Republicans Fighting for the Heart of the Republican Party

Santorum won the Iowa caucus after all, despite some alleged last minute shenanigans by the Romney supporters. But Romney clearly won New Hampshire, which is basically in his backyard. And, surprise, Newt Gingrich may pull out a squeaker in South Carolina. It's only January, and already there's been three primaries and possibly three different winners. We'll know the results by Saturday night... hopefully. The good news is that Republicans are trying to redefine their party. The bad news is that a lot of Republicans want a candidate who's as far to the right as possible.

It's clear the Republican party, after years of blunders and incompetence by George W. Bush, needs to go back to the drawing board. More important, the conservative ideas of the last thirty years simply don't work anymore. To put it bluntly, the Republican party needs to reform itself.

Of course, the notion of a Republican reformer is still a bit of an oxymoron. As so often happens in Washington, yesterday's right wing Republican vanguard is today's establishment. As an example, Santorum was a rebel when he was elected Senator from Pennsylvania. After two years, he became an establishment Republican protecting the business as usual interests of wealthy conservative Republicans, bankers and Wall Street high rollers. Hey, it's lucrative being a member of the establishment. And now, Tea Party favorite Eric Cantor is pulling the same stunt: after only one year this time, a Republican rebel has once again discovered the advantages of being part of the Republican establishment. Listen to what he says on TPMLivewire:

At a time when the Republican presidential nomination contest is growing increasingly nebulous, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) urged his party to “coalesce around a single vision with a nominee.”

It's not hard to read the tea leaves in Cantor's words. Instead of supporting an open primary process, he's telling voters to support the establishment candidate—meaning: someone who might be able to get elected. Everybody knows that neither Santorum or Gingrich is electable. Santorum represents a draconian right wing vision and Gingrich's reckless behavior does not make him fit for the oval office.

So the tea party big shots, who stopped mentioning the name of George W. Bush in 2008, want to continue Bush's policies by supporting Mitt Romney. Yep. Just what the country needs, two Republican businessmen in a row making decisions in the Oval Office according to what the hot shots on Wall Street want.

Hang on to your seats, folks. Until the leaders of the GOP reform the party, it's going to be a wild ride.

The Republican Establishment Is Weighing In

It looks like the Republican establishment—the bankers, the Wall Street people, the billionaires, multinaires and the privileged—are going to nail the nomination down for Romney. Or least try. These are the same guys who backed George W. Bush and supported all his policies. The guys who got us into the worst recession since the 1930s want to get back to business as usual: more jobs to China, even lower taxes for the rich, money for defense toys we don't need, and nickel and diming the middle class for those million dollar bonuses.

Already the money is beginning to pour. The establishment finds elections a little more expensive than lobbyists, but from their point of view, buying a few hundred million dollars worth of ads is still a bargain.

It almost doesn't matter which Republican gets nominated: they will all pretend that Barack Obama is the one we need to fight against. Here's a reality check: the more Obama tried to compromise, to stabilize the economy, and stabilize the country, the more Republicans revealed how right wing and out of touch they are becoming. We need pragmatists in Washington, not obstructionists, not extremists, and certainly not the type of people who got us into the mess in the first place.

Bizarre Comment By Mitt Romney

Some politicians are tone deaf. I came across an item in Talking Points Memo that Romney made a bizarre comment in Iowa today at a campaign event:

...Mitt Romney took on President Obama for saying the economy could be worse, saying: “When the president’s characterization of our economy was, ‘It could be worse,’ it reminded me of Marie Antoinette: ‘Let them eat cake’”...

Wow. Never mind the awkward phrasing. It was a weird thing for Romney to say, given that he owns the cake.

The Three Words That Define 2012: Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

At the end of the day, in most years, Americans are pragmatists. I say most years because it's not always certain that pragmatists win the day. For example, one definition of a pragmatist is that if something doesn't work, you try something else. A classic example in the last thirty years is trickle down economics, which argues that if you give more money to the rich, they'll create more jobs. Reagan tried trickle down economics in the 1980s. No matter what you think of Reagan, trickle down doesn't work. It never has. But, for some reason, Republicans keep trying it. They try trickle down economics this way, that way and every which way—and it still doesn't work.

