The Party Is Over

The Republican Party is dissolving before our eyes, as did the Whig Party it succeeded in 1860.

The Republican Congress of seven years ago extended the Voting Rights Act (VRA) and it was signed off on by a Republican president. (The Republican-controlled House vote was 390-33, the Republican-controlled Senate vote 98-0.) Last year Republicans went out of their way to game the election process with a variant form of poll taxation that failed, but brought the VRA before the Supreme Court. It is unrealistic of the Roberts Court to expect that the present Republican Congress will take any action in the best interest of the country with respect to our civil rights. It has no interest in it. That the court also threw out DOMA, despite GOP legal defense spending, really puts the out-of-power party in an odd place – where a major party dissolves, as did the Whig Party.

For several years the GOP agenda has appeared to be all about repealing the Great Society and anything that supported it under the Constitution. Rand Paul ran up the trial balloon opposing part of the Civil Rights Act itself, prior to his election. Lindsay Graham, Jon Kyl, and Mitch McConnell each supported repealing the 14th Amendment. The party continues to support the disenfranchisement of women, not just the Roe v. Wade decision but coming perilously close to the 19th Amendment itself; all of it under the mantra “take the country back.”

The show is far from over. In these last few years of the GOP existence we will still have to endure more crisis mismanagement, another government shutdown and debt ceiling rerun, and a coup d’état for the Speakership, although a short Speakership for the present majority leader Eric Cantor should such a coup come before the midterm elections. Scads of congressional Republicans may expect to be handed pink slips by fed-up voters, whereupon Nancy Pelosi will reprise her Speaker of the House role. Thereafter a crushing defeat in the 2016 general election will sound the death knell.

So, what the Supreme Court has done is to harpoon the GOP by remanding the Voting Rights Act to Congress for a rewrite and by striking down key elements of the Defense of Marriage Act altogether. Speaker Boehner has lost control of his caucus, as the recent Farm Bill debacle demonstrated, and Congress’s approval rating is at a historic low. Blame Obama, blame the Left, blame the Democrats, and condemn anyone who points it out; but the party is over.

GOP Wants to Throw Up

The out-of-power party is using bile instead of brains. By substituting bumper sticker rhetoric for platform policy, Bush’s architect Rove succeeded in transforming the GOP’s constituency to a radio audience of non-reading, non-college educated, white, males, who privately refer to the President in epithets. Political celebrity Sarah Palin voiced easy-to-repeat sound bites that echoed across AM talk radio and Twitter. The transformation succeeded in driving conservative moderates, intellectuals, African-Americans, and Hispanics out of the Party to become amorphic Independents. The Republican Party now seems to be working on alienating women voters over health care issues. The GOP’s successful failure as majority party of the House of Representatives is reflected in record low, single digit congressional approval ratings. Epic sized Super PAC cash-backed poser conservatives are in a campaign that is all about advertising on television and radio. The national good goes unmentioned.

In a surprising New York Times column, David Brooks blames “the professional politicians” who in private “bemoan where the party is headed” and “in public they do nothing.”  Although Republicans had a chance to retake the White House, Brooks writes that those pro polls allowed the party to trash its “reputation by swinging from one embarrassing and unelectable option to the next: Bachmann, Trump, Cain, Perry, Gingrich, Santorum.”

This is not to say that eastern major market pundits like Brooks or fellow conservative travelers like Charles Krauthammer and Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post know something that the rest of country does not. But when they seem united in their conservative consternation about the likes of Rick Santorum, it begs a question. I am not sure what telling the world that “I almost threw up” after reading the text of a speech by President John F. Kennedy says about Santorum or to whom that comment is supposed to appeal.

The 1960 JFK speech in question had to do with Kennedy’s Catholicism as much as the separation of church and state.  Republicans raised his religion as an issue about the Senator’s candidacy much as Romney’s Mormon religion has been questioned. At best, Rick Santorum botched his commentary about the absoluteness of church and state separation by his reference to sickness. At worst, he did not grasp Kennedy’s nuances, or he just does not think before he speaks, which is not a smart presidential qualification.

Santorum later said he wished he "had that particular line back." He should talk to Howard Dean about that kind of wish.

As to Romney, who split his home state of Michigan with Santorum, the former governor suffers much the same think-before-you-speak dilemma as the former Senator. Romney recently told an Ohio reporter, regarding a bill to overturn the Obama administration's much-debated birth control requirement, “. . . the idea of presidential candidates getting into questions about contraception within a relationship between a man and a women, husband and wife, I’m not going there.” Then he added, “contraception is working just fine, let’s just leave it alone.”

