A thought on how the Republican Party got to Trumpism

The Morning Joe crew today were shocked, shocked to discover the Republican Party is more concerned about tax cuts for the wealthy than the safety of 14-year-old girls. (I'm officially adopting Charlie Pierce's version of the program's name, the Morning Zoo.) GOP Strategist Susan Del Percio On Roy Moore Support: You Are About To Lose Me MSNBC 12/05/2017

I mean, conversions are fine. But what did they think the Republican Party has been the last 25-30 years?

I remember when the new "Gingrich Revolution" members elected to Congress in 1994 declared junkie bigot Rush Limbaugh an honorary member of Congress for his service in getting a Republican House elected.

Maybe Joe Scarborough, also elected to Congress for the first time that year, missed that shindig. Because you'd think he might have remembered things like this (Katharine Seelye, Republicans Get a Pep Talk From Rush Limbaugh New York Times 12/12/1994):

"You will never ever be their friends," the talk-show host warned most of the 73 Republican freshmen at a dinner here tonight. "They don't want to be your friends. Some female reporter will come up to one of you and start batting her eyes and ask you to go to lunch. And you'll think, 'Wow! I'm only a freshman. Cokie Roberts wants to take me to lunch. I've really made it!' " The audience laughed.

"Seriously," he added. "Don't fall for this. This is not the time to get moderate. This is not the time to start trying to be liked."

The freshman class, which included not a single "femi-Nazi," one of Mr. Limbaugh's favorite epithets for supporters of women's rights, whooped and applauded, proving itself one big fan club of the man it believes was primarily responsible for the Republican avalanche in November. [my emphasis]

Limbaugh reminded the Republicans about how a fine fellow he is:

Mr. Limbaugh said President Clinton's new nominee for surgeon general would be Pee-wee Herman. He also said he had a copy of the White House drug test -- a multiple-choice examination. "Complete the following verse," he read. "I am the walrus. A: You are the taxman. B: La la la la la la. C: Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? D. Koo-koo-ka-choo."

In closing, he asked his audience to "leave some liberals alive" as artifacts so that "we can show our children what they were." [my emphasis]

Pee-Wee Herman was the comic persona of Paul Rubens, who was arrested in 1991 for public exposure when he was caught masturbating in a porno theater. (Mark Harris and Ty Burr, The Pee-Wee Herman scandal EW 08/16/1991)

Rush Limbaugh's commitment to "traditional values" also came into question later when he got into trouble because of his oxycontin habit. (Jarrett Murphy, Rush Limbaugh Arrested On Drug Charges CBS/AP 04/02/2006) That same year, he also got some bad publicity over some mis-labeled Viagra pills found in his possession on a trip to the Dominican Republic. (Rush Limbaugh's Dominican Stag Party The Smoking Gun 07/06/2006) Some Mean Libruls called attention to the Dominican Republic's reputation at the time as a sex tourism destination. (Evan Derkacz, Rush Limbaugh, sex tourist? AlterNet 06/27/2006) Bad libruls, bad!

As for that bit about leaving "some liberals alive," why, that was just a joke, doncha know? Lighten up, libruls!!

As the Times reported, the newly-elected Republican Congress members "whooped and applauded" for the tasteful comedian. And his bloviating raving against Mean Libruls is still popular among Republicans today.

Golly gee, how could a nice moderate party of honorable gentlemen (and the occasional lady like Michelle Bachmann or Sarah Palin) have morphed suddenly (?!) into the part of Donald Trump and Roy Moore? The Morning Zoo crowd are very distressed trying to understand the deep mystery.

Oh, no, I can see it coming ...

Candidate Obama has been saying more things his base can like than he was for most of 2011.

But his dream of post-partisan harmony keeps inducing him to pepper-spray his own best messages. And the Republicans have figured this out.

So now, Rush Limbaugh, the Republican Party's chief ideologist who for two decades has been held in awe and treated to often extreme deference by powerful Republicans, is catching some flak and losing advertisers because he said one two many times how disgusting and contemptible he thinks women are. President Obama even encouraged the condemnation by telephoning Sandra Fluke, the main target of Rush's recent misogynist ranting, and expressing solidarity with her.

So now it's about time for Obama to make some new concession to the Republicans over this. His last compromise on the birth control issue clouded up his own previously clear stance in favor of women's health care vs. genuinely benighted opponents of birth control. So the birth control opponents escalated, demanding that not only religious institutions but every employer have a "conscience exception" in choosing to deny coverage for birth control to female employees.

Now the punditocracy Cult of Broderian Centrism - which always seems to apply more heavily to Democrats than Republicans in our one-percenter world - are joining Republicans in attempting to get Obama and the Democrats to pepper-spray their stand against Limbaughian woman-hating. I know I've been quoting Charlie Pierce a lot lately. That's because he's writing good stuff. And he was listening closely to Obama's press conference Tuesday and noticed that Obama is not Standing Up For Sex Esquire Politics Blog 03/06/2012. Given a reporter's question that offered him the opportunity to highlight the very popular Democratic stand for birth control and against Limbaugh's Republican misogyny, he quickly changed the subject to the economy. Pierce says of Obama's comments in the press conference:

Not a simple, mumbling word about the right to decent health-care, let alone the right to choose. Given a golden opportunity to say flatly that he and his administration were foursquare behind these rights, he gave the whole thing a pass. I'm sure he's got poll numbers that tell him not to say "abortion" in public but, damn, this was disappointing.