Whoever becomes the Republican nominee is virtually guaranteed to try trickle down economics if elected. Cutting taxes and doing cute favors for the wealthiest Americans is more important to Republican politicians and lobbyists in Washington than creating jobs. That is a fact. One only has to look at their record. No doubt business as usual Republicans will put a good spin on it and tell a good story but it'll be trickle down economics. Trickle down sounds a lot better than what Republican economics really is: protecting the wealthiest Americans at all costs, regardless of how much it hurts our country, our democracy and millions of our fellow Americans.

Of course, there have always been four kinds of wealthy people: the kind who really know what they're doing (Jobs, Gates), the kind who inherit wealth (Paris Hilton as well as oil, lumber and tobacco heirs), the kind who are basically crooks in business suits surrounded by lawyers (Michael Milken and Bernie Madoff), or those who sort of stumble into it (Sarah Palin and any number of failed CEOs given golden parachutes of millions of dollars despite a dismal bottom line). Keep in mind that the first kind knows how to make money and doesn't need help creating wealth. And keep in mind that most wealthy people of the other three types usually don't help the economy much.

There's also a special fifth category that achieves wealth initially through the other routes mentioned but that guarantee wealth for themselves and their heirs through any number of devices that can only be defined as protecting privilege. They pay a lot of money to state legislatures and Congress to guarantee their wealth, and year after year the payoffs for their "investments" are lucrative. As just one example, one of the most lucrative scams during the Bush years was very low taxes on stock market, real estate and commodities speculations. Sorry, but speculation, to a large extent, is simply a legal way of skimming billions of dollars from tens of millions of Americans without actually producing healthy economic activity. (There is some need for prices to find their level but the massive gyrations of the markets have become a hindrance rather than a help to the economy. Count me in as one of those who think all such transaction should include a very modest tax).

Does anyone really doubt that Republicans are dominated by the 1%? Does anyone doubt that the 99% (which include tens of millions of ordinary Democrats, Republicans and independents) has legitimate reasons to be concerned about a power structure in this country that leaves so many people behind? Look, there are many responsible people among the 1%. We all know that. As some commentators point out, we're often talking about the .1% and generally those who abuse our economy to enrich themselves in ways that are unhealthy and unsustainable in the long term.

One of the things I personally have disliked over the last twenty years is the idea that many businesses seem to have that I am just a consumer, a human cow to be milked, bled and sometimes skewered. But I'm not a consumer. I'm an American. I'm sure millions of people feel the same way.

I know, I know, "consumer" is a word that sometimes has to be used in economics to explain how things work. I accept that on a certain level. But the politicians, aggressive sales people and the bottom line corporate takeover artists make a huge mistake of forgetting that consumers are Americans. People who lose their homes or jobs because of big biz financial shenanigans are usually decent people who have been treated as if they don't exist. Nothing is more disgusting to me than a corporation that buys a company with a good reputation and bleeds every dime out of that corporation and forgets the consumers, employees and the community and then, to add insult to injury, sells a product no longer worthy of the company's reputation. That is not the kind of capitalism that made America great.

Nick Hanauer is technically a member of the 1% and has written an article suggesting that taxes need to be raised to ensure that consumers, the real job creators, have money to spend:

Since 1980, the share of the nation’s income for fat cats like me in the top 0.1 percent has increased a shocking 400 percent, while the share for the bottom 50 percent of Americans has declined 33 percent.

(snip)

[But]...there can never be enough superrich Americans to power a great economy. The annual earnings of people like me are hundreds, if not thousands, of times greater than those of the average American, but we don’t buy hundreds or thousands of times more stuff. My family owns three cars, not 3,000. I buy a few pairs of pants and a few shirts a year, just like most American men.

(snip)

If the average American family still got the same share of income they earned in 1980, they would have an astounding $13,000 more in their pockets a year. It’s worth pausing to consider what our economy would be like today if middle-class consumers had that additional income to spend.

Raising taxes on wealthy Americans is only one step that needs to be taken. Much will have to happen to move our country in the right direction. Americans are unlikely to have that extra $13,000 any time soon. Mistakes have been made. Not enough has been spent on scientific research, one of the key activities that has always stimulated our economy. Not enough has been done to fix bridges, streets, hospitals and schools. Too many jobs have been sent overseas.