This is why it should be no surprise that Republicans like New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christy and Florida’s former Governor Jeb Bush have eschewed entering the race, a word that seems contextually out of place. They are smart not to enter. The reason is that it would blight their résumés to run and loose to the incumbent President Barack Obama. They have chosen to let the dummies do that. Christie and Bush will save their political cachet for the 2016 election to run against Obama’s Democratic successor. It will also give the GOP time to throw up and recover.

Say What?

I thought the problem with Romney was that he does not do well without a script. That is not the case. By his latest famous quote about being “severely conservative,” he demonstrated that he does not do well when he ad libs. If you watch you will see that his body language is out of sync with his words. When the question is whether or not we want a President who can deliver lines with conviction, the name Ronald Reagan has got to come to mind. The Gipper was one of the best either on or off script and was the last great rhetorician to occupy the White House. It helps to have great writers, which is something Mitt Romney does not have and desperately needs.

Here is a little trivia about the Presidents’ age (birth year) and their writers. Reagan (1911), a trained actor, had Peggy Noonan. Richard Nixon (1913) worked hard at delivering lines and even used 3 X 5 index cards to practice small talk. William Safire scripted Nixon. A towering and passionate rhetorician, Lyndon Johnson (1908) relied on Richard Goodwin, who named LBJ’s political agenda “The Great Society”. Jack Kennedy (1917), the first television president relied on Arthur Schlesinger and Theodore Sorenson to craft his speeches.

Here is the point of the trivia. When Reagan, Nixon, Johnson, and Kennedy were young men, radio was the dominant medium of mass communication, masterfully utilized by President Franklin Roosevelt with his famous fire-side chats. World War II intensified the importance of radio. The spoken word, the rhetoric used in public speaking, and the crucial importants of written words characterizes the manner in which those men formulated their thoughts. It also influenced their choices of writers who they regarded as critical to their political success. That became more important as the dominant medium became television by 1960.

Mitt Romney (1947) is a baby-boomer for whom the dominant medium became television with the assassination of President Kennedy. Words formulating Romney’s thoughts are sound-bites, not the paragraphs of the radio era. It is bumper-sticker rhetoric, ideal for Twitter. To complicate Romney’s predicament further, he is a spreadsheet man. His speeches could well be written in Excel for a PowerPoint presentation. It would also appear that Romney does some of his own editing.

That is proving to be a mistake. In our media environment, words are like toothpaste. Once they are out, it’s tough to get them back in the tube. Do you think someone really wrote the lines “corporations are people,” “not concerned about the very poor,” or “severely conservative?” Could it be a cynical plot to discredit Romney in the eyes of various constituent groups? Can such thoughtless remarks be purposeful?

The only thing inevitable about Mitt Romney is that he will respond to the pressure of this campaign by trying to outdo his opponents and saying things he will have to redact. If he is wins its nomination, the Republican Party had better hire some great writers to load his lips. He could also use an acting coach to synchronize his body language with his lines. Since no one in the GOP seems to like him, Romney should study Nixon. The party did not like him either, but Nixon won. Otherwise, Romney is in over his head in a rhetorical duel with President Obama.

 

Article first published as Say What? on Blogcritics.

The Not-So Great Society

Mitt Romney revealed a lot about himself when he told CNN’s Soledad O’Brien, “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety-net there.” Weeks before he had asserted that those safety-net programs have “massive overhead” and that because of the cost of such bureaucracy “very little of the money that’s actually needed by those that really need help, those that can’t care for themselves, actually reaches them.” His claim is false. The fact is that more than 90% of the money allocated to safety-net programs reaches its beneficiaries. Romney’s statements demonstrate that he is oblivious to such socio-economic realities, but at least he brought up poverty and made it an issue. That is something that has not happened up since 1964.

Romney touts his business background and pontificates that he knows how to create jobs. That may sound good to the Republican base, but Presidents of the United States have nothing to do with job creation. It is not in their Constitutional authority. Presidents do not legislate. They sign legislation into law or veto it. Furthermore, the United States is not a corporation. The last U.S. President who came to office from business was Herbert Hoover, whose administration ushered in the Great Depression, incredible job loss, and excruciating poverty.

