talkers Magazine”, Farhi puts Limbaugh’s average audience at 14.25 million listeners per week, which is just under 5 percent of the population. Glenn Beck’s audience is far smaller and his largest audience to date was roughly 3.4 million viewers on September 15, 2009, which amounts to just 1.1 percent of the population.
When it comes to the Tea Party Movement, it is equally difficult in coming to an agreement as to just how many people are involved here and to what extent they really reflect more than a microcosm of American political life. According to the conservative Americans for Tax Reform, a pro-Tea Party group, just 578,000 people participated in the 2009 April Tax Day Protests. Their website does not display figures for the July 4th protests nor does FreedomWorks.com or any other pro-Tea Party website that I came across. The largest number I remember seeing is in the neighborhood of 215,000 protestors. Regarding the September 12th Washington D.C. protest rally, Talking Points Memo described the turnout as follows: “FreedomWorks, the main organizers of the Tea Party event in Washington this past weekend, has dramatically lowered its estimate for the size of the crowd at the event from 1.5 million, a number the group now concedes was a mistake, to between 600,000 and 800,000 people -- though this is still substantially more than the tens of thousands that most mainstream media outlets have estimated, and which FreedomWorks wholeheartedly rejects.” Thus if we add up the total attendence at all three Tea Parties, using the higher estimates, we come up with a gross attendence of roughly 1.6 million or just one half of one percent of the population.
What the math reveals is that the actual number of people who either participate in Tea Parties or who listen to Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, presumably many do both, is a rather small percentage of the overall population, even considering that portion that would identify as conservative. That said, its a bit of a strectch to assume that such a statistically insignificant number of people is either enough to move the Republican Party further to the right or that it is likely to do so.
There is one final flaw in Kristol’s analysis and that is his ignoring the rising tide of moderates within the party that are opposing any suggestion that the G.O.P. needs to be purified of any moderate tendencies via litmus tests that even Ronald Reagan would fail, that political orthodoxy should be the face of the G.O.P. or that Republicans can only win elections when they embrace ultra conservative ideas. The now formidable array of moderates seeking to stem any drift to the far right encompasses a spectrum of Republican notables from sitting Senators to strategists and political commentators including: Olympia Snowe, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, Bob Inglis, Mickey Edwards, Christie Todd Whitman, Newt Gingrich, Tom Ridge, Colin Powell, David Frum, Andrew Sullivan, Kathleen Parker and a host of Republican strategists. Gingrich, appearing on Meet the Press (5/24/09) stated that the G.O.P. has to be “broad enough to incorporate divergent views and can’t be purged to the smallest conservative base.” Tom Ridge stated that the G.O.P. “needs to be less shrill and less condeming of those who don’t hew to a far right view.” Following the departure of Arlen Specter from the Republican Party, Olympia Snowe, in a New York Times editorial opined: “There is no plausible scenario under which Republicans can grow into a majority while shrinking our ideological confines and contiuing to retract into a regional party. Ideological purity is not the ticket back to the promised land of governing majorities.” At an April debate over the future of the G.O.P. Lindsey Graham made the following observation: “We are not losing blue states and shrinking as a party because we are not conservative enough. If we pursue a party that has no place for someone who agrees with me 70 percent of the time, that is based on an ideological purity test rather than a coalition test, then we are going to keep losing.” I could go on, but anyone who has been paying any attention to the civil war within the Republican Party knows that there are more than enough voices and intelligent arguments being made to more than call into question the logic and wisdom of people like Bill Kristol and their fanciful notions that the redemption of the G.O.P. lies in the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or the rank and file Tea Party participant. All one has to do is examine the results of the 2009 off-year elections and what is evident is that where Republicans won elections, in the gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, they did so by running moderate campaigns that played to the centrist voter. In contrast, the great and financially costly effort by the far right in trying to influence the congressional election in New York’s 23rd Electoral District resulted in a conservative failure with a Democrat capturing a seat held by the G.O.P. since as far back as the Civil War.
Over the course of his career, William Kristol is a man who has backed more political losers and also-rans than winners and it would be nothing less than disastrous for the Republican Party to heed his advice or put any stock in his predictions. Kristol worked for former Secretary of Education William Bennet, the voice of personal responsibility during the Reagan Administration, who subsequently lost much of his credibility when he admitted to losing over a million dollars in Las Vegas slot machines. He was Vice President Qualye’s Chief of Staff. Kristol managed the failed Senatorial campaign of Alan Keyes in 1988 and Keyes would go on to fail twice more in seeking a seat in the Senate and then two more times when running for president. Kristol championed the pardon of Scooter Libby and the nomination of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate, a decision that McCain’s staffers would later admit to be his single biggest mistake. But it is in an examination of Kristol’s unabashed cheerleading for the War in Iraq that his predictive abilities are revealed to be so totally lacking. It was Kristol who predicted that the removal of Saddam Hussein from power would unleash a chain reaction of democratic reform across the Middle East that to date has failed to materialize.
Bill Kristol represents that desperate sort of conservative that can’t abide the dynamics of political change wrought by the election of Barack Obama. Likewise, the relatively rapid decline in the influence of Neoconservatives since the 2004 election can’t bring him much joy either. To my mind, Bill Kristol falls into that category within the Conservative Movement that is firmly wedded to the notion that their orthodox ideology is the only one acceptable for America and that anything else is either politically irrelevant or treasonous. Kristol’s faulty logic gives rise to the notion that he is engaged more in wishful thinking than objective political analysis. His prediction as to future direction of the G.O.P. amounts to nothing more than a political “Hail Mary pass” in hoping beyond hope, that somehow or other the Republican Party can be moved to embrace the orthodoxy of the far right. In my opinion, having watched him over the past decade and read his articles, he seems to be increasingly assuming the role of a shill for ultra conservative ideas, becoming as a result less objective in his political analysis. Republicans would be well advised to part company with Mr. Kristol, least they find themselves facing a future of continued electoral defeat and a decline in the party’s appeal among that now indispensable factor in American politics, the unaligned independent voter.
Steven J. Gulitti
New York City
12/19/2009
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Mr. Limbaugh’s Nazi Obsession
It is a cardinal rule in American political discourse that one refrain from associating an opponent or an opposing position with Adolph Hitler or the Nazis. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) discovered this all too well when he found himself on the floor of the Senate, apologizing for having associated American military police personnel at Abu Ghraib with Nazi concentration camp guards. That said; it makes for a rather insightful discussion when we stop to analyze several of Rush Limbaugh’s recent insinuations that the present administration of Barack Obama resembles the regime of Adolph Hitler.
Back in August, at the height of the health care town hall follies, Mr. Limbaugh attempted to theoretically tie the Obama administration to that of Adolph Hitler by pointing out that Hitler and the Nazis opposed big business, cigarette smoking, Jewish Capitalism and environmental degradation. Limbaugh’s grasp of the Nazi platform is largely accurate. The Nazi 25 Point Program of 1920 called for the nationalization of all corporations, profit sharing by large industries, a communalization of department stores and, where necessary, the seizure of land without compensation for the good of the community. German doctors were the first to link tobacco consumption with lung cancer and the Nazi regime instituted the world’s first government backed anti-smoking campaign. By the 1930s, Germany had the most powerful conservation program in the world. My problem with Mr. Limbaugh lies in his ipso facto reasoning that reaches back in history to elements of a particular regime and suggests that they are in some way organically linked to the present. Beyond this elementary appreciation for Nazi economic and social policy, Mr. Limbaugh has strayed far from reality in his assertion that Hitler affected a reduction in chronic unemployment by a policy of mass arrest and internment at the Dachau concentration camp. Limbaugh has gone so far as to suggest that Nancy Pelosi has advocated the arrest of those who refuse to purchase insurance under a reformed health care system and have the arrested interned in prisons, which would thereby reduce the level of unemployment.
In a July 2009 interview with Greta Van Susteren, of Fox News, Limbaugh boasted of his “refusal to go to college” as if this were somehow a badge of honor. Perhaps it is this lack of a formal education that lies at the root of his constant misapplication of history as a means of explaining present day politics. With regard to government efforts to stabilize the economy, Limbaugh has wrongly conflated sound Keynesian measures with all-encompassing state control in a centralized economy. Outside of a relative handful of libertarian economists, you would be hard put to find any reputable economic thinker today who does not agree with the fact that government action a year ago prevented the world from sliding into another depression. On the topic of health care it is impossible to deny that the system here is not broken and that the market has failed to adequately deliver affordable care at a reasonable cost to the majority of Americans. Would Mr. Limbaugh and his fellow travelers have preferred a collapse of the banking system and Detroit along with it so as to test conservative economic theories in real life? The mere fact that the federal government has acted to shore up the financial system and the auto industry does not equate with a centralized program of nationalizing all industry nor is it a harbinger of some economy-wide profit sharing scheme. Most educated individuals are sophisticated enough to see this so my question is, why can’t Mr. Limbaugh? Does the fact that the Nazis recognized the dangers of smoking do anything to undermine the now more than established fact that tobacco consumption is unhealthy? With regard to Nazi environmental policy, a recently published book: How Green Were the Nazis? Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich, points out that the environmental movement’s popularity pre-dated the Nazi regime and many of the policies enacted under Hitler would have come about anyway.
It is in his contention that the Nazis reduced unemployment via a policy of mass arrest and internment that Mr. Limbaugh reveals just how little he actually knows about Nazi policies aimed at reducing unemployment in pre-war Germany. As a college senior, I undertook a yearlong study of German labor policy from 1876 to 1976 and over the course of this project and all of the material examined in the course of a year, I never once came across any evidence that mass arrest and internment were a major component of pre-war German labor policy. During the course of the three-hour oral examination that I took at the conclusion of this study, my supervising professor never once interrupted me to point out that arrest and internment were an essential element in reducing unemployment in Nazi Germany. Rather than through mass arrests, unemployment was reduced by public works and conservation corps projects, paid employment within the Nazi Party, the subtraction of women from the labor force via family building and marriage incentives, the recruitment of one million men into the military and the economic disenfranchisement of Jews, Communists, Socialists and Pacifists and their subsequent classification as being no longer in the work force. While many in this last category did in fact find themselves behind bars that was never the main element in pre-war Nazi labor policy. A concise review of this subject can be found at Nazi Economics: http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/nazi.htm.
It is one thing for Mr. Limbaugh to try to spin historical facts upon the present policies of the Obama administration and thereby attempt to force fit the past into the present. It is an altogether different matter when Mr. Limbaugh misrepresents one narrow element of the Nazi regime as having been it’s main policy tool for reducing unemployment and then, beyond that, to suggest that Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi actually intend to enforce adherence to a reformed health care program by way of mass arrest, which would have the corollary benefit of reducing unemployment. Such a misrepresentation of history goes beyond the pale of a polite and informed disagreement and crosses over into the realm of fraudulent misinterpretation. One can only wonder if Mr. Limbaugh’s actual intent is the undermining a legitimately elected president who, for all of his missteps, is still grappling with the worst economic environment in eighty years. If Mr. Limbaugh has a problem with Barack Obama’s approach to dealing with this nation’s present predicament then let him endeavor to confine his arguments to the realm of established facts. It would benefit Mr. Limbaugh to leave the intellectual flights of fancy and the fantasizing about Hitler and the Nazis to the denizens who inhabit the netherworld of the far right blogosphere. On the other hand if Rush Limbaugh sees his future in reinterpreting history to the point of corrupting facts beyond recognition, then so be it. It will be his reputation that will suffer far greater damage than it already has. Mr. Limbaugh’s content free cackle about Communism, Socialism, Fascism and his conflating of these three ideologies to the point where one can only wonder if he really understands the difference between them in the first place, adds nothing to the national political debate. From what I can observe, the only discernible positive that emanates from Mr. Limbaugh’s commentary is that it further burnishes his image as America’s national buffoon.
Steven J. Gulitti
New York City
28 November 2009
Back in August, at the height of the health care town hall follies, Mr. Limbaugh attempted to theoretically tie the Obama administration to that of Adolph Hitler by pointing out that Hitler and the Nazis opposed big business, cigarette smoking, Jewish Capitalism and environmental degradation. Limbaugh’s grasp of the Nazi platform is largely accurate. The Nazi 25 Point Program of 1920 called for the nationalization of all corporations, profit sharing by large industries, a communalization of department stores and, where necessary, the seizure of land without compensation for the good of the community. German doctors were the first to link tobacco consumption with lung cancer and the Nazi regime instituted the world’s first government backed anti-smoking campaign. By the 1930s, Germany had the most powerful conservation program in the world. My problem with Mr. Limbaugh lies in his ipso facto reasoning that reaches back in history to elements of a particular regime and suggests that they are in some way organically linked to the present. Beyond this elementary appreciation for Nazi economic and social policy, Mr. Limbaugh has strayed far from reality in his assertion that Hitler affected a reduction in chronic unemployment by a policy of mass arrest and internment at the Dachau concentration camp. Limbaugh has gone so far as to suggest that Nancy Pelosi has advocated the arrest of those who refuse to purchase insurance under a reformed health care system and have the arrested interned in prisons, which would thereby reduce the level of unemployment.
In a July 2009 interview with Greta Van Susteren, of Fox News, Limbaugh boasted of his “refusal to go to college” as if this were somehow a badge of honor. Perhaps it is this lack of a formal education that lies at the root of his constant misapplication of history as a means of explaining present day politics. With regard to government efforts to stabilize the economy, Limbaugh has wrongly conflated sound Keynesian measures with all-encompassing state control in a centralized economy. Outside of a relative handful of libertarian economists, you would be hard put to find any reputable economic thinker today who does not agree with the fact that government action a year ago prevented the world from sliding into another depression. On the topic of health care it is impossible to deny that the system here is not broken and that the market has failed to adequately deliver affordable care at a reasonable cost to the majority of Americans. Would Mr. Limbaugh and his fellow travelers have preferred a collapse of the banking system and Detroit along with it so as to test conservative economic theories in real life? The mere fact that the federal government has acted to shore up the financial system and the auto industry does not equate with a centralized program of nationalizing all industry nor is it a harbinger of some economy-wide profit sharing scheme. Most educated individuals are sophisticated enough to see this so my question is, why can’t Mr. Limbaugh? Does the fact that the Nazis recognized the dangers of smoking do anything to undermine the now more than established fact that tobacco consumption is unhealthy? With regard to Nazi environmental policy, a recently published book: How Green Were the Nazis? Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich, points out that the environmental movement’s popularity pre-dated the Nazi regime and many of the policies enacted under Hitler would have come about anyway.
It is in his contention that the Nazis reduced unemployment via a policy of mass arrest and internment that Mr. Limbaugh reveals just how little he actually knows about Nazi policies aimed at reducing unemployment in pre-war Germany. As a college senior, I undertook a yearlong study of German labor policy from 1876 to 1976 and over the course of this project and all of the material examined in the course of a year, I never once came across any evidence that mass arrest and internment were a major component of pre-war German labor policy. During the course of the three-hour oral examination that I took at the conclusion of this study, my supervising professor never once interrupted me to point out that arrest and internment were an essential element in reducing unemployment in Nazi Germany. Rather than through mass arrests, unemployment was reduced by public works and conservation corps projects, paid employment within the Nazi Party, the subtraction of women from the labor force via family building and marriage incentives, the recruitment of one million men into the military and the economic disenfranchisement of Jews, Communists, Socialists and Pacifists and their subsequent classification as being no longer in the work force. While many in this last category did in fact find themselves behind bars that was never the main element in pre-war Nazi labor policy. A concise review of this subject can be found at Nazi Economics: http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/nazi.htm.
It is one thing for Mr. Limbaugh to try to spin historical facts upon the present policies of the Obama administration and thereby attempt to force fit the past into the present. It is an altogether different matter when Mr. Limbaugh misrepresents one narrow element of the Nazi regime as having been it’s main policy tool for reducing unemployment and then, beyond that, to suggest that Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi actually intend to enforce adherence to a reformed health care program by way of mass arrest, which would have the corollary benefit of reducing unemployment. Such a misrepresentation of history goes beyond the pale of a polite and informed disagreement and crosses over into the realm of fraudulent misinterpretation. One can only wonder if Mr. Limbaugh’s actual intent is the undermining a legitimately elected president who, for all of his missteps, is still grappling with the worst economic environment in eighty years. If Mr. Limbaugh has a problem with Barack Obama’s approach to dealing with this nation’s present predicament then let him endeavor to confine his arguments to the realm of established facts. It would benefit Mr. Limbaugh to leave the intellectual flights of fancy and the fantasizing about Hitler and the Nazis to the denizens who inhabit the netherworld of the far right blogosphere. On the other hand if Rush Limbaugh sees his future in reinterpreting history to the point of corrupting facts beyond recognition, then so be it. It will be his reputation that will suffer far greater damage than it already has. Mr. Limbaugh’s content free cackle about Communism, Socialism, Fascism and his conflating of these three ideologies to the point where one can only wonder if he really understands the difference between them in the first place, adds nothing to the national political debate. From what I can observe, the only discernible positive that emanates from Mr. Limbaugh’s commentary is that it further burnishes his image as America’s national buffoon.
