Tag Archives: GOP

Never Thought I’d Live To See This…

One of the dubious benefits of living a long time is that you live through really striking cultural and institutional changes. During my lifetime, I’ve seen changes I consider very positive–the expansion of women’s rights, gay rights, civil rights, an internet connection to virtually all of human information, ease of global travel…I could go on and on.

But I’m also around to see the backlash to all of that. And even weirder, I’ve lived to see a Republican Party that once rabidly opposed Communism and “the evil empire” embrace authoritarianism and Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

A while back, I shared a folk song from the Sixties  that made fun of the John Birch Society and its habit of seeing “commies”  under every bush. (“If mommy is a commie then you’ve got to turn her in.”) Back then, the political Right was focused–frequently far too focused–on the dangers of totalitarianism and authoritarianism and government control of the economy.

If you had told me back then that the GOP would “evolve” into a party of pro-Russian apologists, I’d have asked you what you were smoking. But here we are.

A recent discussion at Persuasion was titled “When Hatred of the Left Becomes Love for Putin,” and contains the following observations:

According to Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump will quickly end the war in Ukraine if he is elected, by refusing “a single penny” of aid and effectively forcing the country’s capitulation to Russia. The statement, which followed Orbán’s meeting with Trump last month, is a stark reminder of the extent to which the Trumpified GOP is becoming the anti-Ukraine party, a far cry from early bipartisan support for Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression. And while opposition to aid to Ukraine doesn’t necessarily entail support for Vladimir Putin—common rationales include that the United States must focus on domestic problems or on the more dangerous threat from China, or that Ukraine can’t win and prolonging the war only means more death and suffering—Putin-friendly themes have been increasingly prominent on the right. At this point, pro-Putinism is no longer an undercurrent in right-wing rhetoric: it’s on the surface.

Granted, not all Putin-lovers are similarly motivated.

For some, their hatred of the American left overrides any feelings they have about Putin. Others are more ideological: they oppose the Western liberal project itself. Untangling these different strains is key to explaining why so many on today’s right embrace views that, until recently, would have gotten them branded Kremlin stooges by other conservatives.

The article references Tucker Carlson– his recent, adoring trip to Moscow and his fawning interview of Putin.

The interview was a two-hour lovefest in which Putin and his lies went unchallenged except for some polite pushback on Evan Gershkovich, the American journalist held in Russia on phony spying charges. Then, Carlson topped this with gushy videos extolling the wonders of the Soviet-built Moscow subway and of Russian supermarkets.

And it cited an article from the Federalist published the day after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine:

Author Christopher Bedford, former head of the Daily Caller News Foundation and a prolific contributor to right-of-center media, not only bluntly stated that “a lot of us hate our elites far more than we hate some foreign dictator” but admitted finding a lot to admire in said dictator—for instance, Putin’s unapologetic defense of Russia’s “religion, culture and history,” while Western elites denigrate and apologize for theirs.

Today’s GOP has abandoned even the remnants of genuine conservatism; today, the party is hysterically “anti-woke”–a cult focused on culture war efforts to return straight White Christian males to social dominance.

It’s hardly news by now that many American right-wingers see Putin’s Russia as the antithesis of Western “wokeness.” This is especially true with regard to sexual and gender norms: I noted the beginnings of this trend in 2013, when several right-wing groups and conservative pundits praised a Russian law censoring “propaganda” of homosexuality. Discussing the phenomenon recently in the context of the GOP’s anti-Ukraine turn, David French pointed to such examples as far-right strategist Steve Bannon’s praise for Putin’s “anti-woke” persona and Russia’s conservative gender politics, or psychologist Jordan Peterson’s suggestion that Russia’s war in Ukraine was partly self-defense against the decadence of “the pathological West.”…

The article notes that, for some Republicans, pro-Putin rhetoric indicates a radical rejection of liberalism, even the classical  liberalism of John Locke and John Stuart Mill. It quotes the “near-panegyric” to Putin in a 2017 speech by Claremont Institute’s Christopher Caldwell at Hillsdale College, and notes that both Claremont and Hillsdale are “intellectual hubs of Trumpist national conservatism.”