In the end, what Americans need are more jobs, not more budget cuts that do nothing more than cut jobs. For two years, Republicans have been complaining about the economy and for two years they have hardly lifted a finger to create jobs. Not in Washington. And not in state capital after state capital. Already, at the election approaches, Republican politicians, Republican pundits and even Republican think tanks are changing their rhetoric to tell Americans what they want to hear. But keep in mind that to date the only thing Republicans have done is cut jobs and ignore the poor and even the middle class. The recession started in early 2007. Where have the Republicans been? At least Democrats have been trying. They would have accomplished a great deal more if not for Republican obstructionists in Washington and in state capitals.

Nick Hanauer is a member of the 1% but not exactly in the sense that has been discussed in recent weeks. The 1% (or .01%) that everybody is talking about are people like Mitt Romney (who's comfortable making $10,000 bets) and Newt Gingrich (who pretends he's not a lobbyist). One was born into the 1% and is making it clearer day by day what his values really are. And the other became wealthy by shilling for the 1% for the last 30 years.

At the end of the day, we need to reelect President Obama and put more Democrats in Washington. But we also need two parties in this country. The Republicans in the GOP leadership need to become pragmatic again.

Circus Atmosphere Among Top Republicans: Donald Trump to Host Presidential Debate

The Republicans running for president are so bad that a phrase left over from the George W. Bush era comes to mind: shock and awe. Hey, it's a circus with lots of stunts, much swinging back and forth in the polls, and an embarrassing number of splats.

I suppose it began with Sarah Palin who "earned" millions by never really declaring herself a candidate for the 2012 presidential election. When Palin quit halfway through her term as governor, anyone paying attention figured she was doing it for the money. Conservatives considered that observation cynical and shoveled piles of cash into her coffers. If Palin had been serious about a presidential run, she at least could have used some of that cash to remake her image. Karl Rove showed that was possible with George W. Bush.

The first attempt by Newt Gingrich to run for president last spring was a disaster simply because he tried to calibrate himself to the right of Romney and to the left of some of the right wing fruitcakes trying to grab onto the Tea Party movement. The irony is that Gingrich is a reactionary and has been trying to pull the Republican party to the far right for more than twenty years. Over the summer, he had to take a long vacation before coming back as Gingrich II.

One of the oddest candidates initially was Donald Trump. He tried to pump a lot of hot air into the silly birther craze that conservatives kept going out of a stubborn desire to create "reality" by huffing and puffing their fantasy into some sort of straw house that was ridiculously easy to blow down. So what was Trump doing? Had his political advisers told him that being ridiculous sells? Oh wait, time and time again in American politics, the ridiculous sells quite well. The problem for Donald Trump is that throughout his life he has frankly always sounded like a blowhard. More on him in a moment.

Rick Perry has crashed. It was so painful to watch that it's probably better to simply move on.

Michelle Bachmann has made so many gaffes that I keep thinking of the Cuban Missile Crisis 1962. She would have closed our embassy in Iran.

Herman Cain is a circus barker. He is also crashing in the polls. But at least
he's been entertaining. I've never seen a candidate find so many ways to twist in the wind because of his own comments. Trump and Cain have been the two circus barkers on the Republican campaign trail. They're both the equivalent of high-priced used car salesmen. Americans haven't seen too many salesmen types in presidential contests before. The first may have been George W. Bush. Bush's only claim to fame before becoming governor of Texas was that he was a president's son and that he had a knack of parting wealthy investors from their money for oil projects that never went anywhere.

But Gingrich is back—as Gingrich II. Or maybe it's Gingrich III, Gingrich IV.... One loses count. It's hard to say how far Gingrich will go. How do you predict the fortunes of such a person when Newt's claim to fame began on C-Span when he would hurl phony charges at Democrats in an empty chamber at one or two in the morning. It was a joke, a charade, a misuse of special orders, a desperate attempt for a mediocre politician to get attention. Using special orders to get something off your chest is fine. But attacking your House colleagues without telling them that you're attacking them is a sore point with a long history in Washington. But conservatives thought it was cute and Gingrich finally had a career as a politician known for his....what? Can anyone name something useful that Gingrich has done in the last thirty years?