Steven J. Gulitti
New York City
28 November 2009
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Discerning the Meaning of the 2009 Elections
It will be weeks, if not months, before the analysis of 2009’s off year election results fade from the forefront of political commentary, particularly among conservatives. While the White House spin machine is content with downplaying the results as purely a function of local issues, conservatives have attempted to paint these contests as a referendum on the Obama Administration, or more bizarrely, the next step in “the American people taking back their country”. Most seasoned political observers know that off year, special and mid-term elections are characterized by low voter turnout and that party activists play a much greater role in determining the outcome. Viewed through that prism, the 2009 contests fall clearly into the pattern of typical off year elections. Thus, the primary question is this: If the 2009 elections exhibit all of the characteristics of other off year elections, how can they logically be seen as a referendum on the Obama presidency or the opening volley in some great populist uprising. After all, if the American people are so disgusted with the Obama Administration, would the rising chorus of conservative opposition not propel them to action and would we not observe a significant up tick in voter turnout?
Analyzing the Gubernatorial races first, it is impossible to deny that local issues dominated. Democratic strategist Steve McMahon pointed out that property taxes and the increase in insurance rates, both of which are state level issues, are a big part of why Jon Corzine was not re-elected. While not directly involved, scandals played a role in Corzine’s demise as well, culminating in last summer’s roundup of a cast of characters from politicians to rabbis. Corzine’s affiliation with the investment firm Goldman Sachs and his aloof political style did nothing to endear him to the people of New Jersey. As one NPR reporter put it: “Corzine never mastered the art of retail politics.” Political columnist A.P. Stoddard pointed on November the 3rd that if Corzine lost it would not be Barack Obama’s fault as in New Jersey; Obama had an approval rating in the vicinity of sixty percent in contrast to Corzine’s thirty nine percent. In the end, Corzine wound up losing by four percentage points to Chris Christie.
In Virginia, the issues that Republican Bob McDonnell focused on were improving the state’s economy, job creation and solving longstanding statewide transportation problems. Of these, only job creation could conceivably be linked back to the Obama Administration. While many voters are skeptical as to just how many jobs the Administration’s stimulus has created, most people still believe that Obama inherited a difficult situation, the blame for which cannot be laid at the door of his White House. In contrast to McDonnell, the Democratic challenger, Creigh Deeds was a relative unknown who struggled with name recognition till the very end.
What is notable about both races is that the Republican winners eschewed the currently fashionable conservative think tank groupthink, which prescribes a political philosophy that hews to the hard right. As you will recall, following the defeat in the 2008 election cycle, most of the outspoken conservative commentators and theorists claimed that when the G.O.P. moved to the center it lost elections and that future electoral victory could only come by moving further to the right, the further, the better. Neither of the winners in New Jersey or Virginia dwelled on aspects of the “Culture Wars” nor did they resort to the now hackneyed rant about “a slide toward European Socialism.” Moreover, both Christie and McDonnell ran upbeat, politically moderate campaigns, devoid of the shrill histrionics that have come to dominate rightwing talk radio or the “political commentators” currently practicing their craft on Fox News. In contrast both Corzine and Deeds ran very negative campaigns to which the voting public now turns an increasingly deaf ear.
Another big issue that can’t be ignored is voter turnout. Political writer Paul Loeb summarizes voter turnout as follows: “In exit polls, Virginia voters under 30 dropped from 21% of the 2008 electorate to 10% this year and from 17% to 9% in New Jersey. Minority voting saw a similar decline. In both states, over half the Obama voters of a year ago simply stayed home, more than a million people in both Virginia and New Jersey. With this collapse of the Democratic base, even relatively modest Republican turnout could carry the day, and did.” That said if this off year election is characterized by such low turn out levels, how could conservatives make an argument that there is such a dramatic rejection of the Obama agenda? Were the races in New Jersey and Virginia truly a referendum on Obama? If exit polls are any indication, they apparently were not. Edison Research provided a view as to whether or not Obama was a factor in people’s decision to vote by way of these exit poll results:
New Jersey:
Support for Obama - 19%
Oppose Obama - 20%
Obama not a factor - 60%
Virginia:
Support for Obama - 18%
Oppose Obama - 24%
Obama not a factor - 55%
Thus in both races over 70% of those who answered exit polls said that Barack Obama did not play a role in their getting out to vote in what were essentially local elections. So much for the idea that the results of this past election constitute a rejection of Barack Obama, whose approval ratings have only moved up since the August Town Hall Follies. Meanwhile, the G.O.P. is polling its lowest approval rating since polling began and only twenty percent of Americans identify with the Republican Party.
Let’s now turn to New York’s 23rd Election District, where a Republican has held the Congressional seat since 1871. It is in the 23rd, a district that has all of the demographics that favor Republicans, that the newly energized national Conservative movement chose to show just how effective it can be in both defeating a Democrat, upending a moderate Republican and turning the tide on Barack Obama. Prior to the election the district was besieged with conservatives from all over the country including volunteers from prominent conservative grass roots organizations like, The National Organization for Marriage, FreedomWorks, of Tea Party fame, and the Club For Growth, which spent one million dollars backing the conservative candidate Doug Hoffman. Such conservative luminaries like Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, Dick Armey, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, who predicted a conservative victory, tried in vain to nationalize the election. The cause of Mr. Hoffman was championed by both the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board and by the NeoConservative organ, the Weekly Standard. In the face of this unprecedented conservative effort, Bill Owens won by endorsing the Obama Agenda, in an economically depressed region where unemployment has been north of ten percent for some time. This is the second time since the election of Barack Obama, that a Democrat endorsing Obama’s agenda has beaten a Republican with national conservative support in a district that demographically favored the G.O.P. The other instance is the special election for Kirsten Gillibrand’s vacated Congressional seat earlier this year.
What the outcome of the election in New York’s 23rd Congressional District shows is that beyond the world of right wing talk shows, the blogosphere, tea parties and grass roots activism, the appeal of the radical right may be much more limited than had been previously assumed. Could it be that the “August Town Hall Follies” with their tenor of rejection, vitriol and political dramatics have convinced few that conservatives have anything meaningful to offer an electorate that is essentially moderate, but that has been trending to the left over the previous two election cycles? It certainly leaves one to wonder just how effective Sarah Palin can be as a national political figure, seeing as she has yet to have any significant outcome on any race in which she has been involved. After all, isn’t she the darling of the base, the one individual that can really turn out a crowd?
Don’t get me wrong; there is a wake up call for the Democrats in the results of the 2009 elections and in 2010 there is no guarantee that they won’t lose more seats, the incumbent party usually does. If it happened to Ronald Reagan, it can certainly happen to Barack Obama. Obama has clearly lost support among independents and people are rightly concerned about the upward growth in federal spending. At the same time, Americans know that this is no ordinary time and that the situation we currently find ourselves in is not the work of the Obama Administration. But those jumping to the conclusion that 2009 is all that meaningful should heed the words of Purdue University Professor of Political Science, Bert Rockman: “I see no particular harbingers for 2010. While people are deeply unhappy about current conditions, they are also keenly suspicious of Republicans.” But the bigger takeaway from all of this is that as far as 2009 is concerned, rumors of Barack Obama’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. Based on the facts cited above, claims that a great anti-Obama populist revolution is underway cannot be substantiated. More to the point, the great citizen’s revolt to “take back their country” seems only to be alive and well in the delusional fantasyland of tea parties, birthers and far right conservatives who can’t seem to abide a climate of much needed political change.
Steven J. Gulitti
New York City
11/6/2009
Analyzing the Gubernatorial races first, it is impossible to deny that local issues dominated. Democratic strategist Steve McMahon pointed out that property taxes and the increase in insurance rates, both of which are state level issues, are a big part of why Jon Corzine was not re-elected. While not directly involved, scandals played a role in Corzine’s demise as well, culminating in last summer’s roundup of a cast of characters from politicians to rabbis. Corzine’s affiliation with the investment firm Goldman Sachs and his aloof political style did nothing to endear him to the people of New Jersey. As one NPR reporter put it: “Corzine never mastered the art of retail politics.” Political columnist A.P. Stoddard pointed on November the 3rd that if Corzine lost it would not be Barack Obama’s fault as in New Jersey; Obama had an approval rating in the vicinity of sixty percent in contrast to Corzine’s thirty nine percent. In the end, Corzine wound up losing by four percentage points to Chris Christie.
In Virginia, the issues that Republican Bob McDonnell focused on were improving the state’s economy, job creation and solving longstanding statewide transportation problems. Of these, only job creation could conceivably be linked back to the Obama Administration. While many voters are skeptical as to just how many jobs the Administration’s stimulus has created, most people still believe that Obama inherited a difficult situation, the blame for which cannot be laid at the door of his White House. In contrast to McDonnell, the Democratic challenger, Creigh Deeds was a relative unknown who struggled with name recognition till the very end.
What is notable about both races is that the Republican winners eschewed the currently fashionable conservative think tank groupthink, which prescribes a political philosophy that hews to the hard right. As you will recall, following the defeat in the 2008 election cycle, most of the outspoken conservative commentators and theorists claimed that when the G.O.P. moved to the center it lost elections and that future electoral victory could only come by moving further to the right, the further, the better. Neither of the winners in New Jersey or Virginia dwelled on aspects of the “Culture Wars” nor did they resort to the now hackneyed rant about “a slide toward European Socialism.” Moreover, both Christie and McDonnell ran upbeat, politically moderate campaigns, devoid of the shrill histrionics that have come to dominate rightwing talk radio or the “political commentators” currently practicing their craft on Fox News. In contrast both Corzine and Deeds ran very negative campaigns to which the voting public now turns an increasingly deaf ear.
Another big issue that can’t be ignored is voter turnout. Political writer Paul Loeb summarizes voter turnout as follows: “In exit polls, Virginia voters under 30 dropped from 21% of the 2008 electorate to 10% this year and from 17% to 9% in New Jersey. Minority voting saw a similar decline. In both states, over half the Obama voters of a year ago simply stayed home, more than a million people in both Virginia and New Jersey. With this collapse of the Democratic base, even relatively modest Republican turnout could carry the day, and did.” That said if this off year election is characterized by such low turn out levels, how could conservatives make an argument that there is such a dramatic rejection of the Obama agenda? Were the races in New Jersey and Virginia truly a referendum on Obama? If exit polls are any indication, they apparently were not. Edison Research provided a view as to whether or not Obama was a factor in people’s decision to vote by way of these exit poll results:
New Jersey:
Support for Obama - 19%
Oppose Obama - 20%
Obama not a factor - 60%
Virginia:
Support for Obama - 18%
Oppose Obama - 24%
Obama not a factor - 55%
Thus in both races over 70% of those who answered exit polls said that Barack Obama did not play a role in their getting out to vote in what were essentially local elections. So much for the idea that the results of this past election constitute a rejection of Barack Obama, whose approval ratings have only moved up since the August Town Hall Follies. Meanwhile, the G.O.P. is polling its lowest approval rating since polling began and only twenty percent of Americans identify with the Republican Party.
Let’s now turn to New York’s 23rd Election District, where a Republican has held the Congressional seat since 1871. It is in the 23rd, a district that has all of the demographics that favor Republicans, that the newly energized national Conservative movement chose to show just how effective it can be in both defeating a Democrat, upending a moderate Republican and turning the tide on Barack Obama. Prior to the election the district was besieged with conservatives from all over the country including volunteers from prominent conservative grass roots organizations like, The National Organization for Marriage, FreedomWorks, of Tea Party fame, and the Club For Growth, which spent one million dollars backing the conservative candidate Doug Hoffman. Such conservative luminaries like Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, Dick Armey, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, who predicted a conservative victory, tried in vain to nationalize the election. The cause of Mr. Hoffman was championed by both the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board and by the NeoConservative organ, the Weekly Standard. In the face of this unprecedented conservative effort, Bill Owens won by endorsing the Obama Agenda, in an economically depressed region where unemployment has been north of ten percent for some time. This is the second time since the election of Barack Obama, that a Democrat endorsing Obama’s agenda has beaten a Republican with national conservative support in a district that demographically favored the G.O.P. The other instance is the special election for Kirsten Gillibrand’s vacated Congressional seat earlier this year.
What the outcome of the election in New York’s 23rd Congressional District shows is that beyond the world of right wing talk shows, the blogosphere, tea parties and grass roots activism, the appeal of the radical right may be much more limited than had been previously assumed. Could it be that the “August Town Hall Follies” with their tenor of rejection, vitriol and political dramatics have convinced few that conservatives have anything meaningful to offer an electorate that is essentially moderate, but that has been trending to the left over the previous two election cycles? It certainly leaves one to wonder just how effective Sarah Palin can be as a national political figure, seeing as she has yet to have any significant outcome on any race in which she has been involved. After all, isn’t she the darling of the base, the one individual that can really turn out a crowd?
Don’t get me wrong; there is a wake up call for the Democrats in the results of the 2009 elections and in 2010 there is no guarantee that they won’t lose more seats, the incumbent party usually does. If it happened to Ronald Reagan, it can certainly happen to Barack Obama. Obama has clearly lost support among independents and people are rightly concerned about the upward growth in federal spending. At the same time, Americans know that this is no ordinary time and that the situation we currently find ourselves in is not the work of the Obama Administration. But those jumping to the conclusion that 2009 is all that meaningful should heed the words of Purdue University Professor of Political Science, Bert Rockman: “I see no particular harbingers for 2010. While people are deeply unhappy about current conditions, they are also keenly suspicious of Republicans.” But the bigger takeaway from all of this is that as far as 2009 is concerned, rumors of Barack Obama’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. Based on the facts cited above, claims that a great anti-Obama populist revolution is underway cannot be substantiated. More to the point, the great citizen’s revolt to “take back their country” seems only to be alive and well in the delusional fantasyland of tea parties, birthers and far right conservatives who can’t seem to abide a climate of much needed political change.
Steven J. Gulitti
New York City
11/6/2009
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Barack Obama, Islamic Radicalism and the Issue of America’s Vulnerability
Try as they will, Conservatives have not really been able to make a good argument that Obama, by moving away from the failed foreign policies of the Bush Administration, has in reality made America less safe. Instead they have responded with a series of knee jerk reactions aimed at the obstruction and rejection of anything and everything that Obama has either done or proposed. Conservatives have fallen back on the now hackneyed idea that they alone are the ones who can keep America safe and that the Democrats in general and liberals in particular will, or deliberately want to, weaken America. In his last book “A Time to Fight” James Webb, decorated Vietnam veteran; former Reagan era SECNAV; Republican turned Democrat; and now Senator from Virginia, devoted an entire chapter to explaining how such an argument by Republicans was no longer tenable or one that they can legitimately promote. Obama has in reality kept in place much of the prior Administration’s policies and procedures that are embodied in the Patriot Act, the wiretapping law and the continued operation of Guantanamo. To date the Obama Administration has recaptured an American merchant ship from Somali Pirates and, in concert with federal and local authorities, uncovered a possible terror ring based in New York and Denver.
Anyone who has followed closely the events surrounding the War in Iraq knows that it is not, and was not, the central front in the Global War on Terror (GWOT). Rather, it is the trans Afghanistan-Pakistan border where the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks are and it is here that they continue to operate putting together attacks on London, Madrid, etc. It is from this region that they continue to attack our troops in Afghanistan and beyond that have destabilized large parts of Pakistan. Thus the point has already been proven. The central front in the G.W.O.T. is where the enemy is and not where Bush, Cheney, Coulter, Limbaugh, Malkin, O’Reilly or any other Conservative defines it to be. The ironic thing is that Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan was the only brilliant move of his eight years in office. He then went on to drop the ball by invading Iraq and leaving the enemy alone, allowing Al Qaeda to regroup and become as dangerous as they were on 9/10/01. There have been volumes written to the point that the invasion of Iraq did nothing to make America safer. The conclusion of the 9/11 Commission Report states that Iraq had played no part in the attacks of 9/11 and Bush himself would later admit so publicly and on national television. Seeing as it is generally agreed that Iraq was never a factor in the 9/11 attacks, and that Al Qaeda remains open for business on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, there is not much more to say in disproving Conservative claims that the actions of the present Administration, as currently carried out in Iraq, will necessarily jeopardize American security interests. If America is attacked by a resurgent Al Qaeda would that be the fault of the Obama Administration or a result of George Bush’s failure to consolidate his initial victory in Afghanistan? Had we spent 800 billion dollars in Afghanistan instead of Iraq what threat if any would we now face? While it is true that Obama has taken ownership of the trans AFPAK conflict, its also true that he inherited from the Bush Administration a set of circumstances there, which are fraught with difficult and dangerous choices, none of which are clear-cut or that guarantee American success.