This is what I mean when I say that this issue can only be a political winner for the Democrats if they go out and make it one. How hard would it have been for him to say, "Look, it's probably not a good time in history to be using the war metaphor, but there's no question that the Republican party is a vehicle in an organized campaigh [sic] to roll back women's rights in the most personal sphere of their lives, and, as long as I'm president, that won't happen."?

I'm glad he called Sandra Fluke. I just wish he'd show that he appreciates the incredible political gift she gave him.

It's not surprising that the President might decline to address Limbaugh's comments directly out of some judgment it might give the hate-radio junkie bigot extra credibility. But failing to twist the political knife on an issue that is clearly working in his own and the Democrats' favor is bewildering. Though no longer surprising, given Obama's history with his kind of thing.

Pierce also notes that Serious People are now pushing the narrative that both sides do that. (The 'Respectable' Punditocracy Joins The Rush Party 03/07/2012)

Here were Sleepy Mark Shields and David "Bobo" Brooks already last Friday, the Quality TV Liberal and Sensible Conservative, both agreeing that it was obvious that Both Sides were to blame for Rush's woman-hating spewing at Sandra Fluke (Shields, Brooks on Limbaugh's Fluke Comments, 100 point game PBS Newshour Online 03/02/2012):



Evan McMorris-Santoro joins in at TPM with Does Obama Have A Bill Maher Problem? 03/07/2012. Pierce addresses what anyone who's been half paying attention to American politics during the last 20 years or any significant portion of it knows, which is that neither Bill Maher or any other media figure has a status in the Democratic Party even remotely like that Limbaugh has had in the Republican Party for two decades. McMorris-Santoro, on the other hand, writes, "Republicans think they’re really on to something here. And some observers agree." The "some observers" in his reports consists of, uh, one person, Siobhan Bennett of the Women’s Campaign Fund.

If Obama or other elected Democrats start pandering to this nonsense, that will be genuinely sad.

Tags: barack obama, rush limbaugh

Gene Lyons on the merchants of hate

Gene Lyons weighs in with his view on Sarah Palin's callous take on the Tucson assassination attack earlier this month in Profiting from political road rage Salon 01/19/2011

My theory: Ever since Rush Limbaugh adapted the techniques of drive-time sports radio to politics -- the loudmouth hyperbole, the fake omniscience, the mute button -- the mass-marketing of outrage to people stuck in freeway traffic with blood-pressure levels already approaching the blowout range has coarsened public discourse to the level of road rage.

You want "blood libel"?

Limbaugh, last week: "What (accused assassin) Mr. Loughner knows is that he has the full support of a major political party ... The Democrat party is attempting to find anybody but him to blame. He knows if he plays his cards right, he's just a victim ... plus a local sheriff doing everything that they can to make sure he's not convicted of murder -- but something lesser."

If you believe that, you'll believe anything.

Tags: domestic terrorism, gene lyons, radical right, rush limbaugh, terrorism

Digby on the state of the Republican Party

Mississippi segregationist Governor Ross Barnett: today he would be a Republican in good standing

Digby writes down what most Democratic leaders and members of Congress are afraid to face. In Loss Of Control Hulaballoo blog 02/01/09, speaking of the bull-headed Republican Party in Congress she says, "But they don't really believe in democracy."

That's why they support voter-suppression tactics straight out of the segregationist textbook. That's why they defend torture. That's why they supported Dick Cheney's truly dictatorial Unitary Executive theory.

And that's why Rush Limbaugh is the leader of their Party.

I think Obama is going to have to flush this fruitless drive for "bipartisanship" with Republicans who aren't interested in it and take his case directly to the people. He's very persuasive. And without some "fireside chat" kind of approach, he's not going to be able to jar the Establishment press into even half-decent reporting.

I was struck today on Meet the Press, which was mostly about as nails-on-the-blackboard painful as usual, that David Gregory put up a clip of Rush Limbaugh demanding that Republicans in Congress oppose the Democratic economic recovery bill with Rush jerking around in his chair like he was in hillbilly-heroin withdrawal or something. And then afterwards Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison eagerly agreed with Mr. OxyContin's instructions.

Obama holding up Rush Limbaugh as the face of the Republican Party means that even in their brain-dead "this side says, the other side says" stenography, the press winds up taking some account of the Democrats' point. Maybe if Obama does that enough, even the Democratic leaders in Congress will learn the trick!

