Betting on Failure: The Right's Story
Congressional Republicans are marginally more popular and significantly less contagious than the swine flu. Even conservatives are keeping their distance. House leader John Boehner's perpetual tan has become a presidential punch line. Senate leader Mitch Dr. No McConnell is known only for obstruction. Ideologues like Rush rush to fill the leadership vacuum, seeking to purge the party of any lingering moderates. It's gotten so bad that neo-con Bill Kristol suggests that leading presidential candidates for 2012 might well be the oft disgraced Newt Gingrich and..gulp.. Darth Cheney himself.
Cheney and Gingrich are worth paying attention to - not as presidential contenders but as very sophisticated conservative political combatants. Both are brass knuckled politicians, steeped in the Lee Atwater school of anything goes wedge politics. And both are laying down clear markers for the debate to come.
Cheney's torture campaign managed to spook querulous Democrats about Guantanamo and force Obama into the lists to respond to him. Cheney's speeches were less analysis than rant, but they told a clear story:
America is at war. Evil enemies lurk in dark corners. After 911, the Bush administration took the steps necessary - some of them harsh, some unspeakable, but all necessary - to keep us safe. Now Obama is dismantling vital elements in that protection, emboldening our enemies, confusing our friends, and weakening our defenses.
In Cheney's words, "The administration seems to pride itself on searching for some kind of middle ground in policies addressing terrorism... But in the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half exposed...There is never a good time to compromise when the lives and safety of the American people are in the balance."
Cheney is betting on failure. He has set Obama up to take the rap if there is another terrorist strike in America, or if things go badly in Iraq or Afghanistan. He's essentially advising Republicans to forget the moderating steps of the Bush second term, and to draw a bright line in assailing any retreat, any compromise, any turn to legal or constitutional niceties.
Gingrich pursues the same strategy on the economy, only he's willing to throw Bush under the bus. In his speech before the Conservative Political Action Convention, he lacerated Obama for ushering in the "European socialist" takeover of America's economy. At same time, he tied Obama to Bush in what he calls "a Bush-Obama big spending program that was bipartisan in its nature. Last year the Bush Obama plan had a 180 billion stimulus package in the spring which failed. It came back with a 345 billion housing package in the summer which failed. It then had a 700 billion Wall Street bailout in October which failed. It had a 4 trillion dollar Federal Reserve guaranty which failed. The Bush-Obama plan was continued. We didn't get real change. ..We got big spending under Bush, now we have big spending under Obama, and so we have two new failures."
Gingrich recycles the old standards of the Reagan conservative mantra to describe the choice facing the country:
"They have shared openly and honestly with us their vision of higher taxes, bigger government, more bureaucracy, greater corruption, more political power by people unworthy of doing it, and a policy which will kill jobs, cripple the economy, trap children in schools that are disasters and weaken America's future. They have every right to have that vision and we have every right to go to the polls and defeat it.
We should have as a goal 435 campaigns in this country of people dedicated to representative government, to lower taxes, to less power in Washington and to taking back from the bureaucracy the power it can't possibly use over the American economy."
In Gingrich's speeches, there is very little on how we got into the mess we are in. Rather the focus is on the failure to get the economy going and the choice going forward.
Again, Gringrich is betting on failure. If, as is likely, unemployment keeps rising over the next year, foreclosures continue, any recovery is halting at best, Gingrich's argument is designed to blame Obama rather than the mess that conservatives left him.
Democrats must engage on this level of analysis. That is why the mantra of not "litigating the past" is foolish. Democrats have to tell clearly the story of how we got into the hole we are in -- both abroad and at home.
Obama is the best at this. His response to Cheney was compelling, but circumscribed:
Unfortunately, faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions. I believe that many of these decisions were motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people. But I also believe that all too often our government made decisions based on fear rather than foresight; that all too often our government trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions. Instead of strategically applying our power and our principles, too often we set those principles aside as luxuries that we could no longer afford. And during this season of fear, too many of us -- Democrats and Republicans, politicians, journalists, and citizens -- fell silent.
...I categorically reject the assertion that these [waterboarding and other tortures] are the most effective means of interrogation. What's more, they undermine the rule of law. They alienate us in the world. They serve as a recruitment tool for terrorists, and increase the will of our enemies to fight us, while decreasing the will of others to work with America. They risk the lives of our troops by making it less likely that others will surrender to them in battle, and more likely that Americans will be mistreated if they are captured. In short, they did not advance our war and counterterrorism efforts -- they undermined them, and that is why I ended them once and for all.