Many Conservatives will go to the grave insisting that invading Iraq was the right thing to do because they fail to see that their ideas as to what makes America either safe or a great nation may not in fact be always and everywhere valid. There are those on the right who continue to try to make the case that we could have eventually won in Vietnam because we never lost a major combat action against the Communists. They will insist on this very narrow historical fact while at the same time being blind to, or ignoring the reality that Communism in Indochina, at that time, was a vehicle for the achievement of nationalist aims. In their myopic focus on combat capabilities they will continue to ignore the fact that successive South Vietnamese governments were too corrupt to act as a foundation for democracy. They will insist that “American Exceptionalism” would triumph over a people that first took up arms against a foreign invader a thousand years before William the Conqueror left Normandy to invade England in 1066.
If America is attacked again, it won’t automatically be the fault of the Barack Obama. What if the attacker was motivated to strike because of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo or the loss of a family member during the occupation of Iraq? What if that attacker was moved to action as a result of the policies of the Bush Administration rather than Barack Obama’s decision to reduce troop levels in Iraq? Would that attack be attributed to the current administration or the last? Conservatives have made a big deal about saying that during the Bush years we were not attacked again, but as Richard Wolfe of Newsweek pointed out, terror attacks skyrocketed worldwide after we invaded Iraq. What about those American service personnel that were killed or wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan at the hands of those motivated to action by the invasion of Iraq, don’t they count as Americans that have been attacked? More to the point, this country was attacked when the Republicans controlled the Presidency, Congress, and the majority of statehouses. As David Sanger points out in his latest book, “The Inheritance”: “The plan for dealing with al Qaeda had been sitting on Condoleezza Rice’s desk on the morning of September 11, waiting for discussion.” In the final analysis it is almost impossible for Conservatives to make the argument that their policies have made us safer seeing as, according to the Center for International and Strategic Studies, the number of people recruited into Islamic terror organizations soared exponentially after the invasion of Iraq thereby dramatically increasing the number of our potential enemies. Conservatives like Ann Coulter would claim that Bush created “a flytrap for Islamic crazies in Iraq”, whereby they could be dispatched with by American forces. It would be more accurate to say that we created a trap of our own within which our troops were needlessly put in harms way for the sake of some misconceived NeoConservative pipe dream. Is it cheaper for a radicalized Muslim to scrape together the cost of a one way ticket to the United States, procure a passport and visa and then forage about this country in search of a terror cell or is it economically and in practical terms more effective to come up with bus fare to Syria and then walk across the border and join in an ongoing insurgency where one could even be paid to carry out attacks against Americans?
We were susceptible to an attack on 9/11 because, among other things, we never thought this sort of thing could happen. We became infinitely safer just by paying attention to security threats thereafter. If we get hit again it may very well be the case that we did so because we did not take the time and spend the money to “harden” critical strategic components of our infrastructure like rail systems, water and power supplies, ports and most importantly chemical plants. Have the failed policies of the Bush era created an opportunity for someone radicalized and now prone to action as a result of those policies to actually carry out an attack on America? If, in the words of Homeland Security expert Stephen Flynn, had we spent billions on infrastructure defense instead of wasting those resources in the Iraq misadventure, we would be infinitely safer. Who then would we legitimately blame for another attack on America, Barack Obama or George Bush and the NeoConservative claque that led us into the Iraq misadventure in the first place?
Steven J. Gulitti
Iron Workers Local # 697
New York City
10/17/2009
Anyone who has followed closely the events surrounding the War in Iraq knows that it is not, and was not, the central front in the Global War on Terror (GWOT). Rather, it is the trans Afghanistan-Pakistan border where the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks are and it is here that they continue to operate putting together attacks on London, Madrid, etc. It is from this region that they continue to attack our troops in Afghanistan and beyond that have destabilized large parts of Pakistan. Thus the point has already been proven. The central front in the G.W.O.T. is where the enemy is and not where Bush, Cheney, Coulter, Limbaugh, Malkin, O’Reilly or any other Conservative defines it to be. The ironic thing is that Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan was the only brilliant move of his eight years in office. He then went on to drop the ball by invading Iraq and leaving the enemy alone, allowing Al Qaeda to regroup and become as dangerous as they were on 9/10/01. There have been volumes written to the point that the invasion of Iraq did nothing to make America safer. The conclusion of the 9/11 Commission Report states that Iraq had played no part in the attacks of 9/11 and Bush himself would later admit so publicly and on national television. Seeing as it is generally agreed that Iraq was never a factor in the 9/11 attacks, and that Al Qaeda remains open for business on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, there is not much more to say in disproving Conservative claims that the actions of the present Administration, as currently carried out in Iraq, will necessarily jeopardize American security interests. If America is attacked by a resurgent Al Qaeda would that be the fault of the Obama Administration or a result of George Bush’s failure to consolidate his initial victory in Afghanistan? Had we spent 800 billion dollars in Afghanistan instead of Iraq what threat if any would we now face? While it is true that Obama has taken ownership of the trans AFPAK conflict, its also true that he inherited from the Bush Administration a set of circumstances there, which are fraught with difficult and dangerous choices, none of which are clear-cut or that guarantee American success.
Many Conservatives will go to the grave insisting that invading Iraq was the right thing to do because they fail to see that their ideas as to what makes America either safe or a great nation may not in fact be always and everywhere valid. There are those on the right who continue to try to make the case that we could have eventually won in Vietnam because we never lost a major combat action against the Communists. They will insist on this very narrow historical fact while at the same time being blind to, or ignoring the reality that Communism in Indochina, at that time, was a vehicle for the achievement of nationalist aims. In their myopic focus on combat capabilities they will continue to ignore the fact that successive South Vietnamese governments were too corrupt to act as a foundation for democracy. They will insist that “American Exceptionalism” would triumph over a people that first took up arms against a foreign invader a thousand years before William the Conqueror left Normandy to invade England in 1066.
If America is attacked again, it won’t automatically be the fault of the Barack Obama. What if the attacker was motivated to strike because of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo or the loss of a family member during the occupation of Iraq? What if that attacker was moved to action as a result of the policies of the Bush Administration rather than Barack Obama’s decision to reduce troop levels in Iraq? Would that attack be attributed to the current administration or the last? Conservatives have made a big deal about saying that during the Bush years we were not attacked again, but as Richard Wolfe of Newsweek pointed out, terror attacks skyrocketed worldwide after we invaded Iraq. What about those American service personnel that were killed or wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan at the hands of those motivated to action by the invasion of Iraq, don’t they count as Americans that have been attacked? More to the point, this country was attacked when the Republicans controlled the Presidency, Congress, and the majority of statehouses. As David Sanger points out in his latest book, “The Inheritance”: “The plan for dealing with al Qaeda had been sitting on Condoleezza Rice’s desk on the morning of September 11, waiting for discussion.” In the final analysis it is almost impossible for Conservatives to make the argument that their policies have made us safer seeing as, according to the Center for International and Strategic Studies, the number of people recruited into Islamic terror organizations soared exponentially after the invasion of Iraq thereby dramatically increasing the number of our potential enemies. Conservatives like Ann Coulter would claim that Bush created “a flytrap for Islamic crazies in Iraq”, whereby they could be dispatched with by American forces. It would be more accurate to say that we created a trap of our own within which our troops were needlessly put in harms way for the sake of some misconceived NeoConservative pipe dream. Is it cheaper for a radicalized Muslim to scrape together the cost of a one way ticket to the United States, procure a passport and visa and then forage about this country in search of a terror cell or is it economically and in practical terms more effective to come up with bus fare to Syria and then walk across the border and join in an ongoing insurgency where one could even be paid to carry out attacks against Americans?
We were susceptible to an attack on 9/11 because, among other things, we never thought this sort of thing could happen. We became infinitely safer just by paying attention to security threats thereafter. If we get hit again it may very well be the case that we did so because we did not take the time and spend the money to “harden” critical strategic components of our infrastructure like rail systems, water and power supplies, ports and most importantly chemical plants. Have the failed policies of the Bush era created an opportunity for someone radicalized and now prone to action as a result of those policies to actually carry out an attack on America? If, in the words of Homeland Security expert Stephen Flynn, had we spent billions on infrastructure defense instead of wasting those resources in the Iraq misadventure, we would be infinitely safer. Who then would we legitimately blame for another attack on America, Barack Obama or George Bush and the NeoConservative claque that led us into the Iraq misadventure in the first place?
Steven J. Gulitti
Iron Workers Local # 697
New York City
10/17/2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
Ann Coulter’s History Lesson
If only Ms. Coulter would be honest enough to admit that she is a bona-fide political satirist, in a tongue in cheek sort of way, her commentaries would be both funny and entertaining. However it is in her attempts at serious political commentary that she falls far short of the mark in saying anything that is either intelligent or historically accurate. Ms. Coulters’ latest attempt at analyzing military affairs in Southwest Asia shows just to what extent she has wandered out of her league and has now entered into a realm where she is neither a qualified or competent commentator.
Her recent article: “Natural Born Losers”; which appeared on 14 October, is just another case in point in a continuing litany of misconceived and misguided missives. In this latest attempt at maligning the Obama Administration, Coulter claims that Obama’s difficult choices in Afghanistan are his alone, uninfluenced by the previous administrations’ efforts there or the course of Afghanistan’s history. Coulter points out that President Bush had “removed the Taliban from power in Afghanistan” as if they had been eradicated down to the last man and their ideology obliterated from every hollow and ridge in the region. Coulter tries to make the argument that Bush’s invasion of Iraq constitutes some sort of military masterstroke whereby he purposely created a showdown with Islamic extremists. In Coulter’s own words:” By design, Iraq was the central front on the war on terrorism” and that Iraq would become a “flytrap for Islamic crazies.” In reality, anyone who has taken the time to read any of the National Intelligence Estimates produced during the height of the Iraqi insurgency knows that the intelligence community never attributed Al Qaeda’ with more than a five to seven percent participation rate in the violence and mayhem that beset Iraq at that time. The cold fact of the matter is that the vast majority of the insurgents that we killed in Iraq were Iraqis and not fighters backed by or ideologically aligned with Al Qaeda. The argument that we were fighting them there so we would not have to fight them on the streets of America is as conceptually flawed today as it was during Vietnam. In reality some of our own occupation polices in Iraq would come to produce many of the Islamic extremists that we would face off against in this supposed “flytrap.” On this years’ anniversary of 9/11, General Charles C. Krulak, retired Commandant of the Marine Corp and a former Commander in Chief of the U.S. Central Command, General Joseph P. Hoar, took Vice president Cheney to task on policies of “enhanced interrogation and its affect on terrorist recruitment. To quote the Generals: “In the fear that followed 9/11, Americans were told that defeating Al Qaeda would require us to “take off the gloves.” As a former Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps and a retired Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Central Command, we knew that was a recipe for disaster. We have seen American troops die at the hands of foreign fighters recruited with stories about tortured Muslim detainees at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. And yet Mr. Cheney and others who orchestrated America’s disastrous trip to “the dark side” continue to assert – against all evidence -- that torture “worked” and that our country is better off for having gone there.”
Coulter claims: “ The most important part of warfare is picking your battlefield, and President Bush picked Iraq for a reason.” Well Bush may very well have had a reason for picking Iraq as a battlefield. But if it was for the purposes of eliminating those who were behind the 9/11 terror attacks he was as off course militarily as Coulter is in her attempts at political and military analysis. Consider the following lesson from the Second World War. In the run up to hostilities the Roosevelt Administration knew that Germany was the more formidable foe. A week after Pearl Harbor, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. At that time Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria were Axis allies. Spain and Portugal were fascist neutrals who allowed their citizens to voluntarily serve with the Germans in Russia. Although we were initially attacked by Japan, we focused our primary war effort on the unconditional defeat of Germany and those of it’s European allies directly involved in the war. We did not invade Spain and Portugal on the pretense that they were in some way involved in the attack on the Pacific Fleet or that they would play a meaningful part in the European Theater. Invading Iraq as a follow on to 9/11 is about as conceptually valid an approach to defeating Islamic terror as an invasion of the Iberian Peninsula after the attack on Pearl Harbor would have been in defeating 20th Century Fascism.
Beyond Iraq, Coulter takes up the situation in Iran, trying to relate our present problems there to Jimmy Carter’s presiding over that country’s “regime change”, insinuating that a weak Carter abbetted the Iranian Revolution. She implies that the recent Iranian post election protests were in fact a drive for American style democracy that has been derailed by Barack Obama’s reluctance to insert himself into Iran’s politics and thereby employ the leverage of “American Exceptionalism”. She suggests that America can somehow create a democratic revolution in this nation that continues to harbor strong anti-American sentiment inspite of it’s internal political discord. But with Iran, like Iraq, Coulter again reveals her absence of an appreciation of history. She never attributes America’s role in the 1953 CIA coup that overthrew a legitimate government in Iran, and installed the repressive regime of the Shah, with the present antipithy Iranians feel twoards the United States. It doesn’t take an Arnold Toynbee to understand that this event alone would be enough to fuel a legacy of anti-American sentiment even if the Shah’s regime had not been one of the most repressive of the Cold War era. Coulter makes much of the recent Iranian street protests but never admits that the protestors were marching and fighting for a more perfect Iran and not for an overthrow of the existing political system. She is either blind to, or ignorant of the fact that the protestors choose the color green for their banners, green being the primary color of Islam.
For all of her syncophantic acclaim for the bygone era of George Bush and Dick Cheney, Coulter seems to ignore the real foreign policy legacy of the previous administration. David Sanger in his recent book, “The Inheritance” lays out a comprehensive analysis of the foreign policy mistakes of the Bush years and the consequences which we now must live with. Sanger points out that while we have been bogged down in Iraq, North Korea went from zero nuclear warheads to between three or five; the Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan; Al Qaeda has destabilized much of Pakistan; the Iranians are closer than ever to an atomic weapon and terror has surged across the rest of the Islamic world. So while George Bush had some semblance of a reason for invading Iraq, the end result is that America is now facing a world far more dangerous than it did on September 12, 2001. Ms. Coulter can employ all of the pretzel logic she wants to in trying to tie any and every foreign policy setback to Barack Obama for whatever justification she conjures up, but the more she tries the more she reveals her own shortcomings both in the realm of political analysis and that inherent in her lackluster grasp of history.
Steve Gulitti
New York City
10/15/09
Her recent article: “Natural Born Losers”; which appeared on 14 October, is just another case in point in a continuing litany of misconceived and misguided missives. In this latest attempt at maligning the Obama Administration, Coulter claims that Obama’s difficult choices in Afghanistan are his alone, uninfluenced by the previous administrations’ efforts there or the course of Afghanistan’s history. Coulter points out that President Bush had “removed the Taliban from power in Afghanistan” as if they had been eradicated down to the last man and their ideology obliterated from every hollow and ridge in the region. Coulter tries to make the argument that Bush’s invasion of Iraq constitutes some sort of military masterstroke whereby he purposely created a showdown with Islamic extremists. In Coulter’s own words:” By design, Iraq was the central front on the war on terrorism” and that Iraq would become a “flytrap for Islamic crazies.” In reality, anyone who has taken the time to read any of the National Intelligence Estimates produced during the height of the Iraqi insurgency knows that the intelligence community never attributed Al Qaeda’ with more than a five to seven percent participation rate in the violence and mayhem that beset Iraq at that time. The cold fact of the matter is that the vast majority of the insurgents that we killed in Iraq were Iraqis and not fighters backed by or ideologically aligned with Al Qaeda. The argument that we were fighting them there so we would not have to fight them on the streets of America is as conceptually flawed today as it was during Vietnam. In reality some of our own occupation polices in Iraq would come to produce many of the Islamic extremists that we would face off against in this supposed “flytrap.” On this years’ anniversary of 9/11, General Charles C. Krulak, retired Commandant of the Marine Corp and a former Commander in Chief of the U.S. Central Command, General Joseph P. Hoar, took Vice president Cheney to task on policies of “enhanced interrogation and its affect on terrorist recruitment. To quote the Generals: “In the fear that followed 9/11, Americans were told that defeating Al Qaeda would require us to “take off the gloves.” As a former Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps and a retired Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Central Command, we knew that was a recipe for disaster. We have seen American troops die at the hands of foreign fighters recruited with stories about tortured Muslim detainees at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. And yet Mr. Cheney and others who orchestrated America’s disastrous trip to “the dark side” continue to assert – against all evidence -- that torture “worked” and that our country is better off for having gone there.”
