Politics Daily

Newt Gingrich or Woody Allen: Who's More Honest About Cheating?

David Corn — 2011-03-10T21:30:00+00:00

Filed under: 2012 President, Deep Background

Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker and not-quite-official 2012 Republican presidential aspirant, has been spouting dumb comments and tossing rhetorical stink bombs for decades. He recently suggested that President Barack Obama is "so outside our comprehension" that his behavior can only be explained by his supposed "Kenyan, anti-colonial" mindset.

During the 1990s, his political action committee, GOPAC, disseminated a memo to Republican candidates with a list of suggested words they should use when describing Democratic opponents. That list included "sick," "pathetic," "betray," "bizarre," "cheat," and "traitors."

In 1994, Gingrich jumped his own shark, claiming that Democrats were responsible for turning the United States into a depraved society and pointing to Susan Smith, a South Carolina woman who had killed her own two children, as evidence of this. "I think that the mother killing the two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we need to change things," he said. "The only way you get change is to vote Republican." (Smith, though, had come from a Republican family.)

But one of Gingrich's most ill-considered remarks came this week when he appeared on CBN and insisted that his past two extramarital affairs were caused by an overabundance of patriotic devotion. Asked about his infidelities, he said:

There's no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate. And what I can tell you is that when I did things that were wrong, I wasn't trapped in situation ethics, I was doing things that were wrong, and yet, I was doing them.

Gingrich was maintaining that he had committed adultery because he had worked too hard. And he had worked too hard because he loved America too darn much. (Is it merely a coincidence that he cheated on his first two wives after each had contracted a serious illness?)

With this self-serving comment, Gingrich further damaged his credibility -- a week after he botched what seemed to be the launch of his presidential campaign. (Or was it the launch of an presidential exploratory committee? Or just the launch of a website?)

Gingrich's my-love-of-country-made-me-do-it-twice spin brought to mind Woody Allen. Not simply because of the veteran filmmaker's scandalous personal behavior. During the 1992 campaign, Gingrich tried to turn Allen into anti-Democratic ammo for the GOP. That year, Allen ended his 12-year-long relationship with actress Mia Farrow, and the news emerged that he was in a relationship with Soon-Yi Previn, a 22-year-old whom Farrow had adopted years before when she was married to conductor André Previn.

The Allen-Farrow-Previn affair became a major tabloid scandal, as Allen and Farrow bitterly fought over custody rights involving their three children and hurled nasty accusations at each other. Gingrich sought to tie this ugly matter to the Democrats, saying, "Woody Allen having non-incest with a non-daughter to whom he was a non-father because they were a non-family fits the Democratic platform perfectly."

We can leave it to smarter moral arbiters to decide whether hooking up with a young woman who is the adopted daughter of your partner is worse than cheating on and then leaving not one but two sick wives. But when you compare Allen's and Gingrich's respective explanations, it's no contest.

Asked in 1992 about his affair with Previn, Allen gave a direct answer:

I'm in love with her ... The heart wants what it wants. There's no logic to those things. You meet someone and you fall in love and that's that.

This hardly excused his behavior -- fulfilling a heartfelt desire can be rather selfish, destructive, and wrong. But his statement was no excuse: he had done what he did because he wanted to. Pure and simple. He wasn't trying to weasel out. He was confessing: I acted on my passion.

Compare that to Gingrich's explanation: he was overworked, due to his passion for the United States, and inappropriate "things happened." Gingrich was justifiably derided on cable television, Twitter, and websites for trying to wrap his infidelity in the flag. A former Gingrich staffer called me and howled in laughter: "This guy thinks he can be president?" After all, if the pressures of being a congressman and, then, House speaker caused Gingrich to become a serial wife-cheater, what might the demands of the presidency do to the poor fellow? (Bordellos beware!)

People do make mistakes. They can be judged for them -- and voters (and film-goers) are free to decide what personal actions matter. Explanations, too, can be judged. When it comes to explaining the ways of the heart (or another organ), Woody Allen has been more honest than Newt Gingrich. That's not saying much for Allen, but it is for the guy who thinks he can be president.

You can follow David Corn's postings and media appearances via Twitter.

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Mitt Romney: How Long Can He Steer Clear of GOP Craziness?

