Monthly Archives: June 2014

David Brat in La-La Land

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The Wall Street Journal (???!!!) has dug up some snips from David Brat’s writings that might cause one to question his, shall we say, cognitive coherence. This bit is typical:

Can Christians force others to follow their ethical teachings on social issues? Note that consistency is lacking on all sides of this issue. The political Right likes to champion individual rights and individual liberty, but it has also worked to enforce morality in relation to abortion, gambling, and homosexuality. The Left likes to think of itself as the bulwark of progressive liberal individualism, and yet it seeks to progressively coerce others to fund every social program under the sun via majority rule. Houston, we have a problem. Coercion is on the rise. What is the root word for liberalism? (Answer: Liberty)

Like many Ayn Randbots, Brat ultimately has no use for representative democracy (“coerce others to fund every social program under the sun via majority rule”). And he goes on and on about how the state has a monopoly on violence —

It does not mean that the State alone uses violence, but it does mean that when push comes to shove, the State will win in a battle of wills. If you refuse to pay your taxes, you will lose. You will go to jail, and if you fight, you will lose. The government holds a monopoly on violence. Any law that we vote for is ultimately backed by the full force of our government and military. Do we trust institutions of the government to ensure justice? Is that what history teaches us about the State?

Is he saying that we should not make criminal justice a function of government? Who else should be doing it, then?

But is he also saying the Right is wrong to enforce its views on morality? Certainly I think it is, but what the Brat think? And why is he making “pro-life” noises on his issue page? Although they aren’t very clear noises —

Uphold Human Life
Human life is sacred, as proclaimed by our founding documents, and I will always support laws that protect life. Our fundamental rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness precede the existence of government and come from God, the Author of Nature. These core constitutional rights have been usurped by the Judicial and Executive Branches and must be returned to the people and their representatives.

You can parse that a lot of different ways, but I think he may be calling for returning abortion law to the states, where women are more likely to be coerced to continue unwanted pregnancy by majority rule.

Brat’s campaign manager is a real peach. Among other things, he wants to protect boys from the poisonous influence of women by banning them from teaching except in all-girl classrooms. One suspects this guy will be replaced for the general election.

The Virginia 7th District Congressional Election

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The Democratic nominee is Jack Trammell, who is a professor at Randolph-Macon College. Here is his Wikipedia page and his “faculty focus” page. He has written a bunch of books and has a particular interest in addressing education discrimination and disabilities.

It appears Trammell was caught a bit flat-footed by Cantor’s defeat; he doesn’t even have a proper “Trammell for Congress” web page, just a donation page. If you want to throw him some money to get a proper campaign going, here is his Act Blue page.

The Republican nominee, David Brat, also is a professor at Randolph-Macon. He does have a proper “Brat for Congress” site, and here is his “issues” page. You can see it’s pretty much a wingnut checklist.

Along with a Ph.D. in economics Brat, a Catholic, has a master’s in divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary. The new Rick Santorum? According to Brat’s Wikipedia page, his published papers include “God and Advanced Mammon: Can Theological Types Handle Usury and Capitalism?” and “An Analysis of the Moral Foundations in Ayn Rand.” I seriously hope those go online sometime. See Steve M for more on Brat’s connections to the Church of Ayn Rand.

David Weigel’s analysis of how Brat defeated Cantor is essential reading. A lot of people are focusing on the education reform issue, but Weigel shows there’s a lot more to it than that. In a nutshell, the baggers and the lunatic fringe — Allen West, Laura Ingraham, et al. — are interested only in total opposition to President Obama. They are no longer interested in enacting conservative policies if doing so means compromising so much as a hair. Cantor was caught trying to please the U.S.Chamber of Commerce / ALEC / American Enterprise Institute crowd — the GOP’s chief sponsors — and in doing so he ran afoul of the bagger agenda, which is that Washington must do NOTHING that requires Democratic votes to pass. And as long as Dems hold the Senate, that pretty much means Washington must do NOTHING.