Coulter claims: “ The most important part of warfare is picking your battlefield, and President Bush picked Iraq for a reason.” Well Bush may very well have had a reason for picking Iraq as a battlefield. But if it was for the purposes of eliminating those who were behind the 9/11 terror attacks he was as off course militarily as Coulter is in her attempts at political and military analysis. Consider the following lesson from the Second World War. In the run up to hostilities the Roosevelt Administration knew that Germany was the more formidable foe. A week after Pearl Harbor, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. At that time Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria were Axis allies. Spain and Portugal were fascist neutrals who allowed their citizens to voluntarily serve with the Germans in Russia. Although we were initially attacked by Japan, we focused our primary war effort on the unconditional defeat of Germany and those of it’s European allies directly involved in the war. We did not invade Spain and Portugal on the pretense that they were in some way involved in the attack on the Pacific Fleet or that they would play a meaningful part in the European Theater. Invading Iraq as a follow on to 9/11 is about as conceptually valid an approach to defeating Islamic terror as an invasion of the Iberian Peninsula after the attack on Pearl Harbor would have been in defeating 20th Century Fascism.
Beyond Iraq, Coulter takes up the situation in Iran, trying to relate our present problems there to Jimmy Carter’s presiding over that country’s “regime change”, insinuating that a weak Carter abbetted the Iranian Revolution. She implies that the recent Iranian post election protests were in fact a drive for American style democracy that has been derailed by Barack Obama’s reluctance to insert himself into Iran’s politics and thereby employ the leverage of “American Exceptionalism”. She suggests that America can somehow create a democratic revolution in this nation that continues to harbor strong anti-American sentiment inspite of it’s internal political discord. But with Iran, like Iraq, Coulter again reveals her absence of an appreciation of history. She never attributes America’s role in the 1953 CIA coup that overthrew a legitimate government in Iran, and installed the repressive regime of the Shah, with the present antipithy Iranians feel twoards the United States. It doesn’t take an Arnold Toynbee to understand that this event alone would be enough to fuel a legacy of anti-American sentiment even if the Shah’s regime had not been one of the most repressive of the Cold War era. Coulter makes much of the recent Iranian street protests but never admits that the protestors were marching and fighting for a more perfect Iran and not for an overthrow of the existing political system. She is either blind to, or ignorant of the fact that the protestors choose the color green for their banners, green being the primary color of Islam.
For all of her syncophantic acclaim for the bygone era of George Bush and Dick Cheney, Coulter seems to ignore the real foreign policy legacy of the previous administration. David Sanger in his recent book, “The Inheritance” lays out a comprehensive analysis of the foreign policy mistakes of the Bush years and the consequences which we now must live with. Sanger points out that while we have been bogged down in Iraq, North Korea went from zero nuclear warheads to between three or five; the Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan; Al Qaeda has destabilized much of Pakistan; the Iranians are closer than ever to an atomic weapon and terror has surged across the rest of the Islamic world. So while George Bush had some semblance of a reason for invading Iraq, the end result is that America is now facing a world far more dangerous than it did on September 12, 2001. Ms. Coulter can employ all of the pretzel logic she wants to in trying to tie any and every foreign policy setback to Barack Obama for whatever justification she conjures up, but the more she tries the more she reveals her own shortcomings both in the realm of political analysis and that inherent in her lackluster grasp of history.
Steve Gulitti
New York City
10/15/09
Friday, July 3, 2009
The Political Suicide of Sarah Palin?
Sarah Palin’s departure from the forefront of American politics is just part and parcel of the continuing kaleidoscope of chaos on the right. In my opinion, her selection as a Vice Presidential candidate was nothing more than a political stunt aimed at capturing the disappointed female supporters of Hilary Clinton. As the current article in Vanity Fair reveals, prominent McCain staffers say that her being picked as a running mate was the single biggest mistake that McCain made in his bid for the presidency. Her selection may have actually led her to think that she had the heft and substance to be a major player on the national scene, but her comments and analytical viewpoints show that she was clearly out of her league and well off of the mark in possessing what it takes to be Vice President of the United States, or Chief Executive. During the 2008 race, Fred Thompson lauded Palin for her prowess as a hunter, saying that: “She could field dress a moose”. That would be a great leadership credential if we were living in the Stone Age, but it is nothing more than an interesting personal anecdote in the twenty first century.
Sarah Palin may well rile up the base of the Republican Party. That could be a liability as the base can actually derail the G.O.P. in upcoming elections. Republican strategist Mike Murphy recently said: “If the Sarah Palin we perceive today wins the nomination in 2012, the G.O.P. will lose. Most Americans don’t think Palin is ready to be President. The base loving you is not enough to get you elected.” Conservative columnist Michael Gerson, speaking on the News Hour said of Palin: “ She was not ready in 2008” and that,” She really alienated women and the college educated on both coasts and that is not how you rebuild the Republican Party.” The cold, hard reality is that the Republican Party cannot hope to win without the support of independent voters, whom Palin clearly alienates and whose ranks are now at a seventy-year high as a proportion of the electorate. Based on her chronic foot-in-mouth problems, it is not all that far fetched to say that Palin would be more likely to gain votes among independents by posing naked in Playboy than by taking the stage to promulgate her political views.
The real question is if Governor Palin has not just committed political suicide by leaving the political stage at a time when most political observers have suggested that her political future hinged on saying less and studying more so as to get up to speed with regard to the issues and substance that the top job in this country requires. After eight years of George Bush that” aw shucks” approach just doesn’t cut it anymore, unless your only goal is to appeal to the base of the Republican Party.
Steven J. Gulitti
July 3, 2009
New York City
Iron Workers Local # 697
Sarah Palin may well rile up the base of the Republican Party. That could be a liability as the base can actually derail the G.O.P. in upcoming elections. Republican strategist Mike Murphy recently said: “If the Sarah Palin we perceive today wins the nomination in 2012, the G.O.P. will lose. Most Americans don’t think Palin is ready to be President. The base loving you is not enough to get you elected.” Conservative columnist Michael Gerson, speaking on the News Hour said of Palin: “ She was not ready in 2008” and that,” She really alienated women and the college educated on both coasts and that is not how you rebuild the Republican Party.” The cold, hard reality is that the Republican Party cannot hope to win without the support of independent voters, whom Palin clearly alienates and whose ranks are now at a seventy-year high as a proportion of the electorate. Based on her chronic foot-in-mouth problems, it is not all that far fetched to say that Palin would be more likely to gain votes among independents by posing naked in Playboy than by taking the stage to promulgate her political views.
The real question is if Governor Palin has not just committed political suicide by leaving the political stage at a time when most political observers have suggested that her political future hinged on saying less and studying more so as to get up to speed with regard to the issues and substance that the top job in this country requires. After eight years of George Bush that” aw shucks” approach just doesn’t cut it anymore, unless your only goal is to appeal to the base of the Republican Party.
Steven J. Gulitti
July 3, 2009
New York City
Iron Workers Local # 697
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Dick Cheney: Flawed Messenger on National Security
As I sit here on May 25, 2009 and reflect on the meaning of this day, just as I do quietly and privately on every Memorial Day, I remember the service and sacrifice of those who went before me, including my own family’s not insignificant contributions in both World Wars and in Korea. Compared to them, my own twenty years of service as a reservist seems insignificant if not trivial. Nonetheless on a day like today, I can’t but help being galled by the recent “road show” undertaken by the former Vice President Dick Cheney with its theatrical, if not alarmist claim, that the current administration has undermined the security of the United States. Mr. Cheney has suggested that Barack Obama would set the country on a course where other Americans will once again find themselves in harms way. I find this political grandstanding nothing less than preposterous, when one stops to consider that it is coming from a man, who when it was his time to serve his country in Vietnam, opted out as he had, in his own words, “other priorities”. In his pursuit of “other priorities”, Dick Cheney would benefit from multiple deferments from military service while other Americans were fighting and dying in Southeast Asia. Cheney’s assertion that Obama has embarked on a “reckless” course of action in seeking to close Guantanamo should be seen as a rather curious statement when one considers that it was Cheney and his Neocon fellow travelers who advocated for a war with Iraq, on the most dubious grounds, thereby engineering the most reckless undertaking in American history.
I can give the Bush Administration a pass for operating beyond the pale of accepted rules of engagement in the period immediately after the September 11 attacks owing to the gravity of the situation and the unknowable state of national security which resulted from those attacks. I can also understand how American intelligence officers at that time, in an effort to forestall another attack, could chose to employ interrogation techniques that can only be categorized as torture. That said, as time passed and the threat environment was revealed to be far less dangerous than had been anticipated the justification for torture and detainment without due process became harder to justify. It is impossible to deny that the existence of the Guantanamo facility along with the abuses at Abu Ghraib would become key factors in the recruitment of new adherents to the radical Muslim jihad and thereby create new and more multifaceted threats to be addressed.
In an address to American troops in Europe during World War II, General George S. Patton would state:” You don’t win wars by dying for your country, you win wars by getting the other guy to die for his.” The corollary line of logic to Patton’s advice for our time is that you don’t win wars by creating new enemies. At this point in time it is a forgone conclusion that the existence of Guantanamo works against our national security interests, as it is the single best recruitment tool presently available to Al Qaeda, thereby contributing to the pool of available enemy combatants. For those who have taken the time to listen to the debate, there is bi-partisan agreement on this fact as evidenced by the recent comments of Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) along with the Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, all of whom have agreed that Guantanamo needs to be closed. The crux of the argument revolves around how to relocate the detainees so as not to compromise our security.
With general agreement on the need to deal with the Guantanamo detainees in some other fashion, what then is the motive behind the Cheney “road show” other than the former Vice Presidents seeming need to redeem himself in the eyes of the American public? As has been speculated by the talking classes, Cheney is still smarting from the fact that he and his Neocon clique were marginalized and took a back seat to Condoleezza Rice and the State Department after the 2004 election. Why is it that Cheney just can’t accept that his version of national security may be inapplicable at this point in time or that it is perhaps, less than well founded given the current threat environment? After all, for all of the claims that Bush and Cheney prevented another attack on U.S. soil, the fact of the matter is that this country suffered it’s worst terrorist attack on their watch. In reality Dick Cheney, with his advocating for War in Iraq and his championing of “enhanced interrogation” and unlimited detention may have done more to endanger the security of the country than Obama ever could by closing down Guantanamo. What will Mr. Cheney have to say if individuals who carry out the next terror attack on the United States admit to interrogators that their motive for joining the jihad was the invasion of Iraq, the abuses at Abu Ghraib, or the existence of Guantanamo?
Steven J. Gulitti
Memorial Day 2009
I can give the Bush Administration a pass for operating beyond the pale of accepted rules of engagement in the period immediately after the September 11 attacks owing to the gravity of the situation and the unknowable state of national security which resulted from those attacks. I can also understand how American intelligence officers at that time, in an effort to forestall another attack, could chose to employ interrogation techniques that can only be categorized as torture. That said, as time passed and the threat environment was revealed to be far less dangerous than had been anticipated the justification for torture and detainment without due process became harder to justify. It is impossible to deny that the existence of the Guantanamo facility along with the abuses at Abu Ghraib would become key factors in the recruitment of new adherents to the radical Muslim jihad and thereby create new and more multifaceted threats to be addressed.
In an address to American troops in Europe during World War II, General George S. Patton would state:” You don’t win wars by dying for your country, you win wars by getting the other guy to die for his.” The corollary line of logic to Patton’s advice for our time is that you don’t win wars by creating new enemies. At this point in time it is a forgone conclusion that the existence of Guantanamo works against our national security interests, as it is the single best recruitment tool presently available to Al Qaeda, thereby contributing to the pool of available enemy combatants. For those who have taken the time to listen to the debate, there is bi-partisan agreement on this fact as evidenced by the recent comments of Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) along with the Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, all of whom have agreed that Guantanamo needs to be closed. The crux of the argument revolves around how to relocate the detainees so as not to compromise our security.
With general agreement on the need to deal with the Guantanamo detainees in some other fashion, what then is the motive behind the Cheney “road show” other than the former Vice Presidents seeming need to redeem himself in the eyes of the American public? As has been speculated by the talking classes, Cheney is still smarting from the fact that he and his Neocon clique were marginalized and took a back seat to Condoleezza Rice and the State Department after the 2004 election. Why is it that Cheney just can’t accept that his version of national security may be inapplicable at this point in time or that it is perhaps, less than well founded given the current threat environment? After all, for all of the claims that Bush and Cheney prevented another attack on U.S. soil, the fact of the matter is that this country suffered it’s worst terrorist attack on their watch. In reality Dick Cheney, with his advocating for War in Iraq and his championing of “enhanced interrogation” and unlimited detention may have done more to endanger the security of the country than Obama ever could by closing down Guantanamo. What will Mr. Cheney have to say if individuals who carry out the next terror attack on the United States admit to interrogators that their motive for joining the jihad was the invasion of Iraq, the abuses at Abu Ghraib, or the existence of Guantanamo?
Steven J. Gulitti
Memorial Day 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
A Tempest in a Tea Party
Now that the topic of Tax Day Tea Parties has faded from even the blogosphere, it is important to examine what these protests were and what they were not. I personally watched Fox News on and off all that day and while some gatherings seemed well attended, many weren’t. The Boston gathering was rather sparse and in Washington D.C. conservative radio talk show host Laura Ingrham said that there were only about a thousand people in attendance when she was present. Of the 364 official Tea Parties, only seven logged attendance of 10,000 or more with the largest reported figure being 16,000 for San Antonio. Depending on what data source you reference, nationwide attendance fell somewhere within a range of 400,000 to 623,000 with one site claiming around 700,000 in total attendance. Leading anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform posted a figure of 578,000. Nowhere did I see a figure breaching the million participant mark. Even a website that billed itself as the online headquarters for the movement would claim that turnout was below one million: “On April 15th, hundreds of thousands of citizens gathered in more than 800 cities to voice their opposition to out of control spending at all levels of government.”
In a time of profound political change, no one should be surprised that there would be dissatisfied elements within the body politic, which from time to time, would resort to political protest to articulate their point of view. But as many in the pundit class would point out, the Tea Party phenomenon was an “orphan movement” with some degree of grass roots origin, which took the G.O.P. and the Conservative Establishment by surprise. While the protests were multifaceted with regard to the grab bag of grievances put forth, what they were not were a spontaneous revolt against the Obama Administration. While some in the ranks of far right media would attempt to paint the Tea Parties as the opening shot in a “citizens movement to stop the drift towards socialism in America”, the majority of conservative columnists pointed out that the Tea Parties were aimed at both political parties. Stephen Moore of the Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal, which also owns Fox News, said that the anger behind the Tea Parties originated with opposition to the bailout of the banking sector and would have been there even if the GOP were in the White House on April 15. The organizer of the Chicago Tea Party, John O’Hara, of the conservative Heartland Institute, said it was a coincidence that the Tea Parties came to the surface during the Obama Administration because the problems predate the inauguration of Barack Obama and that both parties are at fault. “Politicians on both sides of the aisle need to listen up”, O’Hara said. Likewise, the leader of the House Republican Conference, Congressman Mike Pence (R-IN), echoed similar sentiments.
Some students of history might jump to the conclusion, that the 2009 Tax Day Tea Parties are only the beginning of a “citizens revolt”, but I for one see this train of thought as just another fantasy on the part of the disaffected along with the crackpots who quietly dream of a military coup to remove the current administration; Texas succeeding from the Union; or even more darkly, reversing course politically by an attempt on the President’s life. While some political revolutions have been spearheaded by a small cadre of activists, such as the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, there was an underlying desire for change among the vast majority of people in Czarist Russia at that time. Even at the beginning of our own revolution only one third of the people supported the undertaking, while one third supported the British and the rest were undecided. America today in no way represents a country ready for revolution through any other means than the ballot box and those on the extremes of political life would do themselves a favor in coming to terms with that reality.
Historically, putting the Tea Parties in perspective is a relatively simple affair. Compared to the anti-war demonstrations of the 1960’s the overall Tax Day Tea Party turnout was miniscule for a nation that is supposed to be experiencing a swelling tide of anti-government sentiment. It is ironic, when you consider how the Right loves to belittle the environmentalists as “tree huggers”, that the turnout for the original Earth Day in 1970 was 20,000,000 or roughly ten percent of the American population at that time, whereas the total participation in the Tea Parties amounted to not even one percent of today’s population. If one uses the lower number of 400,000 as a benchmark of total Tea Party participation, the attendance at the first Earth Day was 50 times larger than that of all Tea Parties combined. If one uses the number of 700,000, which has not been widely substantiated, the number of those attending the first Earth Day is 28.5 times larger. No matter which metric you use it is hard to claim that the Tea Parties are any type of mass grass roots movement. Beyond Tea Party attendance figures, the current polling shows that Barack Obama continues to enjoy favorable ratings in the 60s with the overall Democratic Party having favorable ratings as high as 56% in some polls. Meanwhile the G.O.P. has an unfavorable rating of as high as 68% in some of the latest polling. The number of Americans polled who says the country is on the right track is presently at 45% up from 12% in October of 2008. This represents the greatest turnaround in this sentiment indicator outside of a period when the nation has been engaged in all out war.