On the economy, Obama has evoked the language of biblical parable in contrasting the economy built on sand with that build on rock. The economy built on sand, begun under Reagan, with top end tax cuts, deregulation, the cult of the CEO, the myth that markets would police themselves that led to a frenzy of speculation, greed, corruption and the placing of bigger and bigger bets with more and more borrowed money until that economy collapsed on its own excess.
"We cannot rebuild this economy on the same pile of sand. We must build our house upon a rock. We must lay a new foundation for growth and prosperity - a foundation that will move us from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest; where we consume less at home and send more exports abroad. "
It's easy to scoff at Gingrich and mock Cheney. Voters weren't buying the conservative mantra when McCain and Joe the Plumber trotted it out in the campaign. But don't misunderestimate the right. There is no question that conservatives will learn the narratives put out by Cheney and Gingrich. The conservative movement excels at teaching their choir the lines of the hymnal. Over time, they will work hard to make Obama own the economic mess they left behind, and decry signs of weakness abroad.
It is vital that the real story be told - and not just by the president, but by neighbors to neighbors, citizen to citizen. The story on how conservative policies and follies led us into the hole we are in - and now are obstructing the efforts to get us out.
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What gets me is that while he continues to SAY that waterboarding is torture he continues to do NOTHING about it! Reviving the kangaroo Military Commissions, having torturers "question" prisoners AGAIN (ONLY if they promise not to torture though let's see how well THAT goes), no REAL accountability for the previous administration's crimes against humanity, seeking preventive (which he has/will call "prolonged detention"), limiting the detainees' rights to challenge their illegal detentions at Guantanamo and completely ELIMINATING that right at Abu Ghraib and Afghan "detention centers...
Is "misunderestimate" a word??
No. And if it were a word, it would mean roughly the opposite of what the author intended.
No, on further reflection, it's simply nonsensical and means nothing. I hope it's an editing error and the word used by the author was "underesti
How soon people forget. "Misunderestimate" was a "word" invented by Bush Jr., spoken Nov 6 2000, the day after he was first elected President. Referring to many people's belief that he wouldn't be elected, he said, "They misunderestimated me."
Robert Borosage is obviously making some pretty good points when his article smokes out so many ditto heads who are repeating Limbaugh lies. There is something seriously wrong with our education system after eight years of Bush/Cheney, of course, when people come on here and read truth, but don't recognize it is truth.
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Post hoc non propter hoc. An event following another event is not necessarily caused by the first event. Without further evidence, we can't assume that no terrorist attacks since 9/11 were the result of the Bush/Cheney policies. If the economy continues to fail under Obama, we can't assume his policies are in any way the cause.
How many Americans are taught basic logic? Liking or hating the speaker has no effect on the truth or falsity of what the speaker says.
One socialist policy does not make a country socialist.
And so on.
You are correct, Robert.
It is very easy to scoff at Newt Gingrich.
It is even easier to scoff at Rush Limbaugh.
It would be even easier still to throw rotten cabbages and tomatoes at them if they were, for instance, placed in the public square in stocks.
Sometimes I miss the Puritans.
Yes, it is so easy to scoff at people you disagree with but don't even listen to. And I can see how ANY liberal would miss the Puritans. They're already demanding a witch-hunt on the "torture investigations". The Puritans, now THEY knew how to waterboard!
Sarah, you must be kidding. This is a serious blog with serious issues well understood by most who participate, but a place where the uneducated and uninformed choose to ditto talk the words of liars. STOP listening to liars Limbaugh, Cheney and Gingerich and heed the advise you don't recognize as truth. These same admonitions are for all who come here to show us how naive they are.
Sarah, we scoff at them because we DO listen to them. That's how we're able to determine that what they say makes no real sense.
Prosecuting for torture is not a witch hunt. It's following laws set down at least since WWII, as a result of the Nuremburg trials, based on principles we were proud to fight for during that war. If it was good enough for our victory in WWII, it's good enough for us now.
Bush created a disaster. Obama is accelerating the outcome.
How so?
I don't think Democrats should get so confident in their "popularity". When you get down to it, exclude the popular president from the equation and the DNC would be back where they were in 2000 and 2004. In fact, I bet half the people who voted for Obama couldn't name his VP and almost certainly couldn't name his Chief of Staff. Now the same would go for GOP voters. The point is, party popularity rests mainly on whether or not people like the president, not so much in what his/her policies are. Do you really think Nancy Pelosi would be elected president if she had gone up against McCain? I think even Hillary would have had a hard time defeating McCain.