Read the entire essay. This isn’t remotely the GOP of my youth…..and it’s scary.

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About Those “Outsiders”

In Indiana, Republican candidates for Governor and Congress are spending megabucks on increasingly horrifying political ads. (Forget “dog whistles”–the ads for Governor, especially, are blatantly racist). Although it’s difficult to choose the very worst, a candidate for Congress in Indiana’s Fifth District probably wins that close vote: he faults the incumbent for sending tax dollars to Ukraine when we have an enormous problem in the U.S.– trans women competing in women’s sports.

Glad he has a sense of proportion…

Interestingly, the gubernatorial candidates’ attacks on each other have been for taking the few positions with which I actually agree, a tactic that certainly shows what they believe their base Republican voters think. If they’re correct, those voters are “base” in both senses of the word.

If there is a “through line” in these awful ads, however, it is the repeated claims to be “outsiders” rather than “career politicians.” It’s a laughable label for most of them: Braun has been a Senator for six years (granted, an undistinguished one, but it’s been six years) and he was a state legislator before that; Crouch was a County Auditor, served nine years in Indiana’s legislature and is currently Lieutenant Governor; Brad Chambers–who has really leaned on his “outsider” status–was Indiana’s Secretary of Commerce. Etc.

Not only are these claims to outsider status bogus, they’re stupid. Would you hire a job applicant who proudly proclaimed  ignorance of your business and emphasized a prior lack of experience?

James Briggs recently addressed this issue, somewhat tangentially, in a column for the Indianapolis Star.  Briggs was talking about his opposition to term limits–an opposition I share–but his reasoning is pertinent to the posturing of these “outsider” candidates. As he wrote:

State Rep. Chuck Goodrich, a Republican running in Indiana’s 5th District primary against Rep. Victoria Spartz, recently bragged about signing a term limits pledge, adding, “It’s time to break the grip of career politicians & ensure elected officials serve the people, not their own interests!”

That’s completely wrong.

A 2006 National Conference of State Legislatures report looked at states with legislative term limits and concluded “high turnover and relative inexperience create a steep learning curve for committee chairs and members, who are often less knowledgeable than their predecessors,” which “can result in increased influence by staff, bureaucrats and lobbyists.”

Essentially, term limits take power from the career politicians and hand it over to people who are less accountable to the public.

In Congress, the “newbies” are inevitably dependent upon and influenced by Congressional staff, who are familiar with the arcane rules of that body– and unelected by and unknown to the voting public.

Much like term limits, it’s popular to say the government should run like a business. I can’t think of any other economic sector where you’d find strong agreement for the statement, “The more experience you have, the worse you must be at your job.” We have a lot of job openings at IndyStar and I can assure you no one is running around yelling, “Find me some journalism outsiders!”

Briggs points out what most of us know: a professional body is more effective when it’s run by people who know what they’re doing.

The longer lawmakers serve in those jobs, the more they can learn how to navigate complex webs of rules and systems. They can also gain policy expertise, which is helpful for creating laws affecting virtually every part of people’s lives. They can develop relationships to help advance their goals.

The problems we face with government, especially in Indiana, aren’t a result of legislative longevity: they are a result of gerrymandering and low voter turnout. Briggs is dead-on with this paragraph:

Obviously, some elected officials don’t deserve to stay in office forever. The ills attributed to unlimited elected terms can more appropriately be linked to partisan gerrymandering, which creates safe spaces for ineffective, lazy and corrupt officials to win election after election. Yes, term limits would eventually knock those people out. So would competitive elections.

Let me repeat that last sentence: So would competitive elections.

