The George W. Bush presidency brought both the Republican Party and the conservative movement low, and it's distressing to watch the GOP base get whipped into a frenzy by cynical demagogues while its politicians do the only thing they know how to do -- pander to the people making the loudest, most aggrieved noises.
Demagoguery and aggrievement are nothing new in American politics. But what's strange is the scattershot nature and incoherence of the attacks on Obama. Usually, politicians -- even demagogues -- summon a sense of history, shared experience, and cultural traditions to move people. But there's little evidence of those things in most of the critiques of Obama's policies by Republican politicians or tea party activists, little evident understanding of what the president is doing or how it might be improved upon, changed, or replaced. Scare words and phrases have supplanted arguments. Those words have historical meaning. Once, history gave those words power. But now they've been shorn of all context. It's a communist-fascist-socialist word salad.
One of the sillier examples of this is the crusade, by Glenn Beck and others, against Obama administration "czars." They already got the scalp of "green jobs czar" Van Jones, and now the attacks continue. "Czar" sounds scary, I guess, because it's a Russian word. Communists are taking over the government! Of course, the last real Russian Czar, Nicholas II, was executed by communists in 1917, so the historical reference is nonsensical. So is the substance of the attack. "Czar" is an informal -- and semi-ironic -- title that connotes a certain policy portfolio. It has been in use since at least the 1970s. As Dave Weigel noted in the Washington Independent, many "czars" actually occupy pre-existing jobs. Some of them been approved by the Senate. Some are mid-level appointees, and don't require Senate confirmation. A few have been appointed to new positions, such as "Afghanistan czar" Richard Holbrooke -- but most of them are well-credentialed.
So: Obama, the president, is appointing people to government positions that have certain policy coordination responsibilities. That's what presidents do. There may be questions to be raised about their job performance or past activities, but in that respect they are no different from hundreds of other political appointees. Yet, exploiting the notion that Obama must be up to something sinister, Republicans have seized upon the czar issue. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, who is running for governor of Texas, attacks the "czars" in today's Washington Post as an affront to the Constitution. It's bizarre. (And also sad that the Washington Post provides a forum for a specious argument.)
During the 1980s and 1990s, many conservatives had credible, coherent arguments to make about government policies and the nature of government itself. I sometimes agreed, more often disagreed. But their arguments had some heft: the liberal welfare state actually did have a lot of serious problems in the overlapping realms of policy and politics. Now, if I'm looking for a meaningful critique of Obama's policies and appointments, (with some exceptions of course) I'm just not going to find it on the right. Conservatism has, effectively, gone AWOL from the policy debate -- which is a great boon to Obama, but probably not so good for the American system.
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Bob Cesca: The Impeachment of President Obama
I've been following the Republican descent into the realms of the bizarre for some time now, and I'm convinced that if they retook Congress the Republicans might try to impeach the president.
i cannot believe people would fall for glenn beck and his 'boris and natasha' paranoia.
he sees spies in the woodwork, and czars in cars, and unmentionable people in the woodshed.
and he spreads his evil to people who follow him slavering after every crumb of his anti-wisdom.
if nothing else ever convinced me that the american school system has failed, this moment would.
how can so many people be so ignorant? and so proud to be ignorant?
51 votes.
Do it for America.
And then give us health care reform.!
It's the F***ing money!
People get paid to stop reform, and do nothing!
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-mcquaid/czarist-nonsense_b_285754.html
"Kay Bailey Hutchinson, who is running for governor of Texas, attacks the "czars" in today's Washington Post as an affront to the Constitution. It's bizarre."
Does that make her the bizarre czar?
Within the diverse groups ranging from birthers to deathers to anti-abortion gun toting militias, there seems to be only one unifying force; their limitless hatred for the President of the United States.
Max Blumenthal writes in Altnet,
“When I dove into the angry mob with a camera, I captured scenes of self-proclaimed "real Americans" declaring that the community organizing group ACORN was Obama's version of Hitler's SS; that the President planned to establish concentration camps for right-wing dissidents; and that Obama was raising a private army in the guise of a civilian volunteer force. The death panel rumor is just one of a rapidly growing array of conspiracy theories reverberating through the Republican base. Each one is more hysterical than the last.”