Tags: barack obama, republican party, rush limbaugh

The OxyContin Party and the broken press corps that enables it

Dark Lord Cheney, a faithful defender of regular white folks against those "elitist" Democrats, told an audience at the National Press Club that he discovered that he had Cheney ancestors among both his paternal and maternal ancestors. "So I had Cheneys on both sides of the family and we don't even live in West Virginia," the Dark Lord said. (Dick Cheney's Incest Joke Irks West Virginian Lawmakers by Mary Ann Akers Washington Post Online 06/02/08).

The Dark Lord apologized. Which I suppose is a bit better than when he shot that guy in the face, and the guy he shot apologized to Cheney! (I've always wondered what kind of phone call preceded that event.) But you've got to wonder, what does an apology mean coming from a guy with no conscience? But at least he's not one of those elitist Democrats acting "snootily", to use George Will's word.

Rush Limbaugh, the famous liar, drug addict and bigot, is one of most popular commentators among the Republican base. A big pal of Bush and Cheney, too. Cheney was planning to observe the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by appearing on Rush's show. Here's how Mr. OxyContin himself expresses the Christian love that overflows from today's sanctified Republican Party:

On the June 2 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio program, while discussing Sen. Barack Obama's presidential candidacy, Rush Limbaugh asserted that the Democratic Party was "go[ing] with a veritable rookie whose only chance of winning is that he's black." As Media Matters for America noted, Limbaugh said on his May 21 broadcast that "Barack Obama is an affirmative action candidate" and asserted during his May 14 broadcast that "[i]f Barack Obama were Caucasian, they would have taken this guy out on the basis of pure ignorance long ago."

Also during the June 2 broadcast, while referencing a May 26 column written by John Lott Jr., Limbaugh stated, "John Lott Jr. has this theory. He's done some research and found out that the growth of government can be traced to when women got the vote." Limbaugh later asserted, "The one observation you can make about this whole business, because he proved it. I mean, it's -- the growth of government started like crazy when women got the right to vote. Which just proves: Size does matter to 'em." (Media Matters, Limbaugh on Obama: His "only chance of winning is that he's black" 06/02/08

Yuk! Yuk! That Rush shore is funny, ain't he? You just cain't beat ole Rush for "political humor"! And size matters, git it? Haw! Haw!

We'll be getting this by the bucketload between now and the November election. The formula of course is to find "clever" ways to say, "Obama's black! Did you know he's black? He's even got a black wife? Did you know they are black?" There'll be much worse, of course. Already is. Rush the dope fiend just gives us the respectable mainstream Republican variety.

That will have limited direct pull among swing voters, I'm guessing. Where it will have traction is that race is likely to make some white swing voters more ready to have doubts Obama due to wild tales about his politics, his religion, his transvestite ex-con Sikh boyfriend, and whatever other lunatic tales the Republican Swiftboaters come up with. Which will be faithfully told and retold and retold again by our sad excuse for a press corps.

Of course, St. McCain the 21st century Crusader has repudiated his former buddy John Hagee. But former Democrat Joe Lieberman, who recently has become somehow attached to McCain at the hip, it seems, is still tight with Rev. Hagee. He's scheduled to be the keynote speaker at an upcoming confab of Hagee's Christians United for Israel (CUFI) group that is dedicated to promoting war with Iran. Max Blumenthal - who's Sid Blumenthal's son, by the way, doing a good job carrying on the family tradition - has some info, with an assist from another video from Bruce Wilson, in Pastor Hagee: The Antichrist Is Gay, "Partially Jewish, As Was Adolph Hitler" (Paging Joe Lieberman!) Huffington Post 06/02/08.

I'm glad to see this kind of thing is getting more attention than in the past. It's not that there's anything terribly different about Hagee's brand of Christianism than what the Republican Party has been eagerly embracing in 1980 or so. A lot of the leaders of what is called the Christian Right promote just the kind of cracker bigotry that Hagee does. It's just that our lazy, intimidated press corps have been largely tippy-toing around them for decades now.

They've been too busy spreading sexual fantasies about Bill Clinton. And still are. Check out Vanity Fair finds no "proof" of Clinton affairs -- but spreads rumors anyway Media Matters.org 06/02/08, and Bill Clinton: Purdum a "Sleazy" "Slimy" "Scumbag" by Mayhill Fowler 06/02/08.

Say what you like about Bill or Hillary Clinton. (Shoot, everybody does anyway!) But they're both liberal Democrats. And they fight. The Democrats need that kind of willingness to fight if they're going to get the Republicans out of the White House.

For all my fondness for economic and class explanations, I still can't help but believe that there's something just wildly irrational about the press corps' weird, genuinely weird obsessions about both Clintons, which carried over to Al Gore, as well. Geez, people (i.e, Chris Matthews, Tucker Carlson, Maureen Dowd, 90% or so of the rest of the press corps), if you feel like making up sex stories, just write a porno novel! Or go visit a hooker, whatever. Do you have to dump the tawdriest, trashiest products of your troubled minds on us? Good grief! Try investigating Dick Cheney's torture program. There's enough sexual perversion there to shock the Marquis de Sade. At least you would be doing something constructive by exposing that.