Like I was saying a post ago, the naive show their uninformed and goat-like following nature when they come here to repeat the lies of Limbaugh, Cheney and Gingerich. Has ignorance gotten in the way of remembering it was greed & Republicans who brought on this failed economy, an unjust & illadvised war and the worst Recession/
Our parents and grandparents lived through a major Depression and then a World War. They faced innumerable hardships and losses in both. They carried on. The President at the time asked sacrifices of them and they made them willingly and, for the most part, without complaint.
Because of this hardship endured, they wanted a better turn of events and a better society for their children. Their sacrifices enabled a generation of people who, heretofore, would never have imagined finishing high school, much less college; but that generation and the subsequent one have evolved, or rather DEVOLVED, into a nation of whiners, moaners and panickers. It's the latter trait that the GOP and the neocons bought into in the wake of 9/11. They smelled the fear and stoked the panic. It's not just an American phenomenon either.
This panick allowed the neocons to override civil liberties in this country and to bully the MSM into a submission it has yet to shake off. These people know that if you keep repeating the same mantra over and over again, the people come to believe it. It's time the Democrats found their backbone.
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Let's face it, Cheney, Gingrich, McConnell and all the other sour-grapes republicans want one thing above all else: TO MATTER. They're on the outs; their party is in a shambles; their candidates failed miserably in the election; the polls show that the GOP is popular with very few Americans; their leaders -- Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin -- are the butt of late night comedians' jokes. Sure, I agree that Cheney is setting Obama up to fail, but if there's another attack like 9/11, any president would look like he/she failed.
Cheney, et al., are dying to be back in the public eye, to shape policy and opinions, to be on the Sunday talking head shows. Why these shows continue to invite them to speak is beyond me. Once is enough, already. These guys aren't in power anymore. When they were, they screwed things up royally with their torture camps and dereg policies on Wall Street. If anything, we should turn a deaf ear to anything they have to say.
The irony in all this fuss from the right is that they're actually accusing themselves! They made this mess over the past 8 years or longer and now it's all gloom and doom. They just can't get it right! First, they control the w hite house for 20 of the last 28 years and then the congress (both houses) until 2004. That SHOULD tell any intelligent person that they had the muscle to implement their own agenda and the DID! Problem was, it was a disaster and so are the Republicans. Now that they've made a mess of everything, the sit on the sideline, bitter, angry and all they can do is obstruct and criticize. They're being led by a fat, loudmouth, cigar smoking, former drug addict, thrice divorced, draft dodger, and a former Speaker of the House who was cited for ethics violations, left his wife when she had cancer and had an affair, and had a public approval rating of 21% when he was speaker. Finally, a lying former Vice President who has absolutely NO credibility with anybody about anything and brought shame and danger on this nation with his saber rattling, profiteering, and tortue. These are their moral examples and leaders who want power back.Need I say more? What a disgusting bunch this is!
If Newt, Rush, and Dick were the Republican Three Stooges, which one would be Moe?
Let's face it. Bush spent way too much money and now Obama, not wanting to be bested, is succeeding in making Bush look like a tightwad. He demanded the $787 Billion "stimulus plan" because we need the jobs--RIGHT NOW or the country would collapse. My question is, WHERE ARE THE JOBS HE PROMISED? Unemployment has not declined and in fact is still at over 600,000 more jobs lost every week. Where are the 5 million new jobs we were promised? Now I would call what he did to get it passed 'fear mongering.
I can see that you're definitely CONFUSED. It is the sore looser, doomy, gloomy Republicans and their mouthpiece Limbaugh who are still working so hard to continue the "doom & gloom." Whatever is worng with you? Are you unable to figure it out that Limbaugh & Republicans are counting on helping the economy and all of your Constitutional rights completely disintegrate to make their point? And finally, can't you see how completely positive President Obama has been and still is in spite of the blocks your Republican mentors are throwing in the way? Why come here to respond if you don't recognize truth when you see it? Oh! that's right. Your're confused.
I would suggest that what you see today being called the Republican-party is an illusion, and that the (true) GOP party no longer exists but was in fact taken over.
Evidence in fact what was recently (2008) voted out of Office, more accurately in fact called the Richard Cheney Administration. Concerning (vice)President Cheney and the cabal "appointments" to key government Agencies and Departments, read the policy of these (appointed) that followed literally what was written by this cabal in: http://rtp
In this Web-page by the radical element PNAC is found in the very first part a very revealing statement concerning "Conservatives failed to do this, Conservatives failed to do that, and Conservatives failed.... But WE AIM to CHANGE THIS." Now the first question should be, "whose is WE great white man, and change exactly how?"