Presidents do propose legislation to the Congress, as LBJ did with the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. That Act established the Office of Economic Opportunity to administer the local application of federal funds targeted against poverty. Modified over the years, the Act’s remaining programs include Head Start and the Job Corps. Johnson proposed that legislation in January of 1964, coerced and cajoled members of Congress to pass it, and signed it into law on August 20, 1964. It created jobs.

In declaring the War on Poverty, President Johnson sought “to help that one-fifth of all American families with incomes too small to even meet their basic needs.” LBJ called for “better schools, and better health, and better homes, and better training, and better job opportunities to help more Americans, especially young Americans, escape from squalor and misery and unemployment rolls where other citizens help to carry them.”

The poverty rate is the percentage of Americans whose income is lower than the federally determined poverty line. It was 17.3% in 1965.

As LBJ put it to Congress, “Very often a lack of jobs and money is not the cause of poverty, but the symptom. The cause may lie deeper in our failure to give our fellow citizens a fair chance to develop their own capacities, in a lack of education and training, in a lack of medical care and housing, in a lack of decent communities in which to live and bring up their children.” The safety-net programs that Mr. Romney does not comprehend came from President Johnson’s Great Society initiative.

Romney, the other GOP candidates, and the Republican Congress gripe about and seek to change one of President Johnson’s greatest legislative achievements, Medicare. It helped to lower poverty rates for the elderly. So did President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Social Security program, which LBJ enhanced by advocating, pushing for, and signing legislation in 1965 and 1967. But the GOP seeks to repeal LBJ’s Great Society by claiming that its programs are bankrupting the country.

Romney ineloquently brought up poverty with his “very poor” statement, for which he drew massive criticism. He said he misspoke. That may be true, but it reveals an ignorance of the fact that more than 20 million Americans live in a household with income of less than half the federal poverty rate. According to census data for 2010, those “very poor” had an annual income below $11,057 for a family of four. That portion of the US population in the very poor category has almost doubled since 1975 and is the highest it has been in 35 years. Business people rely on data. At the least Romney could have read Business Week and appeared less clueless.

In addition to those one in five Americans that Romney does not care about, the ones who had trouble putting food on the table last year, the unpleasant reality is that nearly half of all U.S. households are struggling to cover basic expenses like electricity and medical care. Children are the least fortunate victims. As in LBJ’s time in the late ‘20s when he was a Texas school teacher, childhood poverty can have a lifelong effect on a person's earning potential. The Brookings Institute and First Focus found that by the time children who fell into poverty during a recession grow up to be financially independent adults, their median income is about 30 percent less than that of adults who never experienced poverty as children. That is certainly bad for business.

The poverty issue is not who gets blamed. The issue is what choices do policy makers make to help expand economic activity. Romney and his cohorts are all about austerity, like defunding the safety-net programs for the very poor, the disabled, and seniors. The problem is that austerity in a recession makes things worse, not better. In Europe, which the GOP does not understand, harsh austerity policies have made unemployment soar. Cuts in government spending have failed to reduce budget deficits because tax receipts fell. Economic activity and employment levels collapsed. Poverty increased as spending decreased.

President John F. Kennedy said, “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.” As one of those few, Romney demonstrates a profound paucity of the economic and social understanding that is requisite of Presidents. Despite the Republican pabulum to the contrary, this is still a country of great abundance that is slowly emerging from the Great Recession. However, the nation suffers from a rise of poverty that the nation can ill afford. All of the talk about the middle class ignores the plight of the “many who are poor.”

Poverty is bad for business and Romney should know it. His comments deserve derision because they are false, not because they are gaffes. He raised the poverty issue but has articulated no plan for addressing it, without which the country becomes the Not-So Great Society.

 Originally published as The Not-So Great Society on Blogcritics.

Asking Not

Fifty-one years ago President John F. Kennedy delivered his inaugural address containing the thought provoking line, “And so, my fellow Americans - ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” That short speech contains several other rhetorical gems such as, “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.” Kennedy declared, “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.” Today, the few who are rich seek to benefit from fear and a lack of negotiation as they seek what their country can do for them.

Foremost among those rich few is the Republican nominee apparent Mitt Romney. In his speech after the marginal New Hampshire primary, Romney castigated President Obama. “He wants to turn America into a European-style entitlement society,” the candidate said.  The GOP echo chamber reverberates with variations on the "European-style socialism" theme from television to Twitter. But just because Republicans repeat it does not make it so. The veracity of such rhetoric suffers the problematic flaws of ignorance and inaccuracy.