But Cantor made the mistake of trying to do SOMETHING.

In 2013, Cantor and the counter-establishment flew apart. Less than a month after Obama’s second inauguration, Cantor debuted a vision for a new GOP that would “make life work.” What if the GOP incentivized people to buy better health care and seek more useful college degrees? What if it went a little easier on immigrants? “It is time to provide an opportunity for legal residence and citizenship for those who were brought to this country as children and who know no other home,” Cantor said at a February 2013 speech at the American Enterprise Institute. He pushed through school choice bills (The Student Success Act), and helped amend the farm bill to add more work requirements for food-stamp recipients.

None of this was “liberal,” per se. It just wasn’t what the conservative base had asked for, campaigned for, voted for. It was the agenda of the establishment, simpatico with the Chamber of Commerce. The business community had been there to elect Republicans in 2010 (and with less success in 2012), but in 2013 it was asking for Republicans to pass some sort of immigration reform and avoid a government shutdown. Cantor went with Democrats on a three-day tour to boost reform; he sought out a number of ways to avoid a shutdown, including a failed gambit to split the “defund Obamacare” vote from a separate appropriations vote.

My understanding is that Cantor was the one Republican leader in the House who could most skillfully thread the tactical needle, obstructing President Obama without allowing the GOP to shoot itself in the foot, Ted Cruz/government shutdown style. Without him, the freak flag is more likely to fly. Heh.

I don’t think anyone has any true sense of where this election might go, or if Trammell has even a remote hope of winning Cantor’s gerrymandered district. No matter who wins, though, I think losing Cantor in the House is going to b a huge handicap for the GOP.

Eric Cantor Has Been Primaried!

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This just in —

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was defeated Tuesday by a little-known economics professor in Virginia’s Republican primary, a stunning upset and major victory for the tea party.

Cantor is the second-most powerful member of the U.S. House and was seen by some as a possible successor to the House speaker.

His loss to Dave Brat, a political novice with little money marks a huge victory for the tea party movement, which supported Cantor just a few years ago.

What can one say but …

I don’t know who the Democratic nominee may be. And of course if the baggers prefer this guy Brat to Cantor, Brat’s got to be downright frightening. Still …

HOO-yah.

Five Things I Learned Today

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1. Nixon kept the Vietnam War going for his own political ends. OK, I already knew this, but now there is stronger evidence he de-railed peace talks in 1968 so that the war wouldn’t end before the elections.

2. Joe Nocera reports that the wingnuts are making dissolution of the Export-Import Bank their next “pinata.” The Export-Import bank costs the taxpayers no money and protects jobs by promoting exports, but it’s still too much like socialism, or something, to appease the baggers.

3. There is astonishing silence (well, with some exceptions) on the Right about Sunday’s mass shooting in Las Vegas. However, there is some pushback against Paul Waldmans’ carefully reasoned argument that right-wing rhetoric incited the shooting. See Digby and Steve M for pushback on the pushback.

4. This is a terribly sad story about two people who fell in love and got married — in Pakistan.

5. The rightie hate swarm goons have been attacking Bowe Bergdahl’s home town with a vengeance. John Cole writes,

And where do these warpigs think they are going to find their next warm bodies to run through a meat grinder? Small towns like Hailey, Bethany, and every other town like us in the country. You can be damned sure people are going to be thinking twice after watching this reaction to bringing one of ours home. Who the fuck is going to sign up to get blown up in some meatgrinder when you know the Republicans sending you there under a lie aren’t going to fund the medical care you need and will then shit all over you, your family, and your town if it helps their political agenda?

I used to think that if I had kids, I would want all of them to go into the military. Do a stint in the Air Force or Navy, see the world. Fuck that noise. I’m not having any kids, but I would tell any kid from 17-21 to stay as far away from the military as is humanly possible. If me from 1989 was thinking about the military and watched what has happened the last decade, my attitude would be “Fuck that shit. My shit’s fucked up but I want all my limbs and don’t want my parents being called traitors.” Not to mention, we used to believe in not leaving people behind, even if Sean Hannity didn’t like their dad’s beard. The only possible outcome to military service is negative, these days, unless you are higher level brass.