Okay, there are still people left in the campaign and more debates. The debates, of course, have been bizarre. Paul Wolfowitz, architect of the war in Iraq and the person responsible for the image of Americans being welcomed with flowers, parades and cheers, was allowed to ask a question. This is a guy who was wrong on about one or two dozen predictions he made about Iraq. Two months after we arrived in Iraq everything that Paul Wolfowitz said about Iraq was essentially thrown out the window as useless. Wolfowitz was a cold war warrior who didn't know what to do with himself after the fall of the Soviet Union. So to stay in business and to stay cozy with conservatives, he essentially made up bullshit about places like Iraq. Some foreign policy. And a strange choice to be asking questions.

But the weirdness of the Republican run for the White House has not ended. It probably won't end until November 2012. At the end of December, for some unfathomable reason, Donald Trump has been asked to be the debate moderator. If anyone symbolizes the reckless avarice of the 1% (some say the .1%) that brought on the Great Recession, it's Donald Trump. Trump was born rich. He inherited his real estate company from his parents. I don't know how many times Donald Trump has come to the brink of bankruptcy but it appears he's never really has had to worry about losing his fortune. Why? Because the banks always bail him out. Not because he's competent, but because...well, that's just what they do. Long before President Bush had to bail out the banks, the banks for twenty years had been bailing out Trump. Donald Trump is a bona fide member of the privileged 1%. He's not a banker, but long before the banks expected to automatically be bailed out, Donald Trump was already leading the way. And he's asking the questions.

Gingrich Advocates Third World Status for the United States

Newt Gingrich lives in a strange universe. Unfortunately, it's the same universe other Republican politicians have been occupying lately, such as Bachmann, Perry and Palin. Before I go further, let's look at one of Gingrich's ideas that has been appearing in various places such as the Los Angeles Times:

"It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods in trapping children … in child laws which are truly stupid," Gingrich said. "OK, you say to someone, 'You shouldn't go to work before you're 14, 16 years of age.' Fine. You're totally poor. You're in a school that is failing with a teacher that is failing. I tried for years to have a very simple model. Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school." Mr. Bumble from "Oliver Twist" could not have said it better.

What Gingrich fails to understand is that in many poor neighborhoods the janitor's job is one of the more decent jobs available. For more than forty years, corporations generally have been moving out of poor neighborhoods, not in. And millions of those jobs have simply been sent overseas. There have been exceptions in poor areas, usually organized by Democrats such as Bill Clinton, though a handful of Republican governors have managed to buck the right wing politics of their party and done a few useful things (don't include Rick Perry in that crowd—he's done nothing).

Actually, given that today's radical Republican politicians want to either end or cut social security, medicare, medicaid, student loans and various other programs, it's truly surprising they're doing as well as they are in the polls. At some point, it's going to dawn on a large majority of Americans that the vast majority of Republican ideas these days are about cutting jobs. There is nothing in any of their plans about creating jobs.

Newt Gingrich always has ideas that boomerang on Americans. He was certainly one of the people a few years back who supported the call by George W. Bush that social security should be privatized. Under privatization, people could set aside the money they put into social security and use the same money to invest in the stock market. It's one of those ideas that's great for people who are already rich, such as bankers and Wall Street stock brokers, but it's a lousy idea for everybody else.

If George W. Bush had gotten his way on the privatization of social security, tens of millions of Americans would have lost their shirts in the 2008 stock market debacle. The damage done by George W. Bush, as well as others with the same philosophy as Gingrich, can still be seen in the stock market. Quite literally, the blunders that occurred under Bush for eight years are still unfolding. Republicans have done nothing to help Obama deal with those blunders. Instead, they have obstructed him every step of the way. Republicans want to cut jobs, not create them.

If Gingrich became president and did what many Republicans really want to do, he would outright cut social security. Millions of seniors would suddenly not have enough income to be on their own. They would have to live the way old people did it in the 19th century: move in with their children. Of course, Gingrich is either ignorant of what's happening to America's middle class—not to mention the poor—or he doesn't care. For example, right now, thousands and thousands of middle class families in their fifties and even early sixties, are already hosting older children who either are having trouble getting jobs in the current economy or don't earn enough yet to live on their own.

These are not kids who are slackers. For the last 11 years, the total number of available jobs in the U.S. has been falling. The jobs simply aren't there. Republicans have worked hard for thirty years to game the system for the wealthy. One of the consequences is that Republicans have created conditions that could turn the United States into a third world country.