David Corn — 2011-03-08T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, 2012 President, Deep Background, Newt Gingrich

Mitt Romney, the sort-of second-place finisher in the 2008 Republican presidential sweepstakes, is taking a different approach this year. Rather than trying to create an early splash, Romney is taking his time in declaring a presidential bid and, as The New York Times puts it, "is operating in a cautious, low-key fashion . . . with limited news coverage." The conventional view is that the former Massachusetts governor is doing so to avoid becoming the official front-runner -- a position that would place a large bull's eye on his back. But there may be another reason: He doesn't want to live in Crazy Land. And at the moment, the GOP nomination contest is chock-full of crazy.

A brief recap:

- Mike Huckabee, on a campaign book tour last week, focused on two messages: President Obama is really a Kenyan at heart who attended madrassas, not Boy Scout meetings, when he was a lad, and that's why he doesn't like the West, and Natalie Portman's engagement pregnancy is of national concern. When Americans are worried about the economic future of the nation, Huckabee was slight bit off-topic.

- In an absurd mini-drama last week, Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, and his aides put out conflicting signals about his 2012 intentions, signaling he would announce a presidential run, then that he would set up a committee to explore whether he should run. Finally, he held a press conference to declare . . . that he and his third wife, Callista, had set up a website dedicated to "exploring whether there is sufficient support for my potential candidacy." The bare-bones website had but one page: a sign-up page for potential supporters. "It was ridiculous," a former Gingrich aide told me. "This showed just how undisciplined and chaotic he can be. Not qualities you look for in a president. It was amateur hour." (By the way, months before Huckabee got into the act, Gingrich claimed that Obama's "Kenyan anti-colonial mindset governs the president's actions," which he claimed were "authentically dishonest" and "factually insane.")

- Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), a self-proclaimed tea party leader who says she's contemplating throwing her tricorne into the race, went on "Meet the Press" and once again declared that the Obama administration is a "gangster government." No matter what the question was, her answer was the same: Obama had supposedly hidden $105 billion in the health care bill. Once again, she looked more like a cult member than a possible commander-in-chief. (A few months ago, Bachmann falsely charged that Obama's five-day trip to India would cost $1 billion; the price tab was about 5 percent of that.)

- Tim Pawlenty, who once upon a time was a moderate Republican governor in Minnesota (who kind of supported the Wall Street bailout and backed cap-and-trade climate legislation), has been trying to transform himself into Mr. Tea Party and declaring that if he is elected he will repeal the repeal of the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy that prohibits out-in-the-open gays and lesbians from serving in the military (meaning he wants gay and lesbian GIs back in the closet).

- And there's Sarah Palin and all her utterances -- the latest being an attack on anti-union Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie that didn't make much sense to conservatives. She also picked a fight with comedian Kathy Griffin. (Dave Letterman wasn't available?)

Who'd want to be lumped with these folks and all this nonsense? If Romney were in the race officially -- rather than proceeding with a low-flying operation -- he'd be grouped together with these other candidates and have to respond to their antics. Gov. Romney, do you think President Obama is a covert Kenyan? Gov. Romney, is Obama a gangster president? Gov. Romney, would you reinstate 'Don't ask, don't tell'? Gov. Romney, who's right -- Sarah Palin or Chris Christie? Sarah Palin or Kathy Griffin?

There's no way Romney could answer these sort of queries without either risking coming across as a wing-nut to independent voters or potentially ticking off right-wing voters who will make up much of the GOP primary electorate. (Romney already will have plenty of trouble explaining the mandates-imposing health care system he created in Massachusetts and his previous flip-flops on critical social issues.) As conservative columnist George Will noted the other day, Romney and other serious candidates are in jeopardy of nuttiness by association: "the [GOP] nominee may emerge much diminished by involvement in a process cluttered with careless, delusional, egomaniacal, spotlight-chasing candidates to whom the sensible American majority would never entrust a lemonade stand, much less nuclear weapons."

On Monday night, the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition held a forum for Republican presidential candidates. Who bothered to show? Gingrich, Pawlenty, former Sen. Rick Santorum (who's running as the social conservative candidate), former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer, and former Godfather's Pizza CEO Herman Cain. At the event, Gingrich assailed Obama's "secular, socialist" agenda. (Gov. Romney, do you think the president is a socialist?)

No wonder a Romney spokesman said, "He's not yet a candidate, so he's not doing a candidates' forum." Staying out of the race (in an official sense) keeps Romney out of the line of fire. It also allows him to maintain his distance from Republican looniness. At least for now. Eventually he's going to have to parachute into that hot zone, for the only path to the GOP nomination is through that Republican valley of weirdness.

You can follow David Corn's postings and media appearances via Twitter.

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Huckabee's Slide: From Anti-Elite Demagoguery to Right-Wing Buffoonery

David Corn — 2011-03-04T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: 2012 President, Deep Background, Field Notes

I wrote too soon.