BONUS: Two Things I Already Knew

George Will and Tucker Carlson are assholes.

Being the Hero Isn’t Always What It’s Cracked Up to Be

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Some clarifications:

They draped one officer’s body in a swastika and a yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flag that has been adopted as a symbol of the Tea Party. On the other, they pinned a note warning of “the beginning of the revolution,” a phrase they also shouted, the police said.

They promptly crossed the street to a Walmart, where Mr. Miller fired a single shot and continued shouting about revolution to terrified shoppers. One man at the checkout area who was carrying a handgun tried to stop Mr. Miller, but did not notice that Ms. Miller was working in concert with her husband; she shot the man dead. The couple proceeded to maraud through the store until the police trapped them at the back. There, Ms. Miller fatally shot her husband before shooting herself in the head.

So the other victim beside the cops was not a random woman shopper but a man with a concealed weapon. I am sincerely sorry he died, but all those weenies law-abiding good-guy citizens who imagine that if there only had been someone at hand with a gun, etc., might want to reflect on this.

Amid the pandemonium, Joseph Wilcox, 31, who had been in the checkout line, approached Mr. Miller brandishing a weapon, the police said. Ms. Miller pulled a pistol out of her purse and fatally shot him in the midsection, the police said.

Other tidbits — It appears the pair really did spend time with the Cliven Bundy militia. The woman shooter actually quit her job at Hobby Lobby (of course) to head toward the ranch. There’s some indication the Bundy militia found the two shooters a little fringe-y even for them, and persuaded the pair to go back to Las Vegas.

According to documents found in their apartment, the pair had planned to take over a courthouse and execute pubic officials.

They’d been talking about the evils of the government and their own desire for violence against it as fast as they could flap their lips.

In only a few months in the modest apartment building where they lived here, they made little secret of their distaste for government and their desire to foment revolution.

Their posts on Facebook sometimes threatened violence, and last month, Mr. Miller used the website to ask people to send him “a rifle to help stand against tyranny.” Neighbors said Mr. Miller talked incessantly to anyone who would listen about the evils of welfare or President Obama.

No one reported this. See also “How much does right-wing rhetoric contribute to right-wing terrorism?”

Thoughts on the Mass Shooting du Jour

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Initial reports are notoriously unreliable, and it may take a few days before we can sort fact from rumor. But some of alleged details of Sunday’s mass shooting in Las Vegas really need clarifying asap —

The Las Vegas Review-Journal says the murdered police officers were covered with a Gadsden “don’t tread on me” flag. According to neighbors, the alleged shooters have been talking about the Bundy ranch and how they planned to kill police officers.

The Review-Journal says the pair exchanged gunfire with a bystander carrying a concealed weapon. Other accounts say they exchanged fire with police before retreating into the Wal-Mart and killing themselves.

Several stories have said a lot of white supremacist literature was found in their apartment.

Again, initial reports are unreliable. None of the above may be true. But let’s go with the theory that the two shooters, a man and a woman, were anti-government white supremacists.

I’d be really surprised if they were affiliated in any way with the meatballs sovereign citizens who made a cause out of siding with cowboy/welfare kingpin Cliven Bundy. I doubt that crew could plan/organize itself out of a wet paper bag, but never mind. The meatball fantasy war is with federal agents, not Las Vegas cops.

The shooters may have had no affiliation with anything but their own fantasies, but it appears right-wing anti-government rhetoric had inflamed their un-tethered imaginations. Will the sovereign citizen crowd take a page of the NRA and dismiss what the shooters did as “mental illness” (e.g., their ideology had nothing to do with the shootings; the pair was just crazy)? Watch for that. This shooting appears to be right-wing domestic violence, and if the facts support that appearance this must be publicly acknowledged. No sweeping reality under the rug.

Notice to gun nuts: You cannot possibly argue that these shootings took place in a “gun free” zone.