Tags: bill clinton, christian right, christianism, culture war, hillary clinton, john hagee, racism, republican party, rush limbaugh

Hope never dies for the advocates of the press conventional wisdom (no matter how braindead it may be)

George Packer at his Interesting Times blog gives us a couple of examples in Scenes from a Primary 01/08/08, about the New Hampshire primary. This sentence is very telling: "Dinner with two dozen Dartmouth students last night. They wanted to talk Iraq; I wanted to talk politics."

The Establishment press has decided the Iraq War is no longer an important issue, even though it consistently shows as such in the public opinion polls. That's a perfect illustration. Since our "press corps" has defined the Iraq War as unimportant in the Presidential campaign - however they came to that truly weird conclusion - by definition talking about the Iraq War is not something you do when you "talk politics." Amazing. (George Packer did a book on the Iraq War, so it's not really surprising that students would bring it up to him.)

Like the rest of the press crew, Packer just loo-ooves St. John McCain, that bold Maverick:

Eight years ago, McCain took on the Republican establishment and began to pry open cracks that are now gaping holes. This year, he’s brought the same appealing manner, but he’s made his peace with the Party: an independent in style, a Republican in substance. Back from the dead, he’s now talked about in New Hampshire as the likeliest Republican nominee. He’s also the only one with a good chance of winning in November.

But about those "gaping holes" that Packer detects in the facade of the authoritarian Republican Party, he writes about a conversation he had with a nurse in Salem, New Hampshire:

In conversations like these you can feel the old Republican coalition splitting at its seams. Whatever was the matter with Kansas no longer is. The nurse is a Christian populist—angry about the wages nurses make, resentful of Romney pouring his millions into an election. She has almost nothing in common with the party’s Wall Street establishment (other than their mutual suspicion of what she calls "social medicine"). The coalition that Reagan built outlasted its natural life by a generation—just like the New Deal coalition of urban ethnics, blacks, and Southerners did. It's hard to see how the Republicans will avoid the fate of the post-1968 Democratic Party: a decade or two of interest-group politics, litmus tests, infighting, and nostalgic appeals to dead Presidents and defunct movements. Pat Robertson will go the way of Lane Kirkland; Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney will follow in the footsteps of George McGovern and Walter Mondale.

Conventional political observers have been speculating since the Christian Right emerged in its current form during the Carter administration that there were unbearable tensions between the Wall Street and Main Street wings of the Party. But, funny thing, they always seem to coalesce around the Republican Presidential candidate.

Tom Edsall, who for some reason beyond my feeble imagination manages to be regarded as a "liberal" writer, decribed those Republican fault lines in "The Political Impasse" New York Review of Books 03/26/1987:

In 1980 and 1981 the ideological and economic conflicts within the Republican coalition had not yet emerged. Instead, the main forces behind that coalition—a unified business community, a nascent Christian right, a well-financed conservative movement that has been gathering political and intellectual momentum for a decade, and a growing number of white voters who no longer supported Democratic welfare policies—provided Reagan with a strong base of support. His administration could therefore have its way, particularly in lowering taxes, raising military spending, and cutting benefits for the poor. Three main factors created a favorable climate for Reagan's budget and tax cut legislation. The steeply graduated income tax rates that inflation was pushing onto working- and middle-class incomes; rising regressive Social Security taxes; and increasingly heavy state and local tax burdens.

In 1980 and 1981, then, it seemed that the combined economic, class, and social interests supporting Reagan could become the core of a new majority party. During the last few years, however, these elements have lost their cohesion, and the Republican drive to expand its base has, in fact, had the effect of dividing its supporters. The Administration's 1986 tax reform proposal, for example, clearly had an implicit political purpose: by lowering all tax rates, eliminating many tax breaks, and shifting a significant share of the tax burden from individuals to corporations, the tax plan was intended by party strategists to give a populist boost to Republican hopes of realigning the parties. Instead of being perceived as the instrument of the rich and of corporate America, the GOP would appear as the defender of the common man.

And he didn't ignore the Christianists' differences with the plutocrats, either:

Another Republican alliance coming under strain is that between the country-club Republicans who have controlled the party organizations in most states, and the increasingly restless conservative Christian political community. This alliance has been of prime importance to the GOP: between 1976 and 1984, white fundamentalist Christians accounted for a shift of at least eight million votes to Republican candidates, according to The New York Times–CBS polls. No other single group in those years did more to create a strong Republican coalition.

Conservative Christian political leaders, including Pat Robertson, have, however, become increasingly intent on gaining direct political power. They are sponsoring campaigns to take over numerous state and local Republican party organizations, and running their own candidates in GOP primaries. For example, in Indiana in 1986, fundamentalist Christian candidates defeated candidates backed by the party for Republican nominations in two congressional districts, severely embarrassing one of the strongest state Republican parties in the country. Similarly, fights between Christian groups and party regulars occurred in Republican congressional contests in South Carolina and Tennessee. In three out of four of these districts, the Republican would normally have been favored to win. In fact, Democrats won all four districts. Republican party regulars, dismayed by such activities, are having increasing difficulty maintaining control over nominations. (my emphasis)

Today's Meet the Press was a festival of press hackery featuring Tim Russert hosting Doris Kearns Goodwin, Newsweek's Jon Meacham, Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal, Tom Brokaw of NBC and Michele Norris from NPR. Do I even need to say that they were all gaga over the bold Maverick McCain's brilliant success with his straight-shooting campaign?