Based on the inherent flaws of polling as evidenced in the 2008 New Hampshire Primary, one would assume that the ultimate poll, elections, would be proof positive in ascertaining the true sentiments of the voting public. It is in the special election of March 2009 to replace Kristen Gillibrand in the New York 20th Congressional District that we can most closely gauge to what extent the Tea Parties accurately measure the degree to which the public has, or is in the process of, rejecting the profound change of course that the nation has embarked upon. Politically New York State, outside of the downstate Metropolitan area and Erie County is generally Republican and the 20th is an upstate district, largely rural, predominately white, with a 70,000-voter registration advantage for the G.O.P. The 20th represents the only type of election district where the Republican Party actually made gains among voters in 2008. The race to replace Gillibrand, who took Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat, was framed as the first showdown between the policies of Barack Obama and the Republican Party’s platform of small government, low taxes and opposition to increased federal spending. The national G.O.P. spent heavily on this race, with Michael Steele making two trips to the district along with support on the ground from several top ranking national Republicans. Jim Tedesco, The Republican contender, began the race with a 20% advantage before he came out against the Obama Stimulus Plan. The relatively unknown Democratic contender, Scott Murphy, campaigned in support of the Stimulus from the start. The race, which should have been swept by the Republicans, based on the demographics involved, went down to a recount, which was eventually decided in Murphy’s favor by 726 votes. That said, where then is the empirical evidence of the deep-seated dissatisfaction that the Tea Parties are supposed to represent? What changed between the special election at the end of March and the 15th of April? In reality, the Tea Parties collectively represent the proverbial “tempest in a teapot” and would not have received the media attention they did had they not become a political football to be bandied about in the never ending cable television war between the left leaning MSNBC and it’s archrival on the right, Fox News which heavily promoted the Tea Parties and even hosted some of the biggest.
Steven J. Gulitti
May 11, 2009
New York City
Iron Workers Local # 697
In a time of profound political change, no one should be surprised that there would be dissatisfied elements within the body politic, which from time to time, would resort to political protest to articulate their point of view. But as many in the pundit class would point out, the Tea Party phenomenon was an “orphan movement” with some degree of grass roots origin, which took the G.O.P. and the Conservative Establishment by surprise. While the protests were multifaceted with regard to the grab bag of grievances put forth, what they were not were a spontaneous revolt against the Obama Administration. While some in the ranks of far right media would attempt to paint the Tea Parties as the opening shot in a “citizens movement to stop the drift towards socialism in America”, the majority of conservative columnists pointed out that the Tea Parties were aimed at both political parties. Stephen Moore of the Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal, which also owns Fox News, said that the anger behind the Tea Parties originated with opposition to the bailout of the banking sector and would have been there even if the GOP were in the White House on April 15. The organizer of the Chicago Tea Party, John O’Hara, of the conservative Heartland Institute, said it was a coincidence that the Tea Parties came to the surface during the Obama Administration because the problems predate the inauguration of Barack Obama and that both parties are at fault. “Politicians on both sides of the aisle need to listen up”, O’Hara said. Likewise, the leader of the House Republican Conference, Congressman Mike Pence (R-IN), echoed similar sentiments.
Some students of history might jump to the conclusion, that the 2009 Tax Day Tea Parties are only the beginning of a “citizens revolt”, but I for one see this train of thought as just another fantasy on the part of the disaffected along with the crackpots who quietly dream of a military coup to remove the current administration; Texas succeeding from the Union; or even more darkly, reversing course politically by an attempt on the President’s life. While some political revolutions have been spearheaded by a small cadre of activists, such as the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, there was an underlying desire for change among the vast majority of people in Czarist Russia at that time. Even at the beginning of our own revolution only one third of the people supported the undertaking, while one third supported the British and the rest were undecided. America today in no way represents a country ready for revolution through any other means than the ballot box and those on the extremes of political life would do themselves a favor in coming to terms with that reality.
Historically, putting the Tea Parties in perspective is a relatively simple affair. Compared to the anti-war demonstrations of the 1960’s the overall Tax Day Tea Party turnout was miniscule for a nation that is supposed to be experiencing a swelling tide of anti-government sentiment. It is ironic, when you consider how the Right loves to belittle the environmentalists as “tree huggers”, that the turnout for the original Earth Day in 1970 was 20,000,000 or roughly ten percent of the American population at that time, whereas the total participation in the Tea Parties amounted to not even one percent of today’s population. If one uses the lower number of 400,000 as a benchmark of total Tea Party participation, the attendance at the first Earth Day was 50 times larger than that of all Tea Parties combined. If one uses the number of 700,000, which has not been widely substantiated, the number of those attending the first Earth Day is 28.5 times larger. No matter which metric you use it is hard to claim that the Tea Parties are any type of mass grass roots movement. Beyond Tea Party attendance figures, the current polling shows that Barack Obama continues to enjoy favorable ratings in the 60s with the overall Democratic Party having favorable ratings as high as 56% in some polls. Meanwhile the G.O.P. has an unfavorable rating of as high as 68% in some of the latest polling. The number of Americans polled who says the country is on the right track is presently at 45% up from 12% in October of 2008. This represents the greatest turnaround in this sentiment indicator outside of a period when the nation has been engaged in all out war.
Based on the inherent flaws of polling as evidenced in the 2008 New Hampshire Primary, one would assume that the ultimate poll, elections, would be proof positive in ascertaining the true sentiments of the voting public. It is in the special election of March 2009 to replace Kristen Gillibrand in the New York 20th Congressional District that we can most closely gauge to what extent the Tea Parties accurately measure the degree to which the public has, or is in the process of, rejecting the profound change of course that the nation has embarked upon. Politically New York State, outside of the downstate Metropolitan area and Erie County is generally Republican and the 20th is an upstate district, largely rural, predominately white, with a 70,000-voter registration advantage for the G.O.P. The 20th represents the only type of election district where the Republican Party actually made gains among voters in 2008. The race to replace Gillibrand, who took Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat, was framed as the first showdown between the policies of Barack Obama and the Republican Party’s platform of small government, low taxes and opposition to increased federal spending. The national G.O.P. spent heavily on this race, with Michael Steele making two trips to the district along with support on the ground from several top ranking national Republicans. Jim Tedesco, The Republican contender, began the race with a 20% advantage before he came out against the Obama Stimulus Plan. The relatively unknown Democratic contender, Scott Murphy, campaigned in support of the Stimulus from the start. The race, which should have been swept by the Republicans, based on the demographics involved, went down to a recount, which was eventually decided in Murphy’s favor by 726 votes. That said, where then is the empirical evidence of the deep-seated dissatisfaction that the Tea Parties are supposed to represent? What changed between the special election at the end of March and the 15th of April? In reality, the Tea Parties collectively represent the proverbial “tempest in a teapot” and would not have received the media attention they did had they not become a political football to be bandied about in the never ending cable television war between the left leaning MSNBC and it’s archrival on the right, Fox News which heavily promoted the Tea Parties and even hosted some of the biggest.
Steven J. Gulitti
May 11, 2009
New York City
Iron Workers Local # 697
Thursday, March 5, 2009
A 21st Century Ghost Dance: Rush Limbaugh, The Radical Right and the Politics of Obstruction
In the closing days of the 1880s, beset by far reaching societal change, the Indians of the American West embraced a messianic practice called the Ghost Dance. The Ghost Dance religion, put forth by a Paiute medicine man named Wovoka, foretold of the destruction of the existing world and its replacement with the old order where only the Indians would occupy the landscape. The buffalo would return in great numbers and those Indian warriors who had died fighting the white man would be resurrected. This new world order would be hastened by the performance of the Ghost Dance ritual and the wearing of shirts blessed to repel the bullets of the American Army.
Listening to the rhetoric flowing out of CPAC 2009 one could conclude that the Conservative Movement has embraced its own version of a 21st Century Ghost Dance, led by its own modern day Wovoka in the person of Rush Limbaugh. It is as if by reiterating ideology, invoking the memory of Reagan and maligning the Obama recovery effort as “socialist”, that Conservatives will somehow forestall imminent political change. In an attempt to heighten alarm Limbaugh lays claim to the idea that life, liberty and freedom are under assault. He states that Barack Obama will eliminate capitalism and individual liberty as the cornerstone of American life. Limbaugh makes such a claim in spite of the historical fact that the government has been intimately involved in economic affairs since 1819 with no appreciable loss of personal liberty to date. Nonetheless Limbaugh has put the failure of the Obama recovery program at the top of his personal political agenda because he thinks that such failure will bring about a return to a glorious (imagined) past. Limbaugh defiantly rejects the 2008 election as proof positive that Americans want a change in direction because the electoral results don’t square with his vision of America. All this from a man who, somewhere on the spectrum between ideological purist and buffoon, doesn’t know the Declaration of Independence from the Constitution when it comes to a quote regarding life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Somehow talk of “true patriotism” rings hollow coming from a man who had more draft deferments during the Vietnam War than some soldiers had combat action medals. As CPAC continued, Mike Huckabee claimed, “Lenin and Stalin would love the Obama program” leading one to believe that the former presidential candidate knows less about history than does Sarah Palin. Anyone who thinks that the Obama recovery plans bear any resemblance to Soviet economic polices of the last century is either irresponsibly playing with words for the sake of incitement or just lacks the background required to engage in intelligent political discourse.
Beyond Limbaugh and CPAC the hysteria over the “slide into socialism” continues unabated in conservative media. Harry R Jackson, Jr. intones that: “a war for the soul of the nation” is raging. Pat Buchanan declared the Obama budget a “declaration of war on the Right.” The latest piece from Dick Morris is entitled “Waging War on Prosperity.” Limbaugh’s own brother David has gone so far as to say that media attacks leveled at Rush are really aimed at those who support him, the “true patriots” that oppose Obama’s “Marxist agenda and Stalinist tactics.” Newsmax suggests some on the Right may consider armed violent resistance to the Obama Administration, which to me represents a new high watermark in rightwing hysteria surpassing the previous one left behind by the Terri Schiavo case. The “patriot game” was of little use to Republicans in the last election cycle and except for the low- information voter should prove equally useless this time around.
Progressive political thinkers might ask themselves what intellectual ammunition would be of use in countering this 21st Century Ghost Dance. My suggestion is to start with facts. Socialism is defined as the “collective or government ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.” That definition encompasses the entirety of economic activity. While the present breakdown in the economy has necessitated a large degree of government involvement in economic affairs, nowhere is there any evidence that Barack Obama is advocating government oversight of economic activity beyond those sectors where the free market has failed. Ironically, it was House Republicans that advocated a partial socialization of banking in the financial bailout of 2008. How hypocritical to oppose the very ideas they once promoted. Having dispensed with the allegation that the Obama Administration aims to affect a wholesale socialization of the economy we can skip past the Stalinist / Leninist rhetoric altogether.
Conservative media is obsessed with the idea that Barack Obama wants to punish success and has declared a war on prosperity. For all of the Conservative rhetoric regarding government policy and the economy, it is an established fact that in the post World War II period the economy has generally done better under Democrats than Republicans. Democratic administrations have outperformed their Republican counterparts across the board on average in terms of annualized job creation, GDP and GDP per capita growth rates. Despite all of the talk of taxing the wealthy and its effect on the economy, under Democratic administrations the wealthiest have done almost as well as they have under Republicans. It is noteworthy that Barack Obama won the majority of those earning over $200,000.00 in spite of the fact that Republicans constantly warned voters of the prospect of higher taxes. While Conservatives bend over backwards in arguing for lower tax rates for the rich and businesses, they remain silent on the subject of tax fairness. In 1980 the amount of national wealth received by the top one percent of wage earners was eight percent of the total wealth created in the United States whereas in 2008 it was twenty six percent. Changes in tax laws since the Reagan era have led to the shifting of the national tax burden from wealth to labor resulting in the largest redistribution of wealth upwards since the 1920s. Likewise, the past eight years have seen the percentage of national wealth that accrues to the working American fall to the lowest percentage on record. Median family income, based on Census Bureau findings, actually declined between 2000 and 2007 when adjusted for inflation while at the same time productivity, profits and executive compensation registered strong gains. That said, what are the real arguments to be made for maintaining the status quo with regard to tax policy and the distribution of income as it relates to the economic well being of the people who actually go to work every day and create the goods and services of a modern economy? Somehow, Conservative thinking as it relates to tax policy and prosperity has either missed or ignored eighty percent of the population while obsessing on the well being of the business community and entrepreneurs. Owing to the fact that the “prosperity” of the past eight years was largely fueled by financial engineering, debt accumulation and the housing bubble rather than income growth, where in this time period can we find evidence of the validity of a conservative economic theory which promotes growth through lower taxes?
In their nostalgia for the Reagan era, Conservatives have adhered to an image of the man based on his rhetoric as opposed to his actual record in office. The federal government actually grew under Reagan as he added a new cabinet level department and various other executive level bureaus. While he argued the virtues of limited spending he embarked on a massive military buildup, much of it in excess of what the threat level of that time required. Large-scale military buildups are public spending just the way bridge and highway projects are, it’s only the products that differ. Both ultimately aid overall economic activity. In spite of supposed strength of conservative economic theories, the recession of 1981-1983 was the worst downturn since the Great Depression, until today, with unemployment topping ten percent. While Reagan talked tough with the Soviets he reached out to them and successfully concluded an arms treaty. He was far more bipartisan than are the Republicans of today. He was largely silent on the issue of abortion.
While those in the pro-Obama mainstream media, along with Rahm Emanuel and his Democratic allies, will continue to publicly bait Limbaugh for their own obvious benefit, there is a growing chorus of concern among Republicans inside and outside of government as to how to defuse the extremists on the far right. Former Republican Congressmen Tom DeLay and Vin Weber have been quick to point out that Limbaugh is not the head of the GOP nor is he its spokesman. Former Republican Congressman and talk show host Joe Scarborough has pointed to a need for the GOP to formulate a constructive strategy for the future and to ignore Limbaugh altogether. Former RNCC Chairman Tom Cole of Oklahoma summed up the GOP’s current predicament with the following observation: “The politics of the country are changing profoundly and rapidly, much as they did in 1932 and 1980.” While Rush Limbaugh intones that Conservative principles are essentially unalterable and forever, moderate Republican observers will argue that those principals need to be modernized or else Republicans are looking at a future with their party in permanent minority status.
Limbaugh and his CPAC acolytes argue that “Americans are conservative by instinct”, but empirically it is hard to make such an argument. A November 2008 poll by Pew Research would show that only 38 percent of Americans identify as conservatives. More importantly the most recent NYT/CBS tracking poll of political identification shows only 28 percent of Americans consider themselves Republican. On a county-by-county basis the 2008 presidential election reveals a significant shift towards the Democratic Party, even in many of the states that went for McCain. With the exception of an arc running roughly from Oklahoma through Arkansas, Tennessee and into Appalachia, most of the rest of the country shows an overall rise in the numbers of people who voted Democrat. Current opinion polls also show that in the face of stubborn opposition from the Right, Obama’s overall approval ratings remain high. With a 60 percent favorable rating overall, the President does even better when polling becomes more specific. On topics like withdrawing from Iraq or whether the economic crisis is his fault or inherited, his ratings exceed 80 percent, whereas for Republicans 56 percent of respondents say they are playing politics rather than standing on principles. In terms of the direction the country, 41 percent say it is on the right track, up from 12 percent who felt that way in October of 2008. Currently, Congressional Republicans have an approval rating below that of their Democrat counterparts. Meanwhile among those below the age of 40, Mr. Limbaugh receives a paltry 11 percent approval rating. His audience and his appeal among independent voters is essentially nonexistent.
While this modern day Conservative Ghost Dance wends its way across the political landscape, its ultimate destination remains a mystery. Given the current political climate it does not seem that Rush Limbaugh, his acolytes and his defacto, if not unwilling, Republican allies will return to majority status or the seat of power anytime soon. While Conservatives are venerating an imagined past, the number of people identifying with the Republican Party or willing to vote for its program is shrinking. The GOP is seen more and more as the party of the South and one that is only gaining adherents among the less educated living in the most rural regions of the country. While the core beliefs and principles of the Right seem out of date or inapplicable in this current climate of worldwide economic crisis, there has to be more to the movement than the politics of obstruction. Absent a new message and a program that attracts independents, the only hope that Conservatives and Republicans have is to bank on Democratic failure, which is neither creative nor compelling in the eyes of the voters. Beyond this paucity of new ideas the more immediate concern is that Limbaugh, the Radical Right and the politics of obstruction will derail the GOP’s electoral chances altogether in the next election cycle. After all 2010 will be here before we know it.
