"I don't think this election is about details," crowed Ron Johnson, the Tea Party-backed challenger to three-term Democratic Senator Russ Feingold, shortly after his opponent meticulously explained how the 2009 stimulus bill saved more than a million and a half jobs at their recent debate in Wausau, Wisconsin. Johnson, who currently enjoys an eight point lead in the polls, is a millionaire businessman who has never held office ("That sounds pretty good -- no previous elected experience" he boasted last month at a candidates' forum). Like all Tea Party candidates, he believes he is running a populist campaign -- no matter that he has personally poured 4.4 million dollars into his war chest in an effort to unseat Feingold, the 95th wealthiest senator and a renowned champion of the middle class. Disregard this fact, and disregard the effects of the stimulus, too: these are details, and Mr. Johnson doesn't think this election is about them.
I don't think this election is about details either. I think it's about a group of people who have discovered that, by fuming and blustering about anything other than details, they can mutilate the crown jewel of American democracy -- fair, public, partisan debate -- until left versus right devolves gracelessly into fact versus fiction. The stimulus saved jobs. The bailouts have been almost entirely paid back to the taxpayers. Human activity impacts the Earth's climate. The president is a Christian non-socialist. These are not political positions to be debated by serious women and men: they are just facts. Not liberal theories, but the actual reality of the world. The Tea Party's bread and butter has been the wanton conflation of facts and opinions -- make them indistinguishable from each other, and pretty soon you can dispose of details altogether and put truth itself up for debate.
Of the thirty-seven Senate races being decided in November, only one features a Republican candidate who acknowledges that humans contribute to climate change (that would be Illinois' Mark Kirk). All thirty-seven Republicans (and many of their Democratic opponents) are explicitly running against TARP and the stimulus -- the fiction of their repugnance having won out, by forfeit, over the fact of their actual success. Many GOP hopefuls are even trumpeting as their chief qualification their utter lack of qualifications; in Wisconsin, Johnson's latest TV spot blows the lid off of the fact that fifty-seven sitting senators (including Feingold) are -- gasp! -- lawyers, which would "be fine, if we had a lawsuit to settle." Following in the footsteps of his non-witch party-mate Christine O'Donnell, Johnson reassures us that he is not a lawyer, lest we continue to recklessly overcrowd our nation's highest law-making body with people who went to law school. Details.
The bulk of the criticism levied against the Tea Party has been directed at their most visible absurdities: the laughable primitivity of O'Donnell, Rand Paul, and Sharron Angle, the drawing of Hitler mustaches on the president (and occasionally on themselves), Glenn Beck's high-octane McCarthyism, the unhinged nativist fashion shows, etc. These are all rich targets, of course, and worthy of the sternest objections of all reasonable Americans. But the hidden cost of the Tea Party, and perhaps the movement's most nefarious consequence, is the damage their leaders have done -- intentionally -- to the sanctity of facts.
I understand that the regular folks who support the Tea Party are utterly furious, but I do not doubt for a second that every single one of them would holster their signs and forswear the cause if they could know the facts from the fictions. They are being deprived the truth, and it is sick, and it is sinister. The community of voices that they trust have no interest in explaining the conclusions of the scientists, the humanity of the president, or the fresh hell that TARP and the stimulus helped to prevent, and no other voices can penetrate the protective walls they have built for themselves. The Democratic Party will recover from congressional losses, and the Republican Party will recover from conspiracist rule. America will never recover if we allow objective truth to become just another opinion, an arguable theory, one more detail drowning in a sea of angry fictions.
Follow Daniel Cluchey on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dancluchey
Stimulus: Sure the government can spend money and incur deficits during a recession. But that is simply forgoing future consumption in favor of present consumption. The government either takes money from the loanable funds market, or raises taxes; either way, the average citizen suffers because of the spending binge. Some businesses must forgo investment because of the lack of loanable funds, sacrificing future productivity gains and leading to lower employee wages. This is precisely why the tax multiplier is higher than the spending multiplier. (Barro, Alesina and Ardagna)
http://bit.ly/aaBhbA
...and huge contributions from groups like MoveOn.org:
http://www.dailyscoff.com/?p=2950
...have even the most staunch Ron Johnson supporters conceding that the race is indeed tightening...
-jjg
Gravelle.us
This statement could not be more on-the-money. There is no equivalence between true facts and the out right lies coming mostly from the right.
The ignorance on display in this article is a sad commentary on the state of higher education in America. Or perhaps a deliberate attempt to change fiction into fact.
Although some of the "facts" cited are indeed true, an equal number of them are false. It is easy to fool people when you mix some truths in with the falsehoods you are trying to propagate. Of course, that is a big part of becoming a successful lawyer. Politics after a few years on the bar?
If, as you say, "some of the facts cited are indeed true, an equal number of them are false," that means two of the above-cited facts are false. Which two are you referring to, and what evidence do you have to refute them?
In the United States, isn’t the government the servant, not the ruler, of the citizens—isn’t the government an agent who must be paid for his services, and not a benefactor whose services are gratuitous, who dispenses something for nothing?
Why do Democrats act as if the government is the owner of the citizens’ income and can hold a blank check on our earnings?
The nature of the proper governmental services must be constitutionally defined and limited, leaving the government no power to enlarge the scope of its services at its own arbitrary discretion.
I agree that government is the servant of the citizens -- that's why they call it the public service. Democrats do not act as if the government "owns" the citizens' incomes -- tax rates, which I assume is what you are referring to, are at their lowest point in more than six decades (Source: http://mediamatters.org/research/201004150075 -- note that this is not Media Matters providing the sources, but rather the Tax Policy Center, Citizens for Tax Justice, Rasmussen, CBS, the AP, and former economic adviser to President Reagan Bruce Bartlett).
The largest tax increase President Obama has ever proposed was the non-extension of President Bush's tax cuts (which hasn't happened). It would raise the marginal tax rate on those making more than $200,000 per year from 36% back to its previous level of 39.6%. Is that what makes you and others say that Democrats believe they can control the finances of regular Americans? You do realize that the stimulus bill contained the largest tax cut in American history for small businesses and middle class families, right?
And do you not understand that since our inception, government has had the authority to tax as what ever "party" was in power? And that is how 'we" pay for things like wars and infrastructure and services?
Perhaps you might read the welfare clause (Wikipedia has a very good section you may find informative for a basic understanding that may suit you basic level of understanding)
Also you might look up the 16th amendment while you are there -- last time I checked, amendments are part of the constitution once adopted
We have a representative government to do what is needed when it is needed for very good reasons -- we tried the limited approach first under the articles of confederation and it did not work very well and such limitations would leave us vulnerable as a nation as well as dysfunctional
take a history class and a civics class -- you'll find both informative
"When what is said is not what is meant then what should be said is left unsaid, and what should be done is left un-done."
Praxis, yuh know?
The ones I "know" would never get that far. They have systematically removed friends who will not listen to THEM or try to dispute links that they post of FB.