Russert did read a quotation from Michael Gerson (who wasn't there) in which the word "Iraq" appeared. Godwin, whose son has served in Iraq, did mention the word a couple of time, though mainly to repeat the current press script that no one cares about the Iraq War in the election any more, e.g., "If foreign policy comes back or Iraq comes back in a bigger positive or negative way, that could change this whole thing." This is a truly amazing phenomenon. The pundits decide through whatever mystical process occurs in such things that nobody cares any more about the war and they just start talking about the election as if that's the case. It's an awe-inspiring case of groupthink.

They talked a lot of drivel about how the Republicans are trying to find the "soul" of their Party. If there is such a thing as a Party's "soul", the Republicans' soul is the idea that the wealthiest Americans should be liberated of the terrible burden of paying taxes to support their country.

Godwin did manage to say something sensible on this notion that the Wall Street/Main Street coalition in the Republican Party is shattering:

But I think for the Republican Party, the prospect of victory eventually may solve some of these divisions. I mean, clearly, each one of these primary candidates represents a particular piece of the Reagan coalition. Nobody has it all. My sense is, however, when we get closer to having a Democrat - suppose Hillary wins February 5, and they know who that opponent is, that that desire to win may somehow heal, if not the soul, the desire to look like the soul is healed.

Russert was desperately trying to find a racial angle to the Democratic contest. The guy is fixated on it.

Then there was this exchange:

MS. NORRIS: I mean, they [the Republicans] actually will talk openly about bringing Barack Obama down a few notches because they want to run against Hillary.

MR. MEACHAM: Because it's a known known, to give Secretary - former Secretary Rumsfeld his due. Hillary Clinton, they know what to do. Barack Obama, how do you run against the first African American nominee? It explodes all conventional campaign dogma in ways that completely will surprise and pleasantly and unpleasantly perhaps as they go forward. And I that that that's the - one of the things that's so scary about Obama to Republicans is they don't how to run against him. (my emphasis)

The Republicans won't know how to run against Obama? Say what? They've been running against black people since 1964! Good grief, what planet do these reporters live on?

How might they run against Obama? From the start of The Rush Limbaugh Show 01/14/08:

It is funny to watch -- and, ladies and gentlemen, a final observation here. Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton -- have you noticed, it's Obama versus the Clintons? Two against one. Obama campaigning against both of the Clintons. I wonder how well Mrs. Clinton would hold up if the shoe was on the other foot. That is, if she had to run against an ex-president and a senator. I think she'd cry and complain about the unfairness. For all of her BS about being a victim and piling on, Obama is holding his own against both of them, doing more than his share of the "spadework," maybe even gaining ground at the moment, using not only the spade, ladies and gentlemen. But when he finishes with the spade in the garden of corruption planted by the Clintons, he turns to the hoe. And so the spadework and his expertise, using a hoe. He's faring well. (my emphasis)

Short version: "Spade, yuh git it! Spade and ho! Yuck, yuck, makin' fun of black people is funny, ain't it?"

This, by the way, is typical segregationist humor. And it was followed by typical segregationist comma-dancing, in which Rush managed to use the word "spade" many more times and claim there's nothing wrong with it, as reported by Media Matters, Limbaugh twice used word "spade" during discussion of Obama 01/15/08.

Yes, I think the Christian Republican White People's Party will have some ideas about how they will campaign against Barack Obama. And heal that alleged split between "populist" theocrats and wealthy people who prefer not to pay taxes.

Tags: george packer, racism, rush limbaugh, thomas edsall

The state of American democracy

Fr. Charles Coughlin, the Rush Limbaugh of the 1930s

I watched and heard at least a couple of hours of the Congressional hearings Tuesday with Erik Prince, the Republican/Christian fundamentalist head of the Blackwater mercenary firm. Between Prince the Christianist acting surly and all but sneering his contempt for the Democrats on the Committee and several of the Committee Republicans bitching about MoveOn.org and whining that the Democrats support The Enemy and who criticizing Blackwater mercenaries was equivalent to blaspheming our Saviour-General Petraeus, we got a good glimpse at the thuggish side of today's authoritarian Republicans.