Steven J. Gulitti
New York City
March 5, 2009
Iron Workers Local # 697
Listening to the rhetoric flowing out of CPAC 2009 one could conclude that the Conservative Movement has embraced its own version of a 21st Century Ghost Dance, led by its own modern day Wovoka in the person of Rush Limbaugh. It is as if by reiterating ideology, invoking the memory of Reagan and maligning the Obama recovery effort as “socialist”, that Conservatives will somehow forestall imminent political change. In an attempt to heighten alarm Limbaugh lays claim to the idea that life, liberty and freedom are under assault. He states that Barack Obama will eliminate capitalism and individual liberty as the cornerstone of American life. Limbaugh makes such a claim in spite of the historical fact that the government has been intimately involved in economic affairs since 1819 with no appreciable loss of personal liberty to date. Nonetheless Limbaugh has put the failure of the Obama recovery program at the top of his personal political agenda because he thinks that such failure will bring about a return to a glorious (imagined) past. Limbaugh defiantly rejects the 2008 election as proof positive that Americans want a change in direction because the electoral results don’t square with his vision of America. All this from a man who, somewhere on the spectrum between ideological purist and buffoon, doesn’t know the Declaration of Independence from the Constitution when it comes to a quote regarding life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Somehow talk of “true patriotism” rings hollow coming from a man who had more draft deferments during the Vietnam War than some soldiers had combat action medals. As CPAC continued, Mike Huckabee claimed, “Lenin and Stalin would love the Obama program” leading one to believe that the former presidential candidate knows less about history than does Sarah Palin. Anyone who thinks that the Obama recovery plans bear any resemblance to Soviet economic polices of the last century is either irresponsibly playing with words for the sake of incitement or just lacks the background required to engage in intelligent political discourse.
Beyond Limbaugh and CPAC the hysteria over the “slide into socialism” continues unabated in conservative media. Harry R Jackson, Jr. intones that: “a war for the soul of the nation” is raging. Pat Buchanan declared the Obama budget a “declaration of war on the Right.” The latest piece from Dick Morris is entitled “Waging War on Prosperity.” Limbaugh’s own brother David has gone so far as to say that media attacks leveled at Rush are really aimed at those who support him, the “true patriots” that oppose Obama’s “Marxist agenda and Stalinist tactics.” Newsmax suggests some on the Right may consider armed violent resistance to the Obama Administration, which to me represents a new high watermark in rightwing hysteria surpassing the previous one left behind by the Terri Schiavo case. The “patriot game” was of little use to Republicans in the last election cycle and except for the low- information voter should prove equally useless this time around.
Progressive political thinkers might ask themselves what intellectual ammunition would be of use in countering this 21st Century Ghost Dance. My suggestion is to start with facts. Socialism is defined as the “collective or government ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.” That definition encompasses the entirety of economic activity. While the present breakdown in the economy has necessitated a large degree of government involvement in economic affairs, nowhere is there any evidence that Barack Obama is advocating government oversight of economic activity beyond those sectors where the free market has failed. Ironically, it was House Republicans that advocated a partial socialization of banking in the financial bailout of 2008. How hypocritical to oppose the very ideas they once promoted. Having dispensed with the allegation that the Obama Administration aims to affect a wholesale socialization of the economy we can skip past the Stalinist / Leninist rhetoric altogether.
Conservative media is obsessed with the idea that Barack Obama wants to punish success and has declared a war on prosperity. For all of the Conservative rhetoric regarding government policy and the economy, it is an established fact that in the post World War II period the economy has generally done better under Democrats than Republicans. Democratic administrations have outperformed their Republican counterparts across the board on average in terms of annualized job creation, GDP and GDP per capita growth rates. Despite all of the talk of taxing the wealthy and its effect on the economy, under Democratic administrations the wealthiest have done almost as well as they have under Republicans. It is noteworthy that Barack Obama won the majority of those earning over $200,000.00 in spite of the fact that Republicans constantly warned voters of the prospect of higher taxes. While Conservatives bend over backwards in arguing for lower tax rates for the rich and businesses, they remain silent on the subject of tax fairness. In 1980 the amount of national wealth received by the top one percent of wage earners was eight percent of the total wealth created in the United States whereas in 2008 it was twenty six percent. Changes in tax laws since the Reagan era have led to the shifting of the national tax burden from wealth to labor resulting in the largest redistribution of wealth upwards since the 1920s. Likewise, the past eight years have seen the percentage of national wealth that accrues to the working American fall to the lowest percentage on record. Median family income, based on Census Bureau findings, actually declined between 2000 and 2007 when adjusted for inflation while at the same time productivity, profits and executive compensation registered strong gains. That said, what are the real arguments to be made for maintaining the status quo with regard to tax policy and the distribution of income as it relates to the economic well being of the people who actually go to work every day and create the goods and services of a modern economy? Somehow, Conservative thinking as it relates to tax policy and prosperity has either missed or ignored eighty percent of the population while obsessing on the well being of the business community and entrepreneurs. Owing to the fact that the “prosperity” of the past eight years was largely fueled by financial engineering, debt accumulation and the housing bubble rather than income growth, where in this time period can we find evidence of the validity of a conservative economic theory which promotes growth through lower taxes?
In their nostalgia for the Reagan era, Conservatives have adhered to an image of the man based on his rhetoric as opposed to his actual record in office. The federal government actually grew under Reagan as he added a new cabinet level department and various other executive level bureaus. While he argued the virtues of limited spending he embarked on a massive military buildup, much of it in excess of what the threat level of that time required. Large-scale military buildups are public spending just the way bridge and highway projects are, it’s only the products that differ. Both ultimately aid overall economic activity. In spite of supposed strength of conservative economic theories, the recession of 1981-1983 was the worst downturn since the Great Depression, until today, with unemployment topping ten percent. While Reagan talked tough with the Soviets he reached out to them and successfully concluded an arms treaty. He was far more bipartisan than are the Republicans of today. He was largely silent on the issue of abortion.
While those in the pro-Obama mainstream media, along with Rahm Emanuel and his Democratic allies, will continue to publicly bait Limbaugh for their own obvious benefit, there is a growing chorus of concern among Republicans inside and outside of government as to how to defuse the extremists on the far right. Former Republican Congressmen Tom DeLay and Vin Weber have been quick to point out that Limbaugh is not the head of the GOP nor is he its spokesman. Former Republican Congressman and talk show host Joe Scarborough has pointed to a need for the GOP to formulate a constructive strategy for the future and to ignore Limbaugh altogether. Former RNCC Chairman Tom Cole of Oklahoma summed up the GOP’s current predicament with the following observation: “The politics of the country are changing profoundly and rapidly, much as they did in 1932 and 1980.” While Rush Limbaugh intones that Conservative principles are essentially unalterable and forever, moderate Republican observers will argue that those principals need to be modernized or else Republicans are looking at a future with their party in permanent minority status.
Limbaugh and his CPAC acolytes argue that “Americans are conservative by instinct”, but empirically it is hard to make such an argument. A November 2008 poll by Pew Research would show that only 38 percent of Americans identify as conservatives. More importantly the most recent NYT/CBS tracking poll of political identification shows only 28 percent of Americans consider themselves Republican. On a county-by-county basis the 2008 presidential election reveals a significant shift towards the Democratic Party, even in many of the states that went for McCain. With the exception of an arc running roughly from Oklahoma through Arkansas, Tennessee and into Appalachia, most of the rest of the country shows an overall rise in the numbers of people who voted Democrat. Current opinion polls also show that in the face of stubborn opposition from the Right, Obama’s overall approval ratings remain high. With a 60 percent favorable rating overall, the President does even better when polling becomes more specific. On topics like withdrawing from Iraq or whether the economic crisis is his fault or inherited, his ratings exceed 80 percent, whereas for Republicans 56 percent of respondents say they are playing politics rather than standing on principles. In terms of the direction the country, 41 percent say it is on the right track, up from 12 percent who felt that way in October of 2008. Currently, Congressional Republicans have an approval rating below that of their Democrat counterparts. Meanwhile among those below the age of 40, Mr. Limbaugh receives a paltry 11 percent approval rating. His audience and his appeal among independent voters is essentially nonexistent.
While this modern day Conservative Ghost Dance wends its way across the political landscape, its ultimate destination remains a mystery. Given the current political climate it does not seem that Rush Limbaugh, his acolytes and his defacto, if not unwilling, Republican allies will return to majority status or the seat of power anytime soon. While Conservatives are venerating an imagined past, the number of people identifying with the Republican Party or willing to vote for its program is shrinking. The GOP is seen more and more as the party of the South and one that is only gaining adherents among the less educated living in the most rural regions of the country. While the core beliefs and principles of the Right seem out of date or inapplicable in this current climate of worldwide economic crisis, there has to be more to the movement than the politics of obstruction. Absent a new message and a program that attracts independents, the only hope that Conservatives and Republicans have is to bank on Democratic failure, which is neither creative nor compelling in the eyes of the voters. Beyond this paucity of new ideas the more immediate concern is that Limbaugh, the Radical Right and the politics of obstruction will derail the GOP’s electoral chances altogether in the next election cycle. After all 2010 will be here before we know it.
Steven J. Gulitti
New York City
March 5, 2009
Iron Workers Local # 697
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Revving Up The Kamikazes On The Right
In 1281 medieval Japan was spared a Mongolian invasion thanks to a massive typhoon that swept across Kyushu Island, thereby destroying the invading fleet and drowning the Mongolian warriors. The storm was deemed a divine wind or kamikaze, sent by the gods to save the Japanese. In the waning days of the Second World War, Imperial Japan would invoke the legacy of the 1281 typhoon in an attempt to forestall defeat in the Pacific by crashing wave upon wave of kamikazes into allied invasion fleets as they made their way toward the Japanese home islands. Today an ideologically challenged G.O.P. is failing in its effort to forestall the current administration’s recovery plan. Many commentators on the right have chosen to meet the new political reality with waves of virtual kamikaze attacks through all manner of media. The recent New York Post comic portraying a monkey shot by two policemen and insinuating that the monkey is Barack Obama is the latest, and most tasteless, example of the Right’s desperation.
Lead by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Phyllis Schlafly and even the venerable Tony Blankley and Pat Buchanan, the public has been bombarded with dire warnings about “the end of America as we know it.” Readers of Town Hall have been treated to a RED ALERT, which warns: “Economic Collapse is Imminent”. Meanwhile, the conservative website Newsmax is soliciting money for the defeat of the three Republican Senators that supported the stimulus, portraying them as “traitors”. While I am all in favor of intelligent political arguments aimed at maintaining some semblance of fiscal sanity and reigning in wasteful government growth, we are at a time and place that requires a course change in our political economy and drastic remedial actions aimed at economic fundamentals. The reiteration of conservative theories for theory’s sake just doesn’t cut it now. Neither does a partisan reinterpretation of the New Deal do much to guide us out of the current economic abyss into which we have stumbled. Conservatives are wont to say that it was World War II that ended the Depression and not the New Deal; in doing so they fail to point out that spending for armaments as well as for public works are one in the same as both are public spending. Consumers don’t purchase bridges nor do they buy aircraft carriers only governments purchase those kinds of products. Maniacal attacks and fear mongering about “collectivism”, “economic crapshoots” and “savior based economics” do absolutely nothing to get us out of our current predicament and appear only to be aimed at undermining the present administration for political ends. Conservative columnist Lorie Byrd’s recent piece entitled “Obama Voters’ Remorse” appeared on a day when polling averages showed Obama with a 65 percent approval rating, a Congressional Republican approval rating of 34 percent and Democrats on Capitol Hill garnering an approval rating of 48 percent. The day before, while conservative commentators railed against the stimulus package, 80 percent of those polled by Gallup said that passing the stimulus package was either important or very important. Linda Chavez in a piece entitled: “The Audacity of Hope” would claim: ”Indeed, investors have been noticeably bearish since the election.” trying to blame Obama for the current dissatisfaction between Main Street and Wall Street. While the Dow has lost 1327 points since Election Day, it lost 4317 points between May 2008 and November 11th. Can we really blame the current administration for our dissatisfaction with Wall Street or is Ms. Chavez just playing games with facts in an effort to undermine Barack Obama for political reasons?
There is a curious trichotomy on the right today. First and foremost, there is something disingenuous in the GOP’s newfound conservative fiscal ethos. For the first six years of the last administration the national debt doubled with George Bush amassing more debt than the previous forty two presidents combined and Dick Cheney claiming: “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.” The very Republicans who opposed the stimulus package were more than eager to spend public money during most of the Bush presidency. That said, in spite of their opposition to the Obama recovery plan, Republicans on Capitol Hill know that given the current situation, increased government involvement in the economy is inevitable. Let us not forget that it was House Republicans that insisted on a partial socialization of banking in the autumn of 2008. Is the newfound Republican devotion to fiscal responsibility real or merely a political ploy affected to procure the support of the party faithful? Meanwhile, outside of the Beltway there is considerable support for the Obama recovery plan among Republican Governors. But like the suicide pilots of 1945, many conservative commentators seem unwilling to admit that political change is upon us and instead have chosen to incessantly--if not at times recklessly and dishonestly--attack Barack Obama at a time of deepening national crisis. While many of these attacks are cloaked in the garment of “true patriotism” this conservative media assault may very well have the net affect of further undermining the GOP’s appeal among moderate voters without which the party cannot hope to return to power. To quote political commentator Steve McMahon: ”The Republican leadership is stuck between Rush Limbaugh and the American people who want an end to partisan bickering.” In the past, when Republicans have suffered an election defeat when running a pragmatic candidate, they have chosen to turn to ideological purists in the next election cycle. That may be a formula for defeat in 2010, but the G.O.P. may be driven in that direction anyway thanks to a base that is riled up by a conservative media that seems more interested in undermining a popular president for imagined political advantage. Many conservative commentators are now beholden to a misguided belief that conservative dogmatic purity and ideological zealotry are ends in their own right. While the “true believers” may feel tremendous satisfaction in their ideological purity, just as kamikaze pilots did sixty-four years ago, their chances of driving a wedge between the greater body politic and the Obama Administration are less than a sure strategy for victory and may very well derail the Republican Party when voters head to the polls in 2010.
Steven J. Gulitti
New York City
February 22, 2009
Iron Workers Local # 697
Lead by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Phyllis Schlafly and even the venerable Tony Blankley and Pat Buchanan, the public has been bombarded with dire warnings about “the end of America as we know it.” Readers of Town Hall have been treated to a RED ALERT, which warns: “Economic Collapse is Imminent”. Meanwhile, the conservative website Newsmax is soliciting money for the defeat of the three Republican Senators that supported the stimulus, portraying them as “traitors”. While I am all in favor of intelligent political arguments aimed at maintaining some semblance of fiscal sanity and reigning in wasteful government growth, we are at a time and place that requires a course change in our political economy and drastic remedial actions aimed at economic fundamentals. The reiteration of conservative theories for theory’s sake just doesn’t cut it now. Neither does a partisan reinterpretation of the New Deal do much to guide us out of the current economic abyss into which we have stumbled. Conservatives are wont to say that it was World War II that ended the Depression and not the New Deal; in doing so they fail to point out that spending for armaments as well as for public works are one in the same as both are public spending. Consumers don’t purchase bridges nor do they buy aircraft carriers only governments purchase those kinds of products. Maniacal attacks and fear mongering about “collectivism”, “economic crapshoots” and “savior based economics” do absolutely nothing to get us out of our current predicament and appear only to be aimed at undermining the present administration for political ends. Conservative columnist Lorie Byrd’s recent piece entitled “Obama Voters’ Remorse” appeared on a day when polling averages showed Obama with a 65 percent approval rating, a Congressional Republican approval rating of 34 percent and Democrats on Capitol Hill garnering an approval rating of 48 percent. The day before, while conservative commentators railed against the stimulus package, 80 percent of those polled by Gallup said that passing the stimulus package was either important or very important. Linda Chavez in a piece entitled: “The Audacity of Hope” would claim: ”Indeed, investors have been noticeably bearish since the election.” trying to blame Obama for the current dissatisfaction between Main Street and Wall Street. While the Dow has lost 1327 points since Election Day, it lost 4317 points between May 2008 and November 11th. Can we really blame the current administration for our dissatisfaction with Wall Street or is Ms. Chavez just playing games with facts in an effort to undermine Barack Obama for political reasons?