The ignorance is that most Americans do not know much about Europe other than its economic situation is in far worse shape than our own. "Associating Obama with Europe links him to the current malaise in Europe, and Americans know it's a basket case," according to Rosemary Hollis of London's City University. "It plays to the stereotypical notion that the USA has about Europe, that they [Europeans] are freeloaders, with no defense capability, and live on welfare [state] benefits." She also said that Romney is "relying on a history of socialism being viewed as the enemy." Socialism is the new Communism.

The inaccuracy is that Europe has increased its privatization which has led to a decline of the welfare state, a post WWII idea crafted by the British economist and social reformer William Beveridge. He saw poverty, disease, ignorance, squalor, and idleness as the five "giants on the road to reconstruction." Beveridge proposed setting up a welfare state with social security, a National Health Service, free education, public housing projects, and full employment as its objectives. The welfare state adopted the ideas of economist John Maynard Keynes, specifically that a government could keep its economy vigorous by increasing public spending. The British Labour government used its U.S. Marshall Plan aid money to get industry going. Then it nationalized the trucking, railways and coal industries in 1947 and the steel industry in 1951.

The accusation that President Barack Obama is leading the country into any kind of socialist state is as erroneous as making the same accusation about his predecessor, President George W. Bush. Republicans conveniently ignore the fact that under Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson the government nationalized major banks. The TARP bailout also contained what can be called socialist elements. If Obama deserves a hit, it should be for hiring Republican appointees Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner, whose deregulatory policies of the ‘90s helped create the crisis that required such a government rescue.

Romney has been wrong before. He opposed the automobile industry bailout. “IF (sic) General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed,” he wrote in a 2008 New York Times opinion article. “Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses.” That is not what happened.

The President is not leading the country into a European-style entitlement society, as Mitt Romney pontificates. If anything, President Obama is presiding over an inherited American-style entitlement society that has its origins in FDR’s New Deal, with the Social Security Act, extending through the JFK’s New Frontier and LBJ’s Great Society, with the Civil Rights Act, Medicare and Medicaid. The Republican elites who opposed Democratic Presidents Roosevelt, Kennedy and Johnson decried them as socialists too.

Anti-European, anti-socialism, anti-Obama rhetoric aside, let’s think about what JFK said, as his niece did last year in the Atlantic. “I almost never hear anything like that call to sacrifice for the good of our country from our leaders today,” Kathleen Kennedy Townsend wrote. “When President Kennedy asked what we could do for our country, he didn't pretend it would be easy, or painless, or even fair.” John F. Kennedy’s death for his country affirms that.

“So let us begin anew,” said the 35^th President, “remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof.” So far, that too is being lost on the wealthy Republican candidates seeking the Presidency. As they sink more deeply into incivility, their sincerity leaves much to be proved.

 Originally published as Asking Not on Blogcritics.

Gridlock Eric Cantor

A conservative friend of mine, who remains an avid Herman Cain supporter, recently bemoaned via Twitter, “Conservatives seem to be lost. We throw Cain over the cliff, embrace Newt. Something is wrong.” My response tweet came quickly. “Conservatives aren't lost. They got mugged by Bush/Cheney and let the Tea Party phonies in the House. It's tough.” It is also cynical and two-faced, epitomized by the House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor of Virginia.

According to the Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives, since the 19^th Century the majority leader is the officer “charged with scheduling legislation for floor consideration; planning the daily, weekly, and annual legislative agendas; consulting with Members to gauge party sentiment; and, in general, working to advance the goals of the majority party.” The purpose of having such an officer is to “expedite legislative business and to keep their parties united.”

Cantor has done little to expedite legislative business and even less to keep his party united.

In 2010 the House Majority Leader went about recruiting most of the Tea Party backed freshmen who claim to be conservatives. Although Cantor is attempting humanize his image and present himself as more reasonable, such as the recent fluff piece on 60 Minutes, it does not change the fact that he has lead the obstructionism in the House and fractured its leadership.