I miss “career politicians” like Dick Lugar and Lee Hamilton. Joe Biden has been able to pass transformative legislation because he is a “career politician” who understands how government works, and how to get things done. I don’t know which of Indiana’s “know-nothing” Republicans will wind up on the general election ballot, but this year, for once, the Democrats have an unusually strong state ticket featuring experienced public servants who actually know how government works and what the positions they’re running for entail. They are also right on the issues.

Vote Blue, and make the GOP candidates actual outsiders.

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The “Great Replacement” Fixation

I first encountered the “Great Replacement” theory when I read about the neo-Nazi, “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville. The marchers–bearing tiki torches–reportedly chanted “Jews will not replace us.” (Those chanting were subsequently called “very fine people” by then-President Donald Trump.)

Since I never watch Fox News, I’d missed Tucker Carlson’s full-throated endorsement of that particular conspiracy theory, but as time as passed, I’ve come to understand its roots, and the reason it appeals to White Americans terrified by the prospect of losing cultural dominance. America’s demographics are changing, and it is probable that Whites will be a minority population within a few years. Meanwhile, legal and cultural changes have allowed women and minority folks–Blacks, Jews, Latinos, LGBTQ+ citizens–to become more prominent. Television anchors, elected officials, movie stars and various other celebrities  increasingly come from groups that have been previously marginalized.

It’s no longer possible to ignore these changes.

The result is a palpable panic on the part of those Whites–mostly men, but also some women–who believe that their rightful place in society has been usurped. And that fear of replacement, that realization that they will need to share status with people they disparage, requires a villain. It can’t simply be an accident that “those people” are gaining in numbers and influence. It must be a plot!!

Jamelle Bouie recently wrote about Elon Musk’s obvious fascination with and belief in the “Great Replacement Theory.” Musk recently elevated a slick propaganda film pushing the theory on X (formerly Twitter), confirming the devolution of that site into a cesspool of far-Right anti-Semitism and racism.

Musk is especially preoccupied with the racial makeup of the country and the alleged deficiency of nonwhites in important positions. He blames the recent problems at Boeing, for example, on its efforts to diversify its work force, despite easily accessible and widely publicized accounts of a dangerous culture of cost-cutting and profit-seeking at the company….

Is diversity the problem at Boeing, or is it a shortsighted obsession with maximizing shareholder value at the expense of quality and safety? Musk, a wealthy shareholder in various companies — including his own, Tesla, which is being sued by Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for allegedly allowing racist abuse of some of its Black employees — says it’s diversity.

Bouie goes on to discuss Musk’s “current obsession” with the “great replacement,” the far-right accusation that liberal elites are “deliberately opening the southern border to nonwhite immigration from Mexico, South and Central America in order to replace the nation’s white majority and secure permanent control of its political institutions.”

The “great replacement” was part of the centerpiece of Tucker Carlson’s message to viewers during his time on Fox News. It is touted by a number of anti-immigrant, white nationalist and white supremacist groups. It was featured prominently at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, where neo-Nazis chanted “Jews will not replace us.” And it has inspired at least four separate mass shootings, including the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh (11 killed), the 2019 Christchurch shootings in New Zealand (51 killed), the El Paso shooting the same year (23 killed) and the 2022 supermarket shooting in Buffalo (10 killed).

It should go without saying that the “great replacement” is idiotic. There is no “open border.” There is no effort to “replace” the white population of the United States. Racial diversity is not a plot against the nation’s political institutions. And the underlying assumption of the “great replacement” — that, until recently, the United States was a racially and culturally homogenous nation — is nonsense.

Not only does acceptance of the theory require people to ignore inconvenient facts, it rests–as Bouie points out–on a fundamental fallacy: that racial and ethnic identity also and inevitably translates into political identity. In other words, it assumes that Blacks and Latinos will always vote for Democrats.

I think Bouie has identified the most consequential flaw of today’s GOP.