On Tuesday, I posted a column declaring that Mike Huckabee's new book, "A Simple Government," "is an assault on thinking." My point: in this tract the former Republican governor of Arkansas and failed 2008 contender strikes an anti-elite pose, demagogically bashes policy experts, and attacks the Obama administration for being inexperienced and not sufficiently simple. But that's nothing compared to the crackpot crusade he's been on this week.

It all began when Huckabee appeared on right-wing Steve Malzberg's radio show in New York City, seconded Malzberg's demands for more information on Obama's background (Malzberg is a birther), and claimed President Barack Obama grew up in Kenya "with a Kenyan father and grandfather," noting that Obama inherited a hatred of the British, who colonized Kenya. Huckabee, of course, was wrong: Obama did not grow up in Kenya. He grew up in Hawaii and spent several years as young child in Indonesia. And he had virtually no contact with his Kenyan father after the age of 2. He had not been indoctrinated with anti-British sentiment.

Huckabee soon after claimed that he had merely misspoke and had meant to say Obama had grown up in Indonesia. But that explanation was disingenuous, for Huckabee had repeatedly made the Kenya reference to illustrate the point that Obama was a foe of the United State's closest ally. Indonesia was ruled by the Dutch, not the British. And the folks young Obama spent time with in Indonesia probably didn't care much about the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya.

What Huckabee had been doing on that radio show was spreading Fox News-ish swill: the loony thesis, first peddled by conservative author Dinesh D'Souza in Forbes magazine last September and then seconded by Newt Gingrich, that because Obama's father was apparently an anti-colonialist in Kenya, the president was now acting out the anti-Western and anti-capitalism rage he had inherited from his father. This is a ludicrous. Given that Obama did not grow up with his father, how did he come by such anti-Western (and what these guys really mean is anti-American) anger? Is there a Kenyans-hate-white-capitalists gene? But on Malzberg's show, it was as if Huckabee, who hosts a show on Fox News, had somehow absorbed this stupid idea -- perhaps via Green Room osmosis. He was parroting a shorthand version of D'Souza's premise. This is how the right-wing's transmission belt of trash operates.

There's more. One portion of that radio show appearance has not received much attention. In the middle of the exchange about Obama's birth certificate and Kenya, Malzberg said of Obama, "He despises the West, he despises the Brits, and I think he could take it all out on Israel and that's why he despises Israel." How did Huckabee respond to the charge that Obama detests the West, England, and Israel? He didn't. The former preacher said nothing. And in this sort of situation, silence can be read as at least quasi-assent. I doubt Huckabee truly believes Obama hates the West and Israel. But he's playing footsie with the yahoos who do -- because he will want their votes, should he run for the GOP presidential nomination. By not challenging Malzberg on this point, Huckabee was, in a way, granting legitimacy to his view.

This is particularly troubling: a leader of the Republican Party going along with this vile criticism of the president. During the Bush years, Democrats were often harshly critical of W. But there were no major Democratic figures who contended that Bush was fundamentally anti-American or some kind of "other." Yet leading Republicans encourage such talk about Obama.

Think I'm being too hard on Huck? Two days later -- after the brouhaha over his Kenya remarks -- Huckabee went on another conservative radio show and agreed when the host, Bryan Fischer, said that due to Obama's childhood experiences, the president holds "fundamentally anti-American ideas." That is, Huckabee was still flopping about in the mud pit of conservative craziness.

One question: What was Huckabee doing sharing a microphone with Fischer? He's a true extremist. As Tim Murphy points out in Mother Jones:

Fischer has previously argued that gay sex is "domestic terrorism," that Native American societies were a "slop bucket" that deserved to be wiped out by Christians, that the President is a "fascist dictator," that Muslims should be banned from serving in the military, that gays literally caused the holocaust, and that grizzly bears should be slaughtered to appease an angry God.

But Fischer has an audience, and that's enough for a GOP panderer.

This past week, Huckabee blundered repeatedly. The Republican wannabe who has long cultivated the image of a friendly fellow demonstrated that he is willing to participate in the most perfidious conservative attacks on the president. It was a buffoonish but disturbing performance. Huckabee showed that he's not ready to be president of the United States, though he seems rather well-prepared to be president of Fox News.

You can follow David Corn's postings and media appearances via Twitter.

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Huckabee's New Book: Playing for Simple Minds?