General notice: When your scary neighbors who are always angry and live in camouflage pants talk a lot about killing police or anyone else, you might want to let local law enforcement know about this.

A Bowe Bergdahl Reader

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Lots of news articles are out today about the Bergdahl exchange, which boil down to —

Bergdahl did try to escape at least once, and was kept in a cage after he was re-captured. My impression is that his physical health is not too bad, considering, but it appears the captivity messed with his head. It’s still not clearly understood why he left his unit, but it’s possible he just wandered off to wander off.

The guys who were exchanged were not exactly hardened Taliban troops. They are old men, kept at Gitmo for many years. The photographs of them we’ve been seeing are several years old. Even before they were prisoners only one was all that hard core.

And finally, the hypocrisy of wingnuts knows no bounds, and Diane Feinstein is really annoying.

Articles about Bergdahl and his captivity:

[From 2010] America’s Last Prisoner of War

Bergdahl Was in Unit Known for Its Troubles

As Bowe Bergdahl Heals, Details Emerge of His Captivity

Articles about the Gitmo prisoners who were exchanged:

Most of 5 freed Taliban prisoners have less than hard-core pasts

Taliban prisoner swap makes sense

Articles about why Republicans are shameless and Diane Feinstein needs to retire:

The Bergdahl boomerang: GOP lawmakers who long urged a rescue now sour on the idea

Critics of P.O.W. Swap Question the Absence of a Wider Agreement

Commentary by Digby

Commentary by Kevin Drum.

Commentary by Prairie Weather

The Coming Blue Wave?

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This may cheer you up:

On Tuesday, in competitive primaries from New Jersey to Iowa to California, voters chose bold progressive Democrats over more conservative and corporate Democrats, handing big victories to the “Elizabeth Warren wing” of the Democratic Party.

Indeed, it was Progressive Super Tuesday. And it is the latest chapter in a larger story we’ve seen play out in American politics since the Wall Street economic wreck.

There’s a rising economic populist tide in America, sweeping into office leaders like Senator Warren, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, and a growing bloc of progressives in Congress.

Ed Kilgore is more cautious. I do think that the days when a milquetoast like Evan Bayh could be taken seriously as a political contender are so over. And, seriously, I do hope a progressive/populist contender for the Dem presidential nomination emerges soon. I fear a Hillary Clinton Administration could set us back.

What’s the Difference Between Today’s GOP and a Bunch of 5th Grade Playground Bullies?

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No real difference. It’s all about piling on the kid they don’t like, just because.

U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl at one point during his captivity converted to Islam, fraternized openly with his captors and declared himself a “mujahid,” or warrior for Islam, according to secret documents prepared on the basis of a purported eyewitness account and obtained by Fox News.

Wow, that sourcing is solid as a rock, right? But just for fun, let’s entertain the possibility that Fox News is reporting facts. Then let’s entertain the possibility that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was humoring his captors any way he could so that they wouldn’t cut his bleeping head off. Same thing with his father, with the tweets and the beard. Would not most parents do such things to save the life of a child?

From now on, our troops sent into war will need to understand that we leave no one behind — unless you are odd and unpopular, or unless some political and media hacks, most of whom never wore a uniform, decide it’s politically useful to grandstand on your ass. Then, you’re on your own.

And don’t assume that some politician who made noises about bringing you home actually meant what he said.

Four months ago, Senator John McCain said he would support the exchange of five hard-core Taliban leaders for the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. “I would support,” he told CNN. “Obviously I’d have to know the details, but I would support ways of bringing him home and if exchange was one of them I think that would be something I think we should seriously consider.”

But the instant the Obama administration actually made that trade, Mr. McCain, as he has so often in the past, switched positions for maximum political advantage. “I would not have made this deal,” he said a few days ago. Suddenly the prisoner exchange is “troubling” and “poses a great threat” to service members. Hearings must be held, he said, and sharp questions asked.