Cantor told Politico, “the most important issue facing the people that sent us to Washington, and that is how do we help small businesses create jobs.” That is not what the record shows. Creating jobs has been House Republicans’ last priority. Here is the short version of the 112^th Congress’ numbers for their 2011 agenda:

14        Votes to repeal patient health care protections

10        Anti-Consumer votes

7          Votes to keep unnecessary subsidies for Big Oil companies

4          Votes to restrict women’s access to health care

3          Votes to end Medicare

3          Votes to roll back workers’ rights

0          Comprehensive jobs bills

So it should come as no surprise, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows 84 percent of Americans disapprove of the job Congress is doing, with almost two-thirds saying they “disapprove strongly.” Just 13 percent of Americans approve of how things are going after the 112th Congress’s first year of action, “solidifying an unprecedented level of public disgust that has both sides worried about their positions less than 10 months before voters decide their fates.”

“I think last year showed us where sort of the differences lie between the two sides and hopefully we could use the knowledge gained there to focus on progress that we can make over the next 10 months leading up to the election,” Cantor said in his recent Politico interview. The problem is that during most of those 10 months House members will not be in Washington since they will be at home trying to woo their constituents.

In the latest New York Times-CBS News poll, Mr. Cantor’s party gets the blame for Washington gridlock. Curiously enough, the poll also found that “nearly half of the Republicans surveyed do agree with Democrats and independents on one thing: Congressional Republicans are not working with the president to make progress on the legislative agenda.”

In GQ Magazine’s “The 50 Most Powerful People in Washington,” Eric Cantor tops the list. GQ questions whether Cantor will wait for the retirement of Speaker of the House John Boehner, ranked number 12, or shove the Ohio Republican out of the way. “The Virginia Congressman masterminded, and then masterfully carried out, the GOP's strategy of legislative intransigence that has stymied the White House these past three years,” the article says. “In the process, he imposed his will on all of Washington, refashioning the city into a hyperpartisan capital of gridlock.” GQ notes, "People with the last names Obama and Biden not included."

However, running on such a record could be problematic for Republicans. Just in case the country forgets about the political theatre of last year’s gridlock, the House started off 2012 with a protest vote against raising the debt ceiling.  The 239-176 vote suggests that GOP members, especially the Tea Party freshmen, still think that a default on US obligations is an acceptable goal of the Republican Party. It also demonstrates the schism in the party orchestrated by Majority Leader Cantor, who has demonstrated disinterest in party unity.

Such high school political posturing explains why conservatives such as my friend feel somewhat lost. Intransigence and obstructionism are neither conservative nor progressive traits. Ronald Reagan and Lyndon Johnson practiced the art of compromise, something presently absent in Washington. They articulated an American ideology and eschewed the bumper sticker rhetoric that poses for it today. But from time to time the country suffers a bad decade. That explains gridlock Eric Cantor’s perceived power, such as it is. 

Originally published as Gridlock Eric Cantor on Blogcritics.

Tea Party: A Koch Industry

Let’s call a spade a spade. Let’s call the Tea Party the Koch Party. The Koch Party is the tail that is wagging the GOP’s lead dog, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH).

The billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch bankrolled Tea Party groups from their beginning in addition to funding FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity, and Citizens for a Sound Economy. The Kochs have been referred to as “the financial engine of the Tea Party.” Their agenda opposes the extension of unemployment benefits, opposes a federal deficit, and calls for a freeze on federal regulations regarding oil, mining, and financial concerns. 

As the New Yorker reported, “In Washington, [David] Koch is best known as part of a family that has repeatedly funded stealth attacks on the federal government and on the Obama Administration in particular.” 

Just before Christmas Boehner’s song was that the Keystone XL pipeline was the keystone of the payroll tax cut bill. “We will make changes,” Speaker Boehner said. “I will guarantee you the Keystone pipeline will be in the bill when it goes back to the Senate.” Increasing Canadian oil imports benefits Koch Industries, which is responsible for close to a quarter of the oil sands crude that is imported into the United States. Pipeline approval would be a windfall for Koch, with its deep involvement in the Canadian petroleum industry.

The Senate gave the Speaker the song he wanted to sing, a payroll tax extension with the Pipeline project rider. It then adjourned and left Washington. But the Koch Party House members rebelled and the Speakers’ tune changed to another piece of brinkmanship, for which the 112^th Congress has become renowned. At stake this time were 2 million Americans losing their long-term unemployment benefits and 160 million workers seeing their taxes rise by 2-percentage points.

Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) slammed the GOP. “The public has to be concerned and wondering why on Earth are we not getting a payroll tax cut when everybody says they're for it?" The answer to her question is the Koch Party, led by Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), who opposed the Senate bill and urged his caucus to reject it.