The sheer ignorance of a large percentage of the American people is something that we will always have to contend with. The outrageous manipulation of that ignorance by right wing media and now the Republican Party itself, is something that we need to confront as a direct threat to our very system of government.
I think you're bearing false witness.
The poor love democracy because at least they have some voice, and sometimes they can get free goodies.
The rich love democracy, because the mediocre are easy to manipulate.
The competent non-rich minority tolerate democracy because they can't think of anything better, even though they are fed upon by everyone else.
Would that the minority party would express these views as rationally as you have.
Instead they have supported, even embraced, the fringe of politics and have chosen
to incite the ignorant and biased to the very edge of violence.
The only rational dispute with this administration, or for that matter the status-quo,
bought and sold nature of our Congress, has come from the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
If I find any fault in your message, it is the implied assumption that there is a cohesive Democratic Party at all. Baucus, and Dodd, Carper and Landrieu, and the rest of the DLC corporate run puppets, might as well belong to another party entirely.
But if you go sayin' Obama is Chairman Mao
You ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow
President Bush had 35 czars and 45 appointees, and President Obama has 31 czars and 33 appointees. Assuming these positions are appointed at the beginning of an administration and last throughout their length of term, I don't see our current president as doing anything different.
Please check out wikipedia for a list of presidential czars and appointees from 1933-present.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._executive_branch_czars#Summary_table_-_Number_of_czars_per_administration_.28see_the_sortable_table_below_for_details_and_references.29
liberal as "The Dirty L Word". Then in 1994 with Newt Gingrich & his scorched earth brand of politics & the attitude of Win at any cost. It continues today with the 24/7 ranting & raving of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity & the rest of Fox News. How sad & embarrassing for our country !
there could be valid arguments about health care. death panels, illegal aliens have no place in the debate.
"a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth"
glenn beck
information craz of fox news.
the veiw 5/20/09
but do you have any idea how many beck followers have posted and accept it as fact.
LOL
"a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth"
glenn beck
information czar fox news
the view 5/20/09
I think you are too rational. Republicans, like Sen. Hutchinson, are not at all bothered by their hypocrisy. All they are interested in is appealing to the their base: the loyal army followers of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, by attacking everything Obama does. I bet you, if tomorrow Obama announced that he was adopting everything in the Republican platform they will still attack him; accusing him of stealing their ideas to implement a socialist/communist/ Nazi/ fascist/ Muslim/Black Nationalist-Kenyan, take over of America by ACORN. The issue is not Obam's policies; rather, the issue is who Barak Obama is. Obviously, since the followers of Limbaugh, Beck, and Hannity can't impeach him because of who he is, they have decided to disrupt his administration by throwing the"kitchen sink" at him.
Considering that many of these people are reacting through their limbic systems (fear, paranoia, "fight or flight"), incoherence doesn't seem strange at all. They've in good measure bypassed their rational cortical regions where coherent thought resides in favor of more primitively responding parts of the brain.
The mentality is very similar to the witch hunts in Salem, Mass in 1692.
They're just hunting a different witch this time (read "czar" ... or "Muslims, Nazis, socialists, communists, fascists.")
If you're interested, google the current demagogue du jour, Sarah Palin, and her witch hunter "pastor."
She said Van Jones had socialist ties like we are living in the 1950s. The USSR no longer exists. Communism is not really any sort of legitimate threat to this government or country. The bigger threat is the boundless and pervasive tactics of misinformation and propaganda. If information is power then what is disinformation? It is just as powerful and much more harmful.
These lawmakers are like putty in their hands. They are their "base" as bush used to say. They are "too big to fail" so the government will never let them in fear of not getting proper funding for the following election. Some socialism or rather government interference and strict oversight over a few of the monstrosities out there (Goldman, AIG, BofA, etc.) would do this country a world of good. The Chinese economy looks pretty good right about now actually. Socialism ceased to be THE SCARY word for all the new generation, college-educated out there because we just didn't live through the red scare and dont really find socialist ideas as a threat but more of a decent idea that was twisted and distorted into a disaster. But so has capitalism. Combining the best of those two economic policies would probably be the wisest choice of all.