David Corn — 2011-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: 2012 President, Deep Background

Mike Huckabee, whether or not he's running for president, has decided the path ahead for him is demagoguery. The former Republican governor of Arkansas, who kind of finished second in the 2008 GOP presidential contest (it's complicated), is mulling another run, and in the meantime he has produced the obligatory campaign book. Titled "A Simple Government," this book is an assault on thinking.

Let's start with Huckabee's big beef against President Barack Obama, for, as a campaign book, it's raison d'etre -- oh, sorry about the French -- must be to make the case that the author ought to be where Obama is now. Huckabee writes,

My biggest problem with President Obama isn't his insistent partisanship; it's his reliance on advice from people who don't understand the real world that you and I live in. Obama has overloaded his administration with policy wonks and Ivy League professors because he speaks their language. Virtually no one on his team has had experience running anything; they probably couldn't even run a lemonade stand.

Cheap shot -- slamming government officials with graduate degrees. But let's look at the Obama Cabinet. It includes four governors. Didn't these people used to run things? (They did so as much as Huckabee ever did.) Before this administration, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates ran . . . the Pentagon. Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist (yeah, that's a bad thing), was director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory before Obama picked him to steer the Energy Department. (Whom did President George W. Bush place in that slot? A defeated Republican senator named Spencer Abraham.) Arne Duncan, the head of the Education Department, oversaw the Chicago public school systems. Shaun Donovan, the secretary of housing, ran the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Attorney General Eric Holder once upon a time managed the U.S. attorney's office in Washington. Retired Gen. Eric Shinseki, secretary of veterans affairs, used to run a little outfit called the U.S. Army. And Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was boss of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

All told, this is a lot of running things. This isn't to say that all these appointees have gotten all the calls right. But it's absurd for Huckabee to claim that the problem with Obama's administration is a lack of experience.

Huckabee is playing to the crowd. And here's his bumper sticker: "We need a simple government."

Simple government? Is it simple to devise rules that can prevent a financial meltdown? (Quickly, Governor, describe a credit default swap to us.) Is finding the right course in Afghanistan simple? What's a simple way of dealing with the private insurance companies that control the delivery of health care in this country? Was going to the moon simple? Is keeping the food supply chain safe a simple endeavor? By the way, Huckabee in 2007 supported cap-and-trade climate change legislation -- which would have created a highly complicated system of carbon counting and swapping -- but this past December he claimed (falsely) that he never had. Apparently, it's real simple for a politician to lie.

Huckabee tries to cover his backside by saying, "Don't get me wrong: I know that many of the nation's problems are highly complex. But I also know that the governing principles that can solve them, if we work together, are simple. Justice, integrity, freedom -- the basic notions upon which America was founded -- are simple." The values may be simple, but the application of them to real-world problems is often not so easy. Stem cells, anyone?

Huckabee is pandering. I know; you're shocked. He's playing that ol' blast-the-elites card: "I'm not trying to win a Pulitzer Prize or impress the folks at Harvard, Yale or Stanford. . . . I'm writing for people who aren't ashamed to eat hot dogs and hamburgers (in moderation!) and probably think that a meal of snails is better suited to birds and fish than to humans." Yes, that is indeed the great cultural Rubicon in the United States: escargot, oui or non?

His shtick is not harmless. Huckabee is more worried about a fancy-eating Yale professor than a economy-destroying Wall Street crook. ("Wall Street" is not listed in the index of this book.) He decries the recent loss of millions of jobs, but his book has precious little to say about the financial implosion that caused the economy to tank.

Moreover, this aw-gosh, let's-just-do-what-us-simple-folks-know-is-best belies Huckabee's own past as a politician. As has been well documented, when he was active in Arkansas politics, he was snared in a series of ethics slip-ups. In a 1992 failed Senate campaign, he used campaign funds to pay himself as his own media consultant and to pay a family babysitter. In a successful run for lieutenant governor, he set up a nonprofit that allowed him to accept money for speeches from backers without disclosing their identities. When governor, as Salon reported,

he raked in tens of thousands of dollars in gifts, including gifts from people he later appointed to prestigious state commissions. . . . [H]e converted a governor's mansion operating account into a personal expense account, claiming public money for a doghouse, dry-cleaning bills, panty hose and meals at Taco Bell. He tried to claim $70,000 in furnishings provided by a wealthy cotton grower for the private part of the residence as his own, until he learned ethics rules prevented it. . . . Inauguration funds were used to buy clothing for his wife.

Huckabee mounted one scheme after another. And they weren't all simple.