There is a curious trichotomy on the right today. First and foremost, there is something disingenuous in the GOP’s newfound conservative fiscal ethos. For the first six years of the last administration the national debt doubled with George Bush amassing more debt than the previous forty two presidents combined and Dick Cheney claiming: “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.” The very Republicans who opposed the stimulus package were more than eager to spend public money during most of the Bush presidency. That said, in spite of their opposition to the Obama recovery plan, Republicans on Capitol Hill know that given the current situation, increased government involvement in the economy is inevitable. Let us not forget that it was House Republicans that insisted on a partial socialization of banking in the autumn of 2008. Is the newfound Republican devotion to fiscal responsibility real or merely a political ploy affected to procure the support of the party faithful? Meanwhile, outside of the Beltway there is considerable support for the Obama recovery plan among Republican Governors. But like the suicide pilots of 1945, many conservative commentators seem unwilling to admit that political change is upon us and instead have chosen to incessantly--if not at times recklessly and dishonestly--attack Barack Obama at a time of deepening national crisis. While many of these attacks are cloaked in the garment of “true patriotism” this conservative media assault may very well have the net affect of further undermining the GOP’s appeal among moderate voters without which the party cannot hope to return to power. To quote political commentator Steve McMahon: ”The Republican leadership is stuck between Rush Limbaugh and the American people who want an end to partisan bickering.” In the past, when Republicans have suffered an election defeat when running a pragmatic candidate, they have chosen to turn to ideological purists in the next election cycle. That may be a formula for defeat in 2010, but the G.O.P. may be driven in that direction anyway thanks to a base that is riled up by a conservative media that seems more interested in undermining a popular president for imagined political advantage. Many conservative commentators are now beholden to a misguided belief that conservative dogmatic purity and ideological zealotry are ends in their own right. While the “true believers” may feel tremendous satisfaction in their ideological purity, just as kamikaze pilots did sixty-four years ago, their chances of driving a wedge between the greater body politic and the Obama Administration are less than a sure strategy for victory and may very well derail the Republican Party when voters head to the polls in 2010.
Steven J. Gulitti
New York City
February 22, 2009
Iron Workers Local # 697
Friday, February 6, 2009
On the Verge of a Stimulus Plan
Regrettably the Obama Administration has gotten off to a sloppy start both in letting House Democrats take the lead in crafting the stimulus plan and in the tax related problems surrounding several high level appointees. But make no mistake about it; these missteps are not fatal and will not magically vindicate the failed policies of the past. They will not by default somehow lead to the immediate resurrection conservative ideology and their shelf life in the news cycle will be relatively short. If all one did was to heed the political babble of the Hannitys, Limbaughs and Malkins of the world one would think that we had arrived at Jimmy Carter redux but that is emphatically not the case. The folly of such sentiment is apparent in a last minute plea by Dick Morris via The National Republican Trust PAC entitled: “Obama Close to Big Defeat, Help Make It Happen”. The alarm is sounded anew about the supposed threat of “socialism” and among other things, the dredging up once again of Jeremiah Wright as if he has anything to do with the current administration. If one were to only set his or her dial to the right side of the political spectrum one would believe that the election of Barack Obama was some sort of aberration, a visitation if you will, on the American body politic. One of the more interesting outcomes of the last election is the extent to which the conservative punditry has parted company with Congressional Republicans. Conservative commentary has been relentless in its incessant rant about the slippery slope of economic socialization and its penchant for dogmatic purity in a day and age when practical solutions trump ideological debate. In contrast, Republicans on Capitol Hill have embraced the notion of the stimulus plan even while arguing about particular elements contained therein.
On the verge of a resolution of the stimulus package, conservative commentator David Brooks was quick to point out that Republican opposition to the bill was more in the realm of legislative particulars with ideological arguments largely absent from the discussion. To quote Brooks, “If the stimulus fails, Republicans don’t want their name on it.” Having insisted on a partial socialization of the financial sector during the Bush Administration’s bank bailout the GOP is ideologically hobbled in the midst of the present discussion as to whether or not the government should be involved in stepping in to help right a floundering economy. With the Republican Party losing ground across a large swath of the political landscape, obstructionism at this point in time will only serve to further hinder the GOP in the next election cycle. In spite of the apparent fact that Congressional Democrats have yet to get the message that the public is fed up with earmarks and spending for esoteric pet projects, Republicans on the Hill know that there is no political cover in obstructionism. As the bill winds its way through the Senate, moderate Republicans are showing support and that should be all that is needed to reach a workable compromise. That said Republicans on Capitol Hill have admirably stood up to the notion of wasteful spending even if that portion of the bill characterized as such amounts to a relatively small sum of the total spending. Moreover, Republicans have been right on the mark in pointing out the lack of stimulus inherent in spending that is two to three years out in the bill. In the final analysis on November 4th the American people voted for a new direction in the American political economy and with that there comes an implicit increased involvement of government in economic activity. Barack Obama may be off to a rocky if not sloppy start, but a new course has most assuredly been charted and fundamentally, Congressional Republicans, if not the conservative talking class are on board for the ride.
Steven J. Gulitti
NYC
February 6, 2009
On the verge of a resolution of the stimulus package, conservative commentator David Brooks was quick to point out that Republican opposition to the bill was more in the realm of legislative particulars with ideological arguments largely absent from the discussion. To quote Brooks, “If the stimulus fails, Republicans don’t want their name on it.” Having insisted on a partial socialization of the financial sector during the Bush Administration’s bank bailout the GOP is ideologically hobbled in the midst of the present discussion as to whether or not the government should be involved in stepping in to help right a floundering economy. With the Republican Party losing ground across a large swath of the political landscape, obstructionism at this point in time will only serve to further hinder the GOP in the next election cycle. In spite of the apparent fact that Congressional Democrats have yet to get the message that the public is fed up with earmarks and spending for esoteric pet projects, Republicans on the Hill know that there is no political cover in obstructionism. As the bill winds its way through the Senate, moderate Republicans are showing support and that should be all that is needed to reach a workable compromise. That said Republicans on Capitol Hill have admirably stood up to the notion of wasteful spending even if that portion of the bill characterized as such amounts to a relatively small sum of the total spending. Moreover, Republicans have been right on the mark in pointing out the lack of stimulus inherent in spending that is two to three years out in the bill. In the final analysis on November 4th the American people voted for a new direction in the American political economy and with that there comes an implicit increased involvement of government in economic activity. Barack Obama may be off to a rocky if not sloppy start, but a new course has most assuredly been charted and fundamentally, Congressional Republicans, if not the conservative talking class are on board for the ride.
Steven J. Gulitti
NYC
February 6, 2009
Sunday, February 1, 2009
The Challenge of a New Morning in America
Historically there are two types of elections in this country, changes in speed or in direction. The election of Barack Obama is unquestionably of the latter and with it comes an inherent change toward a more progressive political climate. His inaugural address signaled the end of the era of Reagan as well as that of the Clintons as the driving force within the Democratic Party. But within this historical realignment there are daunting challenges facing both parties. A key challenge for the Democrats is to avoid falling back into the bad old habit of throwing money at social problems without adequate examination of those problems or insuring intelligent oversight so as to avoid fiscal waste. Likewise, there is the age-old temptation to create voter allegiance tied to steady streams of government largesse. Already the stimulus plan has more than a few questionable spending proposals that will do little to create economic activity but will certainly increase government spending. If these items have been included as bargaining chips that can be traded off for real simulative measures in the final legislation that is one thing, anything else is unacceptable. Democrats should not fool themselves into thinking that the failed Bush Administration will somehow, as if by magic, guarantee the party a free ride into the future. In crafting government programs designed to deal with the current economic downturn or which attempt to bring American social policy into the 21st Century, progressives need to be mindful of the future entitlement-funding crisis that is looming just over the horizon.
The ideologically exhausted Republicans face a far more complex set of challenges. While many will pay lip service to the values of small government, free markets and deregulation, there is the undeniable realization that large-scale government participation in the economy, in the near term, is a foregone conclusion both in public spending and financial regulation. Commenting on the proposed stimulus last week Senator Robert Bennett (R-UT) said: “Democrats should break out pieces of the huge stimulus that both parties agree will work and quickly approve them. You could take the $30 billion for roads and bridges that is truly shovel ready and pass that this afternoon. Lets pick those pieces out, pass them right away, and then say, O.K., this is a down payment on the $800 billion.” It’s more than apparent that any Republican, especially one from Utah, who is accepting $800 billion in a stimulus program, is not in opposition to the concept of government involvement in the economy. The real debate across the aisle revolves around cutting taxes vice spending but most economists come down on the side of spending, as tax cuts, while quick to enact, don’t necessarily create immediate economic activity. Consider the Bush tax rebate of last summer, 80 percent of it went to pay down debt or into savings thereby creating little in the way of a spending stimulus. Building public works creates demand for construction materials, puts people to work who in turn spend and the end product is a public good that lasts for generations. On the other hand, outside of tax credits for equipment or facilities, businesses will not necessarily expand output due to receiving a tax break unless they see a demand for their goods or services. In the final analysis, Republicans on Capitol Hill have reverted in form to the role they played in the era before Ronald Reagan, that of advocating a better way to mange government as opposed to being the purveyors of policies that guide the country to the right. In commenting on the House version of the stimulus, Eric Cantor (R-VA) said:” We must reconcile the nation’s need for quick action with the need for prudent policies designed to spur sustainable job creation here in America.” That there is not much in the way of rhetoric about “government being the problem” or relying on the private sector to pull us out of the slump just goes to show you how much the Republicans have had to accept the paradigm shift that has taken place in the American political economy.
Outside the Beltway, on conservative talk radio and in the blogosphere, there is a growing chorus of opposition that centers on the inability to accept the fact that the Reagan Revolution is over and that many of its precepts may no longer be applicable. From Michelle Malkin’s recent article admonishing the GOP to work to undo anything progressive that Obama advocates to Dick Morris suggesting that Republicans insist on “free market measures” as part of any stimulus to the serial draft dodger Rush Limbaugh’s unpatriotic prattle that he hopes Obama fails, there is an element of political dead enders who just can’t accept the fact that things are changing in America. The President addressed this very situation in his inaugural address: “What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them, that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.”
It is not insignificant that Republicans picked an African-American as the new face of the GOP. Implicit in this development is the fact that the idea put forth by Karl Rove that there could be a permanent Republican majority is a pipe dream and that the GOP must broaden its base to remain relevant. Moreover, an analysis of voting patterns in the last election showed that even in most Red States there was an increased trend toward voters who choose Democrats. Republicans only gained voters in a swath of the country beginning in Oklahoma and stretching in an arc across Appalachia, that part of America that is the least ethnically diverse, least educated and the most economically depressed. While many on the right admire Rush Limbaugh it is important to note that his following is but 14 million in a nation of 330 million people, roughly 4 percent of the population. Collectively this extreme element on the right further complicates the fortunes of those Republicans on Capitol Hill who know that outright obstructionism coupled with a dogmatic regurgitation of conservative principles will be a formula for failure in the next election cycle, baring an unlikely rapid return to economic prosperity. In the debate surrounding the stimulus, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) addressed criticism from the right aimed at upending bi-partisan efforts in the Senate: “Anyone who belittles cooperation resigns him or herself to a state of permanent legislative gridlock and that is simply no longer acceptable to the American people.” Thus the Republicans are faced the dual challenges of a pressing need to reassess their core ideology while at the same time containing the self destructive zealots within the extreme right wing of the GOP and the wider conservative movement.
Steven J. Gulitti
NYC
February 1, 2009
The ideologically exhausted Republicans face a far more complex set of challenges. While many will pay lip service to the values of small government, free markets and deregulation, there is the undeniable realization that large-scale government participation in the economy, in the near term, is a foregone conclusion both in public spending and financial regulation. Commenting on the proposed stimulus last week Senator Robert Bennett (R-UT) said: “Democrats should break out pieces of the huge stimulus that both parties agree will work and quickly approve them. You could take the $30 billion for roads and bridges that is truly shovel ready and pass that this afternoon. Lets pick those pieces out, pass them right away, and then say, O.K., this is a down payment on the $800 billion.” It’s more than apparent that any Republican, especially one from Utah, who is accepting $800 billion in a stimulus program, is not in opposition to the concept of government involvement in the economy. The real debate across the aisle revolves around cutting taxes vice spending but most economists come down on the side of spending, as tax cuts, while quick to enact, don’t necessarily create immediate economic activity. Consider the Bush tax rebate of last summer, 80 percent of it went to pay down debt or into savings thereby creating little in the way of a spending stimulus. Building public works creates demand for construction materials, puts people to work who in turn spend and the end product is a public good that lasts for generations. On the other hand, outside of tax credits for equipment or facilities, businesses will not necessarily expand output due to receiving a tax break unless they see a demand for their goods or services. In the final analysis, Republicans on Capitol Hill have reverted in form to the role they played in the era before Ronald Reagan, that of advocating a better way to mange government as opposed to being the purveyors of policies that guide the country to the right. In commenting on the House version of the stimulus, Eric Cantor (R-VA) said:” We must reconcile the nation’s need for quick action with the need for prudent policies designed to spur sustainable job creation here in America.” That there is not much in the way of rhetoric about “government being the problem” or relying on the private sector to pull us out of the slump just goes to show you how much the Republicans have had to accept the paradigm shift that has taken place in the American political economy.
Outside the Beltway, on conservative talk radio and in the blogosphere, there is a growing chorus of opposition that centers on the inability to accept the fact that the Reagan Revolution is over and that many of its precepts may no longer be applicable. From Michelle Malkin’s recent article admonishing the GOP to work to undo anything progressive that Obama advocates to Dick Morris suggesting that Republicans insist on “free market measures” as part of any stimulus to the serial draft dodger Rush Limbaugh’s unpatriotic prattle that he hopes Obama fails, there is an element of political dead enders who just can’t accept the fact that things are changing in America. The President addressed this very situation in his inaugural address: “What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them, that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.”
It is not insignificant that Republicans picked an African-American as the new face of the GOP. Implicit in this development is the fact that the idea put forth by Karl Rove that there could be a permanent Republican majority is a pipe dream and that the GOP must broaden its base to remain relevant. Moreover, an analysis of voting patterns in the last election showed that even in most Red States there was an increased trend toward voters who choose Democrats. Republicans only gained voters in a swath of the country beginning in Oklahoma and stretching in an arc across Appalachia, that part of America that is the least ethnically diverse, least educated and the most economically depressed. While many on the right admire Rush Limbaugh it is important to note that his following is but 14 million in a nation of 330 million people, roughly 4 percent of the population. Collectively this extreme element on the right further complicates the fortunes of those Republicans on Capitol Hill who know that outright obstructionism coupled with a dogmatic regurgitation of conservative principles will be a formula for failure in the next election cycle, baring an unlikely rapid return to economic prosperity. In the debate surrounding the stimulus, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) addressed criticism from the right aimed at upending bi-partisan efforts in the Senate: “Anyone who belittles cooperation resigns him or herself to a state of permanent legislative gridlock and that is simply no longer acceptable to the American people.” Thus the Republicans are faced the dual challenges of a pressing need to reassess their core ideology while at the same time containing the self destructive zealots within the extreme right wing of the GOP and the wider conservative movement.
Steven J. Gulitti
NYC
February 1, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
THE REPUBLICAN JOURNEY IN THE WILDERNESS, IT COULD BE A LONG ONE
In the weeks leading up to the 2008 elections, while conservative radio and television talk show hosts were hoping beyond hope for some narrowing of the gap between McCain and Obama, more serious conservative thinkers were arguing that a return to the political “wilderness” could do the Republican Party a world of good in helping to chart a new path to future electoral success. In the months that have elapsed since the election of Barack Obama I have monitored all manner of editorials and opinion pieces on the right. For the most part the post mortems revolve around whether the Republican Party should move further to the right or whether it should embark on some degree of ideological reform so as to reach out to Hispanics, Blacks and the working class in an effort to broaden its’ political appeal. The majority of opinion favors a “return to the principles of Ronald Reagan”. There has been a wholesale rejection of the Bush Administration and the candidacy of John McCain as representing a self-defeating deviation from the core principles of the Reagan years. Absent from the discussion is the question of to what extent are the essential principles of the Republican Party still relevant and valid in this day and age.
First and foremost is the penchant in conservative ideology for limited government, but to what extent is limited government a viable option in a global world where many problems are national or international in scope. To what extent can the American people reasonably expect state and local government to effectively address issues of terrorism, economic dislocation or healthcare? Does anyone realistically expect that we can return to the age of Calvin Coolidge? Conservative historian Paul Johnson points out that the rise of big government in the West is the result of the institutionalization of modern warfare and does not stem from liberal politics. Conservative columnist David Brooks has pointed out that due to the nature of problems facing America in the 21st century; limited government is just not an option. Even the Neocon William Kristol stated in a recent column:” So talk of small government may be music to conservative ears, but it’s not to the public as a whole.”