It gave extra resonance to some very recent blog posts, like Angry, hateful liberal bloggers by Glenn Greenwald Salon 10/02/07, Oprah the Nazi by Dave Neiwert Orcinus blog 10/02/07 and Stealing Fascism by Sara Robinson, Orcinus blog 10/01/07, all of which talk about manifestations of fanaticism that are becoming more and more "mainstream" in today's Republican Party. I'm surprised that none of the Democrats called out one or two of the Republicans on the Committee on their cracks, especially one of them who went on at some length about how the Democrats are supporting the Other Side.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's attempt to put the Republicans on the spot over Rush Limbaugh's trashy comment about soldiers who are critical of the Cheney-Bush war policies being "phony soldiers" didn't work out so well, it seems. As of Tim Grieve's post MoveOn, Limbaugh and how the game is played this morning, "Not a single Republican has signed Harry Reid's letter condemning Rush Limbaugh."

This new fad of having Congress pronounce official judgment on the propriety of statements by partisans in the course of normal political debate highlights one of the problems of democratic parties confronting a part that is becoming increasingly authoritarian, as today's Republican Party is. As disciplined as the often are, especially on supporting Cheney's foreign policies, the Republicans aren't quite a totally Leader-driven Party yet. As Ezra Klein points out in Immigration Issues: After Failure The American Prospect 09/24/07, the recent immigration reform bill was defeated by Republicans despite the President's support of the bill: "The legislation activated a large anti-immigrant bloc, whose primal scream, amplified into a Senate-shaking roar by conservative talk radio, doomed the bill". The aspirants to head the Party are carefully aligning themselves with their white nativist base on the issue, however.

Congressional declarations of what should be considered acceptable political speech is disturbing on a couple of levels. For one thing, it's embarrassing that one of the oldest democratically-elected legislative bodies in the world is reduced to such silly gestures. It's also an implied threat of legislative action, even though the resolution against MoveOn had no legal force.

Here the goals of the two parties are not mirror images of each other. On some issues, that's the case. On the Cheney-Bush torture policy, for instance, the Republicans with rare exceptions support it, while the Democrats oppose it. That's a difficult issue to craft a compromise over. Are they going to agree to only carry out mock executions by simulated drowning on Tuesdays and Fridays?

But in terms of regulating political speech, the goal of Republican authoritarians is to suppress pro-Democratic speech. Not (so far) by explicit bans but by stigma and quasi-legal means such as "free speech zones". As the late Molly Ivins put it, I thought the whole United States was a free speech zone. Also, it looks like the word "provocateur" is now a current part of our political vocabulary again. Anyone familiar with the Nixon administration's measures to suppress dissent could have guessed that some of this was going on. Cheney, after all, has sought to recreate the police-state features of the Nixon administration and take them much further. But this is the first concrete reference I recall coming across about the actual use of provocateurs against legal, peaceful protesters (though I obviously haven't been paying close enough attention), from The Mean Streets of the Homeland Security State-let by Tom Engelhardt and Nick Turse, TomDispatch.com 09/30/07. Turse writes:

In 2005, the Times' Dwyer revealed that at public gatherings since the time of the RNC, police officers had not only "conducted covert surveillance… of people protesting the Iraq war, bicycle riders taking part in mass rallies and even mourners at a street vigil for a cyclist killed in an accident," but had acted as agent provocateurs. At the RNC, there were multiple incidents in which undercover agents influenced events or riled up crowds. In one case, a "sham arrest" of "a man secretly working with the police led to a bruising confrontation between officers in riot gear and bystanders."

The Democrats, on the other hand, stand (I hope!) for a genuinely "liberal" notion of free speech.

That's why I have a lot of sympathy for Jane Hamsher's comment when she writes:

Rush [Limbaugh] may be [a] drug gobbling bloviator with a giant 4-F pustule on his butt, but his comments were well in line with what is considered free speech in this country, and that actually isn't any of the Senate’s business.

On the other hand, she says in the same post:

I really don’t know which is more exasperating — that our Senators think it is their job to tell people at large how they should exercise their right to free speech, or that they fire back at Limbaugh in such a weak and meaningless way. I suppose they have to do something or we will be treated to and endless parade of Cornyn bills where the Village Elders tell us all how displeased they are at our “uncivilized” rhetoric via fiat, and the failure of Republicans to sign on after voting to condemn MoveOn will serve up some campaign fodder. Would that their gesture was something more effective than watching them stomp their feet and shout “I know you are, but what am I?”

As long as Democrats are willing to sit at a Congressional hearing and listen to Republican blowhards call them traitors and claim they hate American soldiers and not at least respond that they are a bunch of lying sleazebags to say something like that, they aren't going to be able to respond to any of these attacks in a fully adequate way.

There is an attitude problem on the Democrats' part. And a big part of that problem is that they still find it hard to accept that today's Republican Party is an increasingly authoritarian institution that doesn't intend to play by either the formal or informal rules of democracy any more than they have to.

Wesley Clark's campaign to Dump Rush off Armed Forces Radio does make a lot of sense. Limbaugh not only trashes on-duty soldiers who don't agree with him. He regularly promotes bigotry directed not only against minorities and immigrants but against The Liberals. Not to mention that his relationship to factual accuracy is inconsistent, to put it nicely. Having a hate preacher like Limbaugh on Armed Forces Radio provides a kind of official endorsement he should not enjoy. Digby states the case for this move succinctly in Killing the King 10/02/07.