Republicans used to understand that politics is the art of addition–that winning a political contest requires reaching out to independents and others–including minorities– who haven’t previously voted for you. Instead, MAGA Republicans are doubling down on subtraction; not only do they fail to reach out to members of minorities who might consider supporting their candidates (the Black community, for example, is overall fairly socially conservative), they are even doing their best to expel “RINOs” –including anyone who dares to criticize Trump– from what has become a defensive cult.

The irony is that the GOP is hastening the day when a replacement will actually occur–the replacement of the GOP with a sane center-Right political party.

A large enough defeat in November will speed that process.

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A Bill Passes. Then What Happens?

Making policy–passing laws–requires a series of decisions. It begins with (and is often stymied by failure to reach) an agreement on the existence, nature and extent of the problem to be solved. When lawmakers do see the same problem, and agree on why something is a problem, they then have to come to some consensus on what action is needed to solve or ameliorate that problem. Then–in our age of “privatization”–they need to determine who should enforce the agreed-upon remedy. Should those empowered to deliver the new service or oversee compliance with the newly-passed regulation be government employees, or should that obligation be vested in the private or non-profit sector?

And finally, once the problem has been identified, a solution agreed upon, the means of enforcement determined, and the law passed, a sound policy process will vet how the new law performs–evaluate its effectiveness in actually addressing the original problem, and noting–and ideally correcting–any negative unanticipated effects.

This process will inevitably involve debate and discussion, and in an era of technological and social complexity, creating sound policy increasingly requires careful attention to sources of specialized expertise in the matter at hand.

Unfortunately, today’s Republicans and Democrats can’t even agree on what time it is, let alone what our actual problems are. The GOP buffoons who increasingly dominate America’s legislative chambers ignore virtually all the “grunt work” needed for sound policymaking. When they aren’t fundraising, preening for Faux News cameras or producing television ads blaming “others” for real and imagined social problems, they are using legislative tactics to block rather than produce policies.

(This is frustrating for all serious citizens, of course, but I spent the last 21 years of my career teaching policy, and watching the total abandonment of actual governance in favor of performative antics is beyond painful.)

It’s one thing to outline the steps of the policy process, as I’ve done above. But just as a (non-AI) picture can be worth a thousand words, a real-life example can be more illustrative than an abstract process outline. So let’s look at a tax bill that Trump still touts as evidence of…something.

As the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy explains:

The tax overhaul signed into law by former President Donald Trump in 2017 cut the federal corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, but during the first five years it has been in effect, most profitable corporations paid considerably less than that. This is mainly due to loopholes and special breaks that the 2017 tax law left in place and, in some cases, introduced. Corporate tax avoidance occurs because Congress allows it to occur, and the Trump tax law in many ways made it worse.

Tax policy is one of many intractable dividing lines between Republicans and Democrats, and it is a given that the tax overhaul of 2017 was not a product of agreement over the nature of the problem. Republicans think the problem is that businesses have to pay too much; Democrats think the problem is that wealthy folks aren’t paying their fair share. Clearly, a tax cut for profitable businesses is not the result of agreement on the nature of the problem. But the linked report focuses on the part of the policy process that both parties–and the Keystone Kops in Congress–routinely ignore.

How is it working?

The Institute looked at taxes paid by profitable corporations.

  • The 342 companies included in this study paid an average effective income tax rate of just 14.1 percent during this five-year period, almost a third less than the statutory rate of 21 percent.
  • Nearly a quarter of the corporations in this study (87 companies) paid effective tax rates in the single digits or less during this five-year period.
  • Of these, 55 (16 percent of the total 342 companies) paid effective rates of less than 5 percent. This is particularly striking given that all these companies were profitable for at least five years consecutively. Companies paying less than 5 percent include T-Mobile, DISH Network, Netflix, General Motors, AT&T, Bank of America, Citigroup, FedEx, Molson Coors, Nike, and many others.
  • Twenty-three corporations paid zero federal tax over the five-year period despite being profitable in every single year. And 109 corporations paid zero federal tax in at least one of the five years.
  • At the other end of the spectrum, 50 corporations paid effective tax rates of more than 21 percent, but most of these companies were also the beneficiaries of large tax breaks because they were paying taxes from previous years that they delayed using depreciation breaks.