To what extent does an overemphasis on free market principles hold any appeal in the midst of the current economic maelstrom? While I am all in favor of a functioning free market where it is proven to be effective, there are more than a few examples as to where it has been an abject failure. Healthcare is the point on the political landscape where conservatives have chosen to draw a line in the sand, the crossing of which will inevitably lead to a “slide into European Socialism”. That our present healthcare system is failing to provide adequate coverage is an established fact. Along with the “socialist threat” a chief conservative opposition to universal health coverage is that the American people don’t want a government official to stand between them and their doctors. What we have instead are insurance company and HMO bureaucrats standing between the people and their healthcare providers while the HMOs and the drug companies reap enormous profits while our ranking in world healthcare continues to decline relative to nationalized systems. We are the only advanced country without universal healthcare, which means that the cost of healthcare has to be priced into every American product and service. This further impedes our competitiveness in a global economy while at the same time it contributes to the image of America as a socially backward country.
The debacle in the housing and financial markets borne of deregulation started in the Clinton years and made all the more perilous during the Bush Administration has put the country on a course that could lead to a prolonged recession if not a depression. Alan Greenspan himself admitted that the very basis of deregulation was based on a “flaw” of having overestimated the free markets’ ability to self correct, stating in his own words that the: “whole intellectual edifice collapsed in the summer of last year.” Republicans continue to stress the virtues of the free market in spite of the fact that House Republicans insisted on what amounts to a partial socialization of the banking system as a quid-pro-quo in their support for the financial bailout. In their touting of free market economic theories Republicans ignore the established fact that over the past 60 years the economy has performed better under Democratic Administrations as has been pointed out by Princeton political economist Larry Bartels in his new book “Unequal Democracy”. Government statistics have further shown that even the among the rich, the amount of economic remuneration received when Democrats are in office is only marginally less than that received during Republican administrations thereby undermining the conservative claim that taxing the wealthiest hurts the economy. From the trickle down policies of Nixon to supply side economics of Ronald Reagan to the trickle down of George W. Bush, Republican tax policies have led to a shift of the tax burden from wealth to labor creating the largest disparities in income between classes since the 1920s.
In the controversy surrounding the auto industry bailout one conservative after another has called into question the use of taxpayer funds to bailout Detroit while touting the “success” of foreign automakers in the South as an example of the benefits of a properly functioning free market. Absent from the discussion is the fact that billions of taxpayer dollars were spent in the Sunbelt to lure Japanese and German carmakers to the region as well as the fact that those companies are aided in the process of capital formation in their home economies by not having to pay for healthcare in a nationalized system. James Womack of the Lean Enterprise Institute has gone so far as to say that if it were not for the legacy healthcare costs Detroit would be price competitive with foreign carmakers. I suspect that what was really behind the opposition of most conservatives to bailing out Detroit is a desire to cripple the United Auto Workers and further impede the union movement before the Employee Free Choice Act resurfaces in Congress this year. The prospect of 57 million American workers finally achieving union recognition is not on the agenda of the GOP in spite of its supposed desire to reach out to working Americans.
In opposing government intervention in times of economic crisis, Republicans are ignoring the traditional role of the Federal government in fostering economic development that goes back in an unbroken line to the early nineteenth century. Republicans continue to tout the virtues of unregulated free market economics at a time of grave danger regardless of the historical fact that the Great Depression has proved otherwise. I would say that it is highly significant that at the 2009 annual meeting of the American Economic Association there has been a wholesale rejection of Reagan era economic principles with virtually all of those present endorsing greater government involvement in the economy via the levers of public spending and, that spending should play a greater role than tax cuts in the upcoming stimulus package. In calling for significant and sustained federal assistance in dealing with the current crisis, conservative economist Ben Stein has said: “The private sector is the patient, not the doctor.”
The cherished conservative wedge issues of “Guns, Gays and God” proved to be non issues in the 2008 election due to both the economic crisis and their declining salience among the non evangelical population at large. The younger the electoral age bracket, the less opposition there is to the rights of gays to marry, even among those voters who identify themselves as Republican. While three states voted against allowing same sex marriage, three states defeated statewide initiatives to ban abortion. Likewise this holiday season saw the issue of the “War on Christmas” as having far less of a media impact than it has had in recent years. To paraphrase Congressional Quarterly’s Jonathan Allen: “The cultural wars are over”. The population as a whole has moved on from the three major conservative wedge issues thereby rendering them far less meaningful in the future.
Even in what had heretofore been the strong suit of the Republican Party, national security, there is evidence of an unraveling. The Republicans have bet the house that the tactical success of the troop surge in Iraq would somehow make up for the fact that we never had a coherent strategy for the war or that the war itself is an unnecessary detour in the wider war on Islamic terror. More than one National Intelligence Estimate revealed that Al Qaeda never made up more than 5 or 7 percent of the insurgents in country and that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia was but a copycat organization that is indigenous to Iraq contradicting the mantra that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror. The last N.I.E. dealing with the subject stated that Al Qaeda had reconstituted itself in the Northwest of Pakistan with an August 2008 follow on report stating that the enemy was more secure and more potent than in September of 2001. In a recently published book, “The Inheritance”, David Sanger has pointed out that while we have been bogged down in Iraq, Iran and China have grown stronger; North Korea has gone from zero nuclear warheads to several; Russia is resurgent and the Pakistan / Afghanistan region has grown dangerously unstable. Domestically we have failed to commit funding to enhancing homeland security by ensuring the safety of chemical plants, ports, railways, water supplies and the power grid. We should all be mindful that the 9/11 terrorists turned available American resources into WMDs and that unprotected chlorine plants or railway tank cars carrying chemicals are as potentially dangerous as airplanes. While President Bush likes to point out that since 9/11 we have not had to endure another attack on American soil, the number of terrorist attacks worldwide has skyrocketed since the invasion of Iraq. If this country is subject to another attack it will not directly be the result of Democrats controlling Washington but may very well be the result of a fundamentally misguided Bush era national security and foreign policy legacy.
Controversy and conflict among conservative thinkers reveals just how much trouble the Republican Party could be in over the near term. The validity of its’ core ideals may point to even greater troubles over the long term. From Fred Barnes to William Kristol to Michelle Bernard there have been calls for a new direction and an adjustment of conservative principles while ultraconservative Grover Norquist has said that calls for reform: “Will be cheerfully ignored.” Ms. Bernard has gone so far as to say that the Republican Party has shrunk to a regional party centered in the South and that it lost the 2008 election: “Because its message was disconnected from the majority of Americans.” But is it the message or the principals upon which the message is based that has given rise to this electoral disconnect? Fred Barnes, of the conservative “Weekly Standard”, has said that conservative principles must be adjusted so as to ensure election victories in the future but how far can you travel from your core beliefs before those beliefs become meaningless? The unprecedented government intrusion into the financial system last fall, with Republicans insisting on a partial government equity stake in banking, shows just how far the party’s’ policies have strayed from the twin ideological tenants of free market economics and limited government. This policy departure has in effect eroded the validity of these two very basic conservative concepts. With the exception of arguing what the role of tax policy should be in the stimulus package, the likely Republican acquiescence to Barack Obama’s recovery program will mark a significant shift from the ideas of Ronal Reagan. You certainly don’t hear too much talk lately about “government as being the problem”, especially among Republicans. Quoting conservative Rich Lowry: “The twenty-five year run of free markets, free trade and deregulation are over. We are already into a paradigm shift.”
Many conservatives that I know are hoping that Barack Obama will be a one term President and that as if by magic, the Republican Party will find electoral salvation in: “a return to the principles of Ronald Reagan.” It goes without saying that a channeling of the memories of Reagan into the present political environment would be about as effective as Sarah Palin’s constant rant about Obama being a “socialist” in upending the Democrats. The double whammy of the Wall Street meltdown and the multibillion-dollar misadventure in Iraq will be to the Republicans of this century what the inability to foresee and respond to the Great Depression was to the GOP in the last. While the Republicans can certainly win elections in environments where voters seek to punish the Democrats as opposed to embracing Republican ideas, the GOP could very well find itself relegated to running on the platform that it can better manage government than in winning elections by offering positions that represent an ideological change of course. This was the lot of the Republicans in the postwar period up until the election of Ronald Reagan. For the GOP the journey to the wilderness could be a long one, quite possibly as long as a generation.
Steven J. Gulitti
N.Y.C.
12 January 2009
First and foremost is the penchant in conservative ideology for limited government, but to what extent is limited government a viable option in a global world where many problems are national or international in scope. To what extent can the American people reasonably expect state and local government to effectively address issues of terrorism, economic dislocation or healthcare? Does anyone realistically expect that we can return to the age of Calvin Coolidge? Conservative historian Paul Johnson points out that the rise of big government in the West is the result of the institutionalization of modern warfare and does not stem from liberal politics. Conservative columnist David Brooks has pointed out that due to the nature of problems facing America in the 21st century; limited government is just not an option. Even the Neocon William Kristol stated in a recent column:” So talk of small government may be music to conservative ears, but it’s not to the public as a whole.”
To what extent does an overemphasis on free market principles hold any appeal in the midst of the current economic maelstrom? While I am all in favor of a functioning free market where it is proven to be effective, there are more than a few examples as to where it has been an abject failure. Healthcare is the point on the political landscape where conservatives have chosen to draw a line in the sand, the crossing of which will inevitably lead to a “slide into European Socialism”. That our present healthcare system is failing to provide adequate coverage is an established fact. Along with the “socialist threat” a chief conservative opposition to universal health coverage is that the American people don’t want a government official to stand between them and their doctors. What we have instead are insurance company and HMO bureaucrats standing between the people and their healthcare providers while the HMOs and the drug companies reap enormous profits while our ranking in world healthcare continues to decline relative to nationalized systems. We are the only advanced country without universal healthcare, which means that the cost of healthcare has to be priced into every American product and service. This further impedes our competitiveness in a global economy while at the same time it contributes to the image of America as a socially backward country.
The debacle in the housing and financial markets borne of deregulation started in the Clinton years and made all the more perilous during the Bush Administration has put the country on a course that could lead to a prolonged recession if not a depression. Alan Greenspan himself admitted that the very basis of deregulation was based on a “flaw” of having overestimated the free markets’ ability to self correct, stating in his own words that the: “whole intellectual edifice collapsed in the summer of last year.” Republicans continue to stress the virtues of the free market in spite of the fact that House Republicans insisted on what amounts to a partial socialization of the banking system as a quid-pro-quo in their support for the financial bailout. In their touting of free market economic theories Republicans ignore the established fact that over the past 60 years the economy has performed better under Democratic Administrations as has been pointed out by Princeton political economist Larry Bartels in his new book “Unequal Democracy”. Government statistics have further shown that even the among the rich, the amount of economic remuneration received when Democrats are in office is only marginally less than that received during Republican administrations thereby undermining the conservative claim that taxing the wealthiest hurts the economy. From the trickle down policies of Nixon to supply side economics of Ronald Reagan to the trickle down of George W. Bush, Republican tax policies have led to a shift of the tax burden from wealth to labor creating the largest disparities in income between classes since the 1920s.
In the controversy surrounding the auto industry bailout one conservative after another has called into question the use of taxpayer funds to bailout Detroit while touting the “success” of foreign automakers in the South as an example of the benefits of a properly functioning free market. Absent from the discussion is the fact that billions of taxpayer dollars were spent in the Sunbelt to lure Japanese and German carmakers to the region as well as the fact that those companies are aided in the process of capital formation in their home economies by not having to pay for healthcare in a nationalized system. James Womack of the Lean Enterprise Institute has gone so far as to say that if it were not for the legacy healthcare costs Detroit would be price competitive with foreign carmakers. I suspect that what was really behind the opposition of most conservatives to bailing out Detroit is a desire to cripple the United Auto Workers and further impede the union movement before the Employee Free Choice Act resurfaces in Congress this year. The prospect of 57 million American workers finally achieving union recognition is not on the agenda of the GOP in spite of its supposed desire to reach out to working Americans.
In opposing government intervention in times of economic crisis, Republicans are ignoring the traditional role of the Federal government in fostering economic development that goes back in an unbroken line to the early nineteenth century. Republicans continue to tout the virtues of unregulated free market economics at a time of grave danger regardless of the historical fact that the Great Depression has proved otherwise. I would say that it is highly significant that at the 2009 annual meeting of the American Economic Association there has been a wholesale rejection of Reagan era economic principles with virtually all of those present endorsing greater government involvement in the economy via the levers of public spending and, that spending should play a greater role than tax cuts in the upcoming stimulus package. In calling for significant and sustained federal assistance in dealing with the current crisis, conservative economist Ben Stein has said: “The private sector is the patient, not the doctor.”
The cherished conservative wedge issues of “Guns, Gays and God” proved to be non issues in the 2008 election due to both the economic crisis and their declining salience among the non evangelical population at large. The younger the electoral age bracket, the less opposition there is to the rights of gays to marry, even among those voters who identify themselves as Republican. While three states voted against allowing same sex marriage, three states defeated statewide initiatives to ban abortion. Likewise this holiday season saw the issue of the “War on Christmas” as having far less of a media impact than it has had in recent years. To paraphrase Congressional Quarterly’s Jonathan Allen: “The cultural wars are over”. The population as a whole has moved on from the three major conservative wedge issues thereby rendering them far less meaningful in the future.
Even in what had heretofore been the strong suit of the Republican Party, national security, there is evidence of an unraveling. The Republicans have bet the house that the tactical success of the troop surge in Iraq would somehow make up for the fact that we never had a coherent strategy for the war or that the war itself is an unnecessary detour in the wider war on Islamic terror. More than one National Intelligence Estimate revealed that Al Qaeda never made up more than 5 or 7 percent of the insurgents in country and that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia was but a copycat organization that is indigenous to Iraq contradicting the mantra that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror. The last N.I.E. dealing with the subject stated that Al Qaeda had reconstituted itself in the Northwest of Pakistan with an August 2008 follow on report stating that the enemy was more secure and more potent than in September of 2001. In a recently published book, “The Inheritance”, David Sanger has pointed out that while we have been bogged down in Iraq, Iran and China have grown stronger; North Korea has gone from zero nuclear warheads to several; Russia is resurgent and the Pakistan / Afghanistan region has grown dangerously unstable. Domestically we have failed to commit funding to enhancing homeland security by ensuring the safety of chemical plants, ports, railways, water supplies and the power grid. We should all be mindful that the 9/11 terrorists turned available American resources into WMDs and that unprotected chlorine plants or railway tank cars carrying chemicals are as potentially dangerous as airplanes. While President Bush likes to point out that since 9/11 we have not had to endure another attack on American soil, the number of terrorist attacks worldwide has skyrocketed since the invasion of Iraq. If this country is subject to another attack it will not directly be the result of Democrats controlling Washington but may very well be the result of a fundamentally misguided Bush era national security and foreign policy legacy.
Controversy and conflict among conservative thinkers reveals just how much trouble the Republican Party could be in over the near term. The validity of its’ core ideals may point to even greater troubles over the long term. From Fred Barnes to William Kristol to Michelle Bernard there have been calls for a new direction and an adjustment of conservative principles while ultraconservative Grover Norquist has said that calls for reform: “Will be cheerfully ignored.” Ms. Bernard has gone so far as to say that the Republican Party has shrunk to a regional party centered in the South and that it lost the 2008 election: “Because its message was disconnected from the majority of Americans.” But is it the message or the principals upon which the message is based that has given rise to this electoral disconnect? Fred Barnes, of the conservative “Weekly Standard”, has said that conservative principles must be adjusted so as to ensure election victories in the future but how far can you travel from your core beliefs before those beliefs become meaningless? The unprecedented government intrusion into the financial system last fall, with Republicans insisting on a partial government equity stake in banking, shows just how far the party’s’ policies have strayed from the twin ideological tenants of free market economics and limited government. This policy departure has in effect eroded the validity of these two very basic conservative concepts. With the exception of arguing what the role of tax policy should be in the stimulus package, the likely Republican acquiescence to Barack Obama’s recovery program will mark a significant shift from the ideas of Ronal Reagan. You certainly don’t hear too much talk lately about “government as being the problem”, especially among Republicans. Quoting conservative Rich Lowry: “The twenty-five year run of free markets, free trade and deregulation are over. We are already into a paradigm shift.”
Many conservatives that I know are hoping that Barack Obama will be a one term President and that as if by magic, the Republican Party will find electoral salvation in: “a return to the principles of Ronald Reagan.” It goes without saying that a channeling of the memories of Reagan into the present political environment would be about as effective as Sarah Palin’s constant rant about Obama being a “socialist” in upending the Democrats. The double whammy of the Wall Street meltdown and the multibillion-dollar misadventure in Iraq will be to the Republicans of this century what the inability to foresee and respond to the Great Depression was to the GOP in the last. While the Republicans can certainly win elections in environments where voters seek to punish the Democrats as opposed to embracing Republican ideas, the GOP could very well find itself relegated to running on the platform that it can better manage government than in winning elections by offering positions that represent an ideological change of course. This was the lot of the Republicans in the postwar period up until the election of Ronald Reagan. For the GOP the journey to the wilderness could be a long one, quite possibly as long as a generation.
Steven J. Gulitti
N.Y.C.
12 January 2009
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