But this kind of dilemma will pop up more and more. And it is a real dilemma. When an authoritarian party dedicated to suppressing dissent against its policies is facing off against a party dedicated to a liberal democratic position on political speech, the pro-democracy party doesn't have the option of simply directing the same suppression tactics against the authoritarian party.

Complicating all this is the projection dynamic, in which affluent Republican white guys manage to define themselves as victims targeted by The Liberals to be suppressed. It seems bizarre for most people to imagine that Christians are being persecuted for their religion in the United States. But for white fundamentalists, that has been a standard assumption for years if not decades. Republican fundis are convinced that The Liberals and The Hollywood Crowd (i.e., "The Jews") are actively persecuting them in the United States. It's part of the craziness that comes with authoritarian fanaticism.

I've posted about this phenomenon several times in connection with the anti-Semitic "war on Christmas" nonsense that the FOXists have taken to promoting every year during the holiday season:

Whining by the "defenders" of Christmas 12/28/04
The (Christmas) war fraud 11/24/05
The fine old conflict over Christmas 12/08/05
Analyzing the phony "war on Christmas" 12/15/05
More on the bah-humbug war against the (nonexistent) "war on Christmas" 12/23/05

And as Digby points out, our Beltway press and pundits are heavily invested in not recognizing the evolution of the Republican Party and the American party system more generally (Village Parties 10/02/07):

... this fetish for bipartisanship is a [Washington Beltway] Village construct. They all live together. They want everyone to get along, like back in the good old days when Tip and Bob would fight it out on the floor and then head out and get shitfaced with Wilbur Mills and John Tower. In those days the parties were not aligned ideologically and there was great political utility in having an open line of communication.

We are in a different time, in which the parties have realigned along some old traditional lines. We are also dealing with the fact that one party was hijacked by a radical political movement that sought to take the country back to a 19th century economic system, an 18th century social system and a 1st century Imperial system. Many Americans disagree with that plan and are trying to bring the nation back to the present.

Tags: anti-semitism, authoritarianism, bipartisanship, establishment press, mainstream media, mainstream press, republican party, rush limbaugh, war on christmas

Rush Limbaugh and "humanitarian" war

OxyContin (the physical kind)

This little bit of trash in the flotsam and jetsam that flows daily from the rightwing noise machine will likely be swallowed by the news and polemics about the departure of Abu Gonzales the Torture Guy. But I wanted to take note of it while the flows by.

Digby and Steve Benen have called attention to junkie bigot Rush Limbaugh's comment on the air that Democrats support an intervention to stop the killing in Darfur because, he asked, what color are the people in Darfur? "It's black. And who do the Democrats really need to keep voting for them? If they lose a significant percentage of this voting bloc, they're in trouble."

Mr. OxyContin is not known for his thoughtful commentary on foreign policy, and that crack was no different. Rush's fans can't repeat it enough to themselves: black people vote for Democrats, the Democrats are the party of black people, Democrats do things that black people support. And Rush is one of the favorite political commentators among Republicans. On the one hand, we don't need to invest Rush's OxyContin-soaked ravings with more weight than they deserves. On the other, we don't have to go along with the notion that this is "political humor" or pretend that the Republican rank-and-file don't like Rush's bigoted talk. A very substantial portion of them do.

Rush's Darfur comment was meant to be a racial sneer, and that's about all it is.

However, the caller who was calling in trying to sound like a smart-ass dittohead managed, against the odds, to ask a real question:

Hey, Rush. It's great to talk to you. I talked to you once before. I've been listening to you for a couple of years now, and I think I'm getting brighter, but there's a lot to be learned. I know I'm no expert in foreign affairs, but what really confuses me about the liberals is the hypocrisy when they talk about how we have no reason to be in Iraq and helping those people, but yet everybody wants us to go to Darfur. I mean, aren't we going to end up in a quagmire there? I mean, isn't it - I don't understand. Can you enlighten me on this?

In OxyContinLand, everyone "knows" that The Liberals are hypocrites and The Liberals are liars. And this caller was likely trying to toss a softball to give Rush a chance to rave once again about liberal hypocrisy.

I should mention here that I'm not aware myself of any groundswell of enthusiasm among The Liberals for military intervention in Darfur. But OxyContin Vision reveals things to its practitioners that are hidden to us grubby news readers.

But when the caller asked, "I mean, aren't we going to end up in a quagmire there?", he/she managed to touch on a legitimate concern. I don't know if OxyContin Man went on to address that or not.

But one thing that Democrats do need to rethink after the experience of the Iraq War is the whole notion of "humanitarian intervention", or in its variant name, "humanitarian war". Helena Cobban has pointed out what should have been obvious to everyone, but it wasn't really to me before I saw her comment. That is, "humanitarian war" is a grotesque concept, downright Orwellian, actually.