The Republican party began to being taken over by a radical Military/Industrial Complex during the Nixon/Reagan era, and made complete during the 2-Bush operations.
The Republicans don't care how much they hurt the country. Neither do their rich contributors. The origins of the blame fall squarely on the people who voted for them.
Americans shouldn't worry about terrorists - they have the Republicans. Why hurt America when the Americans are dong it all by themselves.
I'm sure Bin Laden never dreamed that one attack could virtually destroy the US. He must've considered Bush to be a gift from Allah.
Bin Laden, himself, actually said he was setting America up to defeat herself from within. He knows his stuff ... divide and conquer, anyone?
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Bush saw BinLaden and 9-11 as a gift from heaven.
I don't see heaven here.
I see a giant octupuss like Monster covering the Earth. Bush puppet is on one finger, Bin Laden puppet is on another finger. Plane flyers on another.
People running and fighting each other trying to escape the Monster.
But thats just me. lol
As a young Republican, it seems that every time I pick up the paper or turn on the TV some member of my party is doing or saying something dumb. The problem is that the party has shackled itself to the Christian right and doesn't know how to get loose. When you are a U.S. Senator, and your caught with a call girl, preaching "family values" to others probably isn' t a good idea. Despite what elected officials and those high up in the party seem to believe, most Americans don't like hypocrites. It seems that lately Republicans have just gone crazy. Then when you think it can't get worse, Cheney attacks Colin Powell. I mean really, of all the people to attack? Colin Powell consistently pulled down high poll ratings during his time as Sec. of State, and his popularity has only risen since. The the party insists on pushing that drug addict Limbaugh as a "party leader", which would be like the democrats pushing David Letterman as a party leader. These people are entertainers, and in Limbaughs case you have the whole hypocrisy thing again. How can you lecture people on right and wrong when your illegally obtaining prescription meds from your maid. As someone who works, pays taxes, and is a law abiding citizen holding these people up as shining examples seems crazy. The party needs to get back to core policy issues and stop wasting time trying to be the moral arbitor of the nation.
I'll agree with your assessment except for Colin Powell. I lost most of my respect for him since the day he sat before Congress with a vial of powder in his hand and spouted lies.
Thank you for being willing to think for yourself. Reasonable republicans need to stand up to their party and try to return it to policies that are in the best interest of the country. If you have any ability to run for office, please do so. Your country needs you.
Well, at least David Letterman is intelligent and funny....
Right. Maybe David Hasselhoff would be a more apt comparison.
It sounds to me like you should reconsider your party affiliation, young man, since you can apparently see all the things the older Republicans can't. If I were you I'd become Independent in order to escape the cognitive dissonance.
The issue isn't whwt the GOP is or isn't doing. The issue is: we have got to stop Obama's spending. He is proposing over $9 trillion in new deficits.
May 27 (Bloomberg) -- Treasuries fell for a fourth day, pushing 10-year note yields to a six-month high, amid concern record U.S. debt sales will overwhelm investor demand as the economy begins to show signs of stability.
Yes he is. And every serious economist to comment on is says he's probably spending too little. We're in DEEP trouble and have no will to actually tax ourselves even in the "good" times so we're going to be really screwed for a very long time to come.
Welcome to Ronald Reagan's America!
I think conservatives should agree to let the government tax as they wish. Only when people have to start paying for all this ridiculous spending will they actually start forcing government to shrink. Reality has finally sunk in here in California. How long will it take the nation to figure it out?
I think we're already too far in debt. If the government were forced to tax citizens at a rate to close the budget deficit, the Laffer curve would kick in and result in the same or less revenue being taken in especially during a recession.
Spending is spending..
Now, we have the full spending in the light. Including the wars. Of course it will look bigger. It's actually being accounted for,
Is there more spending otherwise, outside of war? You bet. Who will actually SPEND money in the culture if everyone is hurting so no one can buy? We can't take the same tack that we've been down under Bush or since Regan. That led us where we are. It was a wrong turn. Down a wrong road.
The government needs to spend. Nothing else will create the jobs needed. And corporate greed has no vested interest in spreading their wealth; they're cutting jobs, not creating them.
I say, spend. Prime the pump. But also, shatter the remaining foundations upon which our crumbling house was built... Ours is a very old, dated method that is rife with corruption and greed. That has to go, so as to ensure that the spending won't be cast into the pockets of whose who would do the most harm with it.
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