One obvious “fix” for this would be passage of the global minimum tax negotiated by the Biden administration that’s currently being blocked by GOP lawmakers more interested in currying favor with special interests than engaging in the policy process.

Americans deserve better.

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My Mother Was Right…

As I used to tell my own children, you should always listen to your mother.

My sister and I were the products of a politically “mixed marriage.” Mother was a Republican and Dad was a Democrat, and they often ended up casting votes that cancelled each other out. There was a limit to our mother’s political conservatism, however–she was deeply suspicious of what she called the “fringe Right,” the Birchers and others who were then seen by the broad majority of the party as kooks and crazies.

Mother didn’t live long enough to see those kooks and crazies complete their takeover of the Republican Party and chase out the more moderate folks we used to lump together as “country club Republicans”– some who were philosophical conservatives and others whose business interests had turned them into anti-tax, “trickle-down” true believers.

Everything my mother thought about what was then the far-Right “fringe” has turned out to be correct. Only worse.

I was reminded of her long-ago criticisms when I read a recent article in Talking Points Memo. (Apologies if this is one of the articles behind the paywall for subscribers only.) The article began:

Whiplash-inducing breaks from long-held party positions have become the norm in today’s Republican Party.

From former president Donald Trump to emerging voices such as Senator J.D. Vance, presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, and North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, a wave of politicians and activists have signaled an abandonment of Republican orthodoxy on issues that once defined the party.

The party of free trade has become protectionist. The party of Cold Warriors has increasingly backed Russia and opposed aiding Ukraine. The party of less government has grown conflicted about where it stands on Social Security and Medicare.

How can not just a party, but its voters, suddenly change direction on so many bedrock issues?

Or have they?

Ben Bradford, who wrote the column, hosts a podcast series called “Landslide.” He proceeded to answer his own question,  asserting that the current Republican Party does not, in fact, represent a change or reversal of course–rather, in his opinion, it represents an evolution. “What seems like a shift on fundamental issues” he says, “is the latest expression of the same underlying force that has propelled voters for nearly half a century.”

Bradford takes readers back fifty years, to the mid-1970s and the “New Right,” reminding us of their opposition to a “range of the era’s social and cultural changes: school integration, new textbooks, gun laws, the women’s rights movement, gay and lesbian rights, and — eventually — abortion.”

New Right organizations included Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum and the NRA’s further-right cousin, the Gun Owners of America. It also included many of the same conservative groups that push policy positions and drive national debates today: the Heritage Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and the National Right-to-Life Committee, to name just a handful. These groups shared many of the same founders. Harper’s Magazine described their organizational charts as “an octopus shaking hands with itself.”

Two things that were “new” about the New Right were direct-mail fundraising and–especially– culture war.

The New Right was organized around social and cultural backlash. It created a link between activists working for seemingly unrelated causes–for example, opponents of abortion and opponents of gun laws. Howard Phillips described the goal of the New Right as “organizing discontent.” At a time when the major political parties were still trying to downplay hot-button social and cultural issues, the New Right created a coalition based upon voters’ backlash to culture change.

The article argues that it was a tactic that changed the nature of American conservatism.

Bradford goes on to document how the New Right saved Ronald Reagan’s campaign–a campaign animated by a backlash against a changing culture.

The message of a better past endangered by a changing culture would not feel out of place coming from Republican candidates today. And, the issues they emphasize — opposing the contents of textbooks, the use of race in school admissions, and transgender rights, among others — are the modern descendants of those 50 years ago.

As my mother would have added, that “backlash” coalition wasn’t just angry about social change; it was also a hotbed of bigotry–it was racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, misogynistic. If it ever gained power, she warned us, Americans who weren’t straight White Christians would be endangered.

Well, they’ve gained power– and proved her point.

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