War is about killing people. Bombing and shooting and displacing people. We should never lose sight of the fact that war is about killing people. Sadly, it's all too human to forget it, though. Which is a big part of why wars continue: people listen to sentimental drivel about the glories of war and forget what's really involved.

War is not "humanitarian". A war can be just, it can be necessary, it can have useful or positive or even noble aims, though the latter typically dissolve in the clouds of death and destruction that war involves. But war is not humanitarian. It's about killing and hurting people.

One of these days I'm going to post about the Kosovo War, which I supported at the time, and its aftermath. Although the strategic purpose had to do with controlling the destabilizing effects of Serbian military aggression and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, it is often thought of as a "humanitarian war" because the most immediate problem was the ethnic cleansing of Albanian Kosovars by Serbian forces. Given the devastated state of our Establishment press, most Americans probably think of the Kosovo War as a brilliant success. Since it was fought heavily by bombing, air power zealots have a particular stake in making it sound like a brilliant success.

But, as Jeffrey Record says, the only legitimate goal of war is to establish a better peace. Whether that has been achieved in Kosovo (or "Kosova" as independence advocates prefer) is still in question. The International Crisis Group (ICG) recently issued a report on the political state of Kosovo that presents something other than undiluted optimism, Breaking the Kosovo Stalemate: Europe’s Responsibility 08/21/07. The IGC warns in the executive summary:

The risks to Europe of inaction are substantial. Before the end of the year, Kosovo Albanian leaders will be under what is likely to be irresistible internal pressure to declare independence, with or without external support. If they act and are not supported, Kosovo would fracture: Serbia reclaiming the land pocket north of the Ibar River, Serbs elsewhere in Kosovo fleeing, and eight years of internationally guided institution-building lost. The implosion would destabilise neighbouring countries, increasing pressure for further fractures along ethnic lines. The EU would quickly experience refugee flows and feel the impact of the boost that disorder would give to organised crime networks in the Balkans that already distribute most of Europe’s heroin, facilitate illegal migration and are responsible for nearly 30 per cent of women victims of the sex trade worldwide.

Has that "humanitarian war" succeeded in establishing a better peace? It arguably has for the past eight years, though it didn't prevent widescale Albanian ethnic cleansing against Serbs in Kosovo after the cessation of hostilities with Serbia.

My point is not that the Kosovo War was wrong. I'm not willing to judge it in a simplistic framework of good war/bad war.

My point is that even the best-intentioned military intervention carries substantial risks. Even in a situation like Kosovo, where a substantial multinational coalition was acting (via NATO) and the international environment was substantially permissive, there is far more involved than dropping some bombs, making the bad guys give up, and leaving. A significant-sized NATO force has been present in Kosovo ever since the conclusion of the war. They haven't faced anything like the resistance seen in Iraq. But even that could change if some mutually satisfactory compromise over Kosovar independence from Serbia isn't worked out relatively soon. (Kosovo was and is legally a part of Serbia.)

Violent resistance. A protracted, expensive and frustrating occupation. Potential long-term damage to a country's international position. These are all risks involved in "humanitarian" interventions just like any other kind. And that's true whether the lead party in the intervention is the US, NATO, the UN or anyone else.

The United States is involved in one losing war (Iraq) more-or-less on our own. We're involved in a second losing war (Afghanistan) formally as part of NATO. And even Dick Cheney may not know how many covert interventions we have going, any one of which could blow up into more complications. I don't see right now as a good moment to be searching for other places to send US soldiers to fight.

After the Kosovo War and before the Scalia Five selected Cheney and Bush to be President, there was serious consideration being giving by the major powers to coming up with an improved international legal and political framework to conduct military interventions with UN approval in cases where genocidal killing was being carried out.

That was one of the casualties of the Iraq War. Not that the need is going away, or efforts to deal with it. But the Iraq War created a new context, along with the unilateralist approach of the Cheney-Bush administration, which was far more interested in shredding international frameworks than building them.

Colonialist rhetoric from Spain and Britain and France to the Cheney-Bush administration always promises to bring the blessings of civilization, including democracy these days, to the people who are being bombed, shot and tortured into accepting such blessings. So it's worth remembering in connection with the "humanitarian" Kosovo War that the neoconservatives generally supported it, while the Congressional Republicans were highly critical and even actively opposed. In those days the Reps didn't seem to think it was "aiding the enemy" to criticize the foreign policy of a sitting President, Bill Clinton in that instance.

Seeing the role that the neocons played in agitating for the Iraq War and now for expanding the war to Iran, it's hard not to conclude that for the neocons, the shaky status of the Kosovo War in international law was an appealing aspect of that war. And that they saw that validating the humanitarian justifications for the Kosovo War could prove useful in their already-active agitation for the Iraq War.

Tags: darfur, helena cobban, kosovo, kosovo war, rush limbaugh

Rush Moves On

Rush Limbaugh is a racist blowhard? Who would have thought it?

I mean, except for anybody who has listened to his radio program. Or heard him on TV. Or read one of his books. Or checked out his Web site.

Tags: authoritarianism, racism, rush limbaugh