Job creation is just the lip service that Speaker Boehner gave to the Keystone XL pipeline project. Blocking the middle class tax cut could cost between 400,000 and 1 million American jobs. Jobs are not on the Koch Party agenda. Its Tea Party surrogates do not understand who creates jobs or how a tax increase would impact consumer spending. Koch Industries is big business concerned about regulations and corporate tax loop-holes.  

Big business does not create jobs: it eliminates jobs. Small business creates jobs, but it can only create jobs when consumer spending goes up.

Well-funded Republicans do not grasp the concept that taking $40 a month away from the average US households is hardly a way to increase consumer spending. The non-partisan National Federation of Independent Business says, “It is going to take a rebound in consumer spending, particularly in the service sector to make a significant dent in the number of unemployed. The manufacturing sector is doing very well, but it does not create many jobs.”  

The Koch Party has had a strategy for the 2012 election. In order to thwart the re-election of President Barack Obama, it has exercised considerable effort to keep unemployment high and to restrain economic growth. The effect has been for the House of Representatives to abdicate its legislative responsibilities to the Senate and to foment a split between the two chambers.

However, the Koch Party strategy is flawed. Its usual Rupert Murdoch ally, the Wall Street Journal, critiqued, “After a year of the tea party House, Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats have had to make no major policy concessions beyond extending the Bush tax rates for two years. Mr. Obama is in a stronger re-election position today than he was a year ago.”

The Republican Party has not necessarily sold out to big business such as Koch Industries. The GOP has been traditionally regarded as the party of business. But it is difficult and expensive to be elected to congress, let alone to the presidency. So Mitt Romney, who has been courting a Koch endorsement, took no sides on the payroll tax standoff. Nor has the Koch Party endorsed his candidacy. They do not trust him.

Koch money funded and organized its surrogate Tea Party wing of the GOP. However, the Koch Party has yet to produce anything other than obstruction of the legislative process, record low congressional approval ratings, and a downgrade of the US credit rating. The Koch Party assertion that such an achievement record is what voters sent them to do in 2010 is dubious. The Speaker and his party are going to take a hit. A big hit.

Originally published as Tea Party: A Koch Industry on Blogcritics.

Gingrich: The Honest Liar

Herman Cain quit. That he has suspended his campaign means that he can still raise money. How presidential. I feel for Cain's followers, especially the ones who donated their money and their time to his populist posturing. However, I do not feel anything but contempt for their candidate. Narcissists never apologize for anything, like dishonesty. It is not the alleged sexless extramarital business, which he denies; it is his dishonesty that has further disqualified him.

Strategic ambiguity aside, Newt Gingrich will do the same thing as Cain – raise money on the pretense of a further presidential campaign. At least, Newt is an honest liar. He admits it. But, lying is still dishonest.

Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) said that Newt Gingrich is dishonest. Frank called Gingrich “fundamentally intellectually dishonest” about the former House Speaker’s consulting contract with Freddie Mac. Frank used the word “ludicrous” during a recent MSNBC interview on the topic. Then again, there have been words between these former colleagues. Gingrich said the Representatives Frank and Chris Dodd “should be jailed” for their oversight of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in one of the GOP debates. So, Frank qualified “dishonest.”

In fact, as Bloomberg reported, Gingrich made between $1.6 million and $1.8 million in consulting fees from two contracts with mortgage company Freddie Mac. Gingrich said that he provided only “strategic advice” over an eight year period. The Gingrich assertion has been since that such advice is not lobbying. Obfuscation notwithstanding, it is paid political influence wielding. We are supposed to forget about that just as we were supposed to forget about the multiple Herman Cain sexual harassment case settlements. Bygones are supposed to be bygones. The truth is irrelevant.

For examples, ten years ago when he ran for president, Gingrich said, “I helped balance the budget for four straight years.  We did it by cutting taxes and bringing the unemployment rate below 4%." He said that on “Meet the Press.” It was not true then and it has not become true now. President Clinton's 1993 tax increase on the wealthy lead to a booming economy, after it passed without a single Republican vote. That Mr. Gingrich is known for saying misleading and contradictory things, however, does not cover such dishonesty.

Consider the Monica Lewinsky affair. The former Speaker of the House engaged in an extramarital affair at the same time he was going after President Clinton for one. Gingrich admitted it in a 2009 broadcast interview, “There are times that I have fallen short of my own standards.” Moreover, he argued that he should not be viewed as a hypocrite for pursuing the impeachment of Clinton over infidelity. Perhaps, more accurately, he meant his “double standards.”