Here's a simple list of six things to keep in mind:

1. Republicans rarely create jobs. They see their job as protecting the rich, while throwing crumbs to various conservative groups to get enough votes at election time.

2. Democrats are job creators. Just look at Bill Clinton's record. Obama's hands have been somewhat tied by the large number of Republican governors cutting jobs and by 30 years of sending jobs to China. But Obama is also a job creator.

3. When it comes to cutting livable wages, the Republicans are the outright winner. The recent attacks on unions absolutely guarantees lower wages for everyone.

4. When it comes to benefits, who's the first to cut them? Republicans.

5. When it comes to banking costs and loans, who's the first to defend bankers instead of middle class Americans? Republicans.

6. When it comes to higher and higher health insurance costs, who resists reform the most? Republicans. When a fat cat insurance executive gets a $20 million bonus, who does he write most of his checks to? Republicans.

Do Americans really want crazy ideas from the 19th century brought back to life again? We'll find out in November 2012.

Sarah Palin Is Consistent....Sometimes

Since there are more important things to talk about than Sarah Palin, I promise this will be the last post discussing her for a bit. The problem is that watching Sarah Palin is often like watching a train wreck. Of course for eight years George W. Bush was something of a train wreck so one can't entirely ignore Palin.

What caught my eye over the weekend is this story on Huffington Post:

Sarah Palin dropped out of a 5k race on Thanksgiving Day in Kennewick, Wash. The former vice presidential candidate and Alaska Governor quit the race because she wanted to avoid the crowds that were waiting for her at the end...

For all I know Palin's reason for quitting the race is legitimate. But the word that caught my eye was 'quit.' Every time she fails to show up for an event, every time she drops out, every time she ditches an interview, even every time she changes her mind, the tag of quitter is going to follow her.

And yet a politician should have the right to change his or her mind. It would have saved our nation a great deal of grief and trouble if George W. Bush had changed his mind a few times.

What Sarah Palin and George W. Bush have in common is an unwillingness to engage the world as it is rather than as what they believe it to be based on the extremes of their ideology and prejudices. Part of the reason President Bush lasted eight years is that he had enormous power at his disposal. Given all the issues that Bush should have been dealing with, he was a bit like an incompetent general who has such overwhelming force at his beck and call that his many blunders left him weaker but still standing at the end of eight years. Make no mistake, Bush left our economy weakened and our position in the world weakened through his steadfast refusal to change his mind at critical junctures.

Thanks to Karl Rove, George W. Bush was able to put the far right into his corner and get them out to vote. Sarah Palin, despite her many shortcomings, doesn't need Karl Rove. She has her own radar for right wing nonsense. That alone is enough to make her dangerous. That's why she was selected by John McCain. It's ironic, by the way, that McCain got deservedly labeled as erratic when in fact he's considerably more steadfast than Palin.

The bottom line is that despite all the jokes and silliness surrounding Palin—often invited by her actions, words and lack of knowledge—there is a possibility she will be the next president of the United States. If by some fluke she is elected and continues her pattern, she will be feckless and erratic while her handlers will insist she has a plan and knows her mind. And our country will drift yet another four years.

It would be easy to dismiss Palin out of hand except for one thing: many American progressives are exhausted. They have been fighting for eight years to restore at the very minimum some sense of balance in our system. Many progressives are acutely aware of what has been lost under Bush. For many, Obama is not, so far, the beacon of light many hoped he would be. It would be a mistake, of course, for progressives to throw in the towel. This is a generational fight, one hardly understood by a media fascinated more by how much their colleagues are going up or down in the pecking order than by the vast changes now going on in the world.

The Carnegie Endowment for Peace notes that vast changes are already underway:

The world’s economic balance of power is shifting dramatically. By 2050, the United States and Europe, long the traditional leaders of the global economy, will be joined in economic size by emerging markets in Asia and Latin America. China will become the world’s largest economy in 2032, and grow to be 20 percent larger than the United States by 2050.

If the United States cannot get its act together, we may see that change moved up to 2020. China has made a number of smart economic decisions in recent years but they are still generations away from making smart decisions on human rights and other issues as well. It may not seem like it at times but progressive politics will matter for many years to come.