This hypocrisy now pervades the Republican Party and the conservative movement, and has even infected several fearful Democrats. When they could use Sergeant Bergdahl’s captivity as a cudgel against the administration, they eagerly did so, loudly and in great numbers. And the moment they could use his release to make President Obama look weak on terrorism or simply incompetent, they reversed direction without a moment’s hesitation to jump aboard the new bandwagon.

The last few days have made clearer than ever that there is no action the Obama administration can take — not even the release of a possibly troubled American soldier from captivity — that cannot be used for political purposes by his opponents.

In the case of former POW McCain, let’s just say there’s something very weird lurking in that balding head of his. There have long been rumors he corroborated with the North Vietnamese while in captivity, and I’ve long taken the position that none of us can know what we might do in that circumstance, and rumors tend to be inaccurate, so just lay off. But back in 2010, Sydney Schanberg at The American Conservative pointed out that something odd was going on with McCain —

John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn’t return home. Throughout his Senate career, McCain has quietly sponsored and pushed into federal law a set of prohibitions that keep the most revealing information about these men buried as classified documents. Thus the war hero who people would logically imagine as a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books.

Almost as striking is the manner in which the mainstream press has shied from reporting the POW story and McCain’s role in it, even as the Republican Party has made McCain’s military service the focus of his presidential campaign. Reporters who had covered the Vietnam War turned their heads and walked in other directions. McCain doesn’t talk about the missing men, and the press never asks him about them.

The sum of the secrets McCain has sought to hide is not small. There exists a telling mass of official documents, radio intercepts, witness depositions, satellite photos of rescue symbols that pilots were trained to use, electronic messages from the ground containing the individual code numbers given to airmen, a rescue mission by a special forces unit that was aborted twice by Washington—and even sworn testimony by two Defense secretaries that “men were left behind.” This imposing body of evidence suggests that a large number—the documents indicate probably hundreds—of the U.S. prisoners held by Vietnam were not returned when the peace treaty was signed in January 1973 and Hanoi released 591 men, among them Navy combat pilot John S. McCain.

Maybe Grandpa McCain should just butt out now.

Economic Apostasy on the Right?

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Thomas Edsall writes that a few conservatives are questioning free-market orthodoxy. One of the “questioners” he cites already has clarified that he doesn’t question “free-market orthodoxy” at all. That guy, James Pethokoukis, works for the American Enterprise Institute and I suspect he wants to keep his job. As Edsall remembers,

Just four years ago, David Frum, still another former speechwriter for George W. Bush, was fired by A.E.I. after sharply attacking Republican refusals to negotiate with Democrats on Obamacare in March of 2010. “We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat,” Frum declared. “Our overheated talk,” he wrote, “mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead.”

On the Right, “free markets” are more sacred than Jesus. Some of them might rather take their chances with lions in an arena than denounce untrammeled and unregulated capitalism. They might assume a giant, invisible hand will reach down to rescue them.

Edsall mentions a couple of other people:

Pethokoukis is one of a number of conservative analysts who over the past three years have undergone something of an intellectual conversion. Michael Gerson, a speechwriter for President George W. Bush and now a Washington Post columnist, and Peter J. Wehner, also a Bush speechwriter and now a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, published “A Conservative Vision of Government” in the winter 2014 edition of the journal National Affairs. Their essay is an attack on the idea cherished by many Tea Party activists that all (or nearly all) government action and intervention is bad.

The problem is, Gerson in particular has a long history of trollerly. He’s skilled at sounding reasonable and moderate while also signaling allegiance to that which is unreasonable and radical. Jonathan Chait does a good job of taking this phenomenon apart.

Edsall goes on to note that the Right’s unflagging extremism is really good at whipping up the base, but (a) it is slowly losing them support among voters who are not crazy, particularly outside the South and the Midwest; and (b) it makes crafting actual policy that might actually be enacted in Real World Land pretty much impossible. But can the Republican Party, even gradually, turn itself around, or is it too far gone and being pulled by a current of its own making toward a total crackup? And if the latter, will it take the country with it?