The House Ethics Committee went after Gingrich on numerous ethics charges. They found Professor Gingrich wrongly used tax-exempt funds to teach a college course. The House reprimanded him for his using tax-exempt funds to promote Republican causes and then lying about it to ethics investigators. Gingrich paid a $300,000 fine in 1997. The next year, facing with a revolt within his party, he resigned the speakership and quit the House of Representatives.

Cain caved because of his dishonesty. Gingrich has admitted to and paid for his. So the question is, do voters prefer a known liar to a discovered liar? With the Cain cancelation, eyes will focus on the comeback of Newt Gingrich. He has truly been there and done that. Under the circumstances, however, I have to question the veracity of a Gingrich candidacy. Dishonesty is still dishonesty, even if one is honest about it.

Article first published as Gingrich: The Honest Liar on Blogcritics. 

Wishful Thinking

The Newt Gingrich candidacy for President is a cynical practical joke. He is not a serious presidential candidate. He is a recognizable figure promoting himself for personal gain, to sell his books and indulge in some fantasy about a future Republican presidential administration, just not anytime soon. His only viability is to make Mitt Romney seem a more reasonable and safer candidate. Gingrich is the spice in an otherwise bland stew. The only expectation of him is for self-destruction within the next eleven months. It is not for him to become the President of the United States in 2012 and it never has been. It is for him to make more money.

But the Gingrich candidacy has shed light on other things about the post-Bush weaknesses of the Republican Party. There is no credible expectation for the GOP to win the national election against the incumbent Democratic president than there was when the Republican standard bearer was Senator John McCain. Media attention always follows shiny objects that move quickly in and out of headlines be it Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich or Michele Bachmann. Fame seekers are just fame seekers. There is no substance to them. Attracting attention does not count.

The 112^th Congress has done so much to discredit the Republican Party that Gallup reports, “About three-quarters of registered voters (76%) say most members of Congress do not deserve re-election, the highest such percentage Gallup has measured in its 19-year history of asking this question.” How that GOP majority expects to run on its record of obstruction and be returned for another term as the majority party is wishful thinking. There is no record of accomplishment. There is only a documented record of opposition to a single person, President Barack Obama.

The country is not “Choking on Obamacare.” The country has not had time to taste, eat, or digest it because most of its 10 provisions will not go into effect until after 2014. Just because conservatives recite those three words does not make the comment so.

The 111^th Congress passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). That the PPACA is remarkably similar to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts health care legislation has been hashed and rehashed so much so that it has become a liability to Romney, especially in the “flip-flop” category.

I do not single out columnist George Will as an ardent wishful thinker, either. The conservative pundits have their own problems with which Will is not alone. They tend to nod with favor towards Gingrich as a man of great intellect and of big ideas. To borrow a Richard Nixon quote, "That's just plain poppycock." It isn’t true. Gingrich may come across as smart compared with Rick Perry, Herman Cain, and Michele Bachmann. Compared with people of true intellect, however, Gingrich is a pretender.

What are those big GOP ideas for government? They seem limited. Repealing a law that has not been completely implemented, abolishing abortion, repealing the Great Society, and replacing President Obama are less than noble ideas.

The wealthy professor and the wealthy businessman are tribunes of a cause that is limited for a nation in the midst of a turn-around. The only reason for a Gingrich candidacy is a Romney candidacy. The only reason for a Romney candidacy is that the GOP has to run someone. Romney winning is wishful thinking.

Article originally published as “So Much Wishful Thinking” on Blogcritics.

Buying Bad Ideas

There are a lot of expressions for bad ideas, like shooting one’s self in the foot. A bad idea is simply one that does not work. The problem is that from time to time, both as ourselves and as a people, we do not recognize a bad idea when we encounter it. The danger comes when for whatever reason -- ignorance, stubbornness or hubris – we stick with a bad idea to our detriment. Unfortunately, bad ideas tend to compound themselves. We have been suffering from that effect.

Consider the candidacy of the former governor of Alaska for Vice President. At the outset it is with some reluctance that I acknowledge a grudging gratitude to Sarah Palin. Until she appeared on television as if a human bridge to nowhere, nothing compelled me to engage in a political debate that I considered both cyclical and one-sided. The cyclical part was the fact that the country was due to change political leadership after an eight year Republican run, which is something that the country does. The one-sided part was the fact that the Democratic Party had emerged from a climactic contest between two compelling and competent Senate candidates, one of whom destined to become a historic first as President of the United States.

An oblivious Palin seemed to take herself seriously, saying stupid things and celebrating such stupidity. It offended me. I minded and began saying so. I minded that Palin did not speak any American language I would expect to hear from a competent executive. It was not alright, folksy or cute. But I underestimated the “moose-hunting rube,” as columnist Charles Krauthammer referred to her in the National Review.

Palin reminded me of one of the most vapid students in my high school graduating class who was the vice president of student body and vice president of at least a half-a-dozen high school clubs. The girl had a mid-double-digit IQ and passable looks. She would have been rather doltish except that she knew how to glom. She would stick to and campaign for the more popular students, thereby elevating her status in the high school social pool. She was a person who was never troubled by an original thought, just like Sarah Palin. The difference is that the high school girl understood the limitations that make bliss of ignorance. Palin did not.

Palin wowed conservatives like the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol and Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, who told the New York Observer that Palin was “a mix between Annie Oakley and Joan of Arc.” Soon after, Palin brought self-aggrandizement to a new level as she energized the baseness of the Republican base – people who use racial epithets in private when they explain that they just don’t like blacks. She appealed to people of limited educational backgrounds as she championed anti-intellectualism with a wink and a nod. She became a darling of Fox News, the moral equivalent of a grocery store tabloid for people who do not read and who feel threatened by people who do.

People at Republican rallies began to shell out big bucks to hear her cheerlead and Palin noticed.

The Republican Party’s self-inflicted loss in 2008 is due as much to its selection of Sarah Palin for Vice President as the country’s guts being full of the Bush Presidency. A 2008 New York Times editorial said of her choice for VP, “It was either an act of incredible cynicism or appallingly bad judgment.” It was a bad idea. But having proved to be such a draw, the crowd pleasing Palin glommed on to the burgeoning Tea Party – another bad idea – and became an influential force.

With Palin on the payroll, Fox News aggressively promoted negativity and hostility, specifically towards the newly elected president. The Tea Party appeared to resuscitate the out-of-power GOP in the mid-term elections. Republicans believed it was important to take control of congress’ lower chamber more so than Democrats and they did, kind of. Reciting an edited version of the US Constitution, the GOP majority of the 112^th Congress had no idea that it had been infected by such a polarizing group. Its anti-government/anti-tax/anti-Obama negativity proved to sell to an electorate suffering from a deep, GOP induced repression.

However, the new Speaker of the House soon discovered that he only controlled a majority of the new Republican plurality. The Tea Party faction held it hostage. Compromise was futile. Government shutdowns and default threats became normal operating procedures.

As a result this bad idea, Gallup reported in September, “Majorities of Democrats (65%) and Republicans (92%) are dissatisfied with the nation's governance.” At present, “Congressional job approval remains at 13% in November, identical to October and tying the all-time Gallup low on this measure. The 2011 average is on track to be the lowest annual rating of Congress in Gallup's history.” What an accomplishment that is.

We are being bullied by the rhetoric of Tea Party acolytes in the Republican Party into thinking that the United States is not a prosperous country, despite evidence to the contrary. We are being coerced into thinking that taxation is too high, even though it is at its lowest point in 60 years. We are being fed a line that our economic policy needs to be austere and rife with cuts. Such contentious conjectures are bad ideas.

There are better ones. For example, here is what President Lyndon Johnson said in his January 28, 1965 message to Congress.

"The task of economic policy is to create a prosperous America. The unfinished task of prosperous Americans is to build a Great Society. Our accomplishments have been many; these tasks remain unfinished:

- to achieve full employment without inflation;

- to restore external equilibrium and defend the dollar;

- to enhance the efficiency and flexibility of our private and public economies;

- to widen the benefits of prosperity;

- to improve the quality of American life."

Palin and her gibberish have been replaced by other people every bit as unqualified for high public office as she who similarly say stupid things. Negativity and attack ads directed at the incumbent president remains the top Republican theme. Fox News is a beneficiary of the advertising revenue but the country is not. I am not convinced that the electorate will buy into more such negativity as a winning proposition as it did in 2010. It isn’t a winner. In its celebrated ignorance, it asks us to buy some more of a bad idea.

Originally published as Buying Bad Ideas on Blogcritics.