One simple bromide Huckabee serves up in his book is predictable: "Raising Taxes Is Not the Answer." Unless you're Huckabee. During the 2008 campaign, Huckabee often declared that he had cut taxes "almost 94 times" while governor of Arkansas. Factcheck.org found that was misleading, noting that Huckabee "leaves out the 21 taxes raised during his tenure. In the end, he presided over a net tax increase." He did so to close large gaps in the state budget so Arkansas, as Huckabee at the time declared in a speech to the state legislature, could continue to "provide an adequate level of service" to its citizens. State government spending also increased by 50 percent while he was governor. And guess what? The state, under Huckabee, moved from a $200 million shortfall to a $884 million surplus.

So tax hikes can work. What a simple idea.

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Roger Ailes' Sex-and-Lies Tale: There Is Something Different About Fox

David Corn — 2011-02-25T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Deep Background

If a television anchor were caught -- on tape! -- encouraging a colleague to lie to federal investigators in order to protect a high-profile friend, do you think he or she would still have a job? Probably not. But if you run a network and if it's Fox, well, then . . .

On Thursday, The New York Times broke one of those deliciously dishy New York political-media exposés involving bold-face names. According to legal papers filed in a civil suit, in 2004 Roger Ailes, the pugilistic head of Fox News, encouraged Judith Regan, a flashy publisher, to lie to federal investigators about an affair she had had with Bernard Kerik, the former NYC police chief nominated by George W. Bush to be the secretary of homeland security. Ailes' motive: to protect Rudolph Giuliani, a close pal of Ailes' and a mentor and supporter of Kerik. Giuliani was at that time looking toward a presidential run in 2008, and any scandal involving Kerik, his close associate, would be bad news for him.

In 2006, after she was fired by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., which owns Fox News, Regan (who had proposed publishing O.J. Simpson's hypothetical confession of the murder of his ex-wife) publicly claimed that a senior exec at News Corp. had asked her to lie about her affair with Kerik, who was married. (Reportedly, Kerik and Regan used an apartment near Ground Zero -- which had been donated for recovery and rescue workers -- as their love nest.) But Regan did not ID the News Corp. honcho who had encouraged her to hush up. In a lawsuit filed against News Corp. in 2007, Regan said this executive had told her that if she disclosed information about her tryst with Kerik, it "would harm Giuliani's presidential campaign."

There's more to this twisted tale -- including accusations of anti-Semitism, a $10.75 million settlement for Regan, a novel that portrayed baseball great Mickey Mantle as a lascivious drunk, and Kerik's indictment on tax fraud and other charges. (Kerik was sent to the slammer last year.) But let's keep the focus on Ailes. The Times scoop, based on legal filings in a case in which Regan's former lawyers are suing her for not paying them (oy!), reveals that Regan taped the phone call during which Ailes pushed her to lie to the feds about a sexual matter.

This tape is Ailes' blue dress.

Fox News, founded in 1996, went to town during the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and subsequent impeachment crusade. That saga made Ailes' network. I doubt anyone kept track, but there must have been at least 17 million occasions when a Fox host or guest said that lying about sex in a legal proceeding (to prevent political embarrassment) was a high crime deserving impeachment -- or worse.

Yet that's what Ailes encouraged Regan to do. And this might have been illegal: conspiring to lie to federal gumshoes is a crime. But prosecutors don't usually bother with such cases. (Remember all those high-minded Fox Newsers who fiercely dismissed the argument that Clinton ought not be prosecuted or impeached for this sort of lie because prosecutors rarely chased after this kind of perjury case?)

Crime or not, Ailes did wrong. Last fall, he told the Daily Beast that it is important to maintain "the appearance of integrity" at a news network. (He was referring to MSNBC's recent suspension of Keith Olbermann for making donations to candidates.) But there's little integrity in a news exec leaning on a witness in a federal investigation -- especially when it's to help a presidential candidate who a few years earlier had used his political muscle to help that news exec get his channel carried on New York City's main cable system. The levels of improbity in this story are many.

I know Ailes. I worked at Fox for several years as a commentator. (If only I could tell you the conversations I heard in the make-up room!) Ailes was a decent boss, always straightforward with me and eager for a good argument. Once we were arguing before the Iraq war about the invasion to come, and I said that intelligence reports indicated that al-Qaeda was present in 65 countries. "Good," he said, "after Iraq, it will be one down and 64 to go." Ailes clearly knows that his whole fair-and-balanced shtick is a clever (and profitable) gimmick designed to make conservative shut-ins believe they are the real mainstream.

Ailes also must know now that he's been nabbed -- and compromised. He encouraged a cover-up (possibly a criminal act) to help Giuliani. And it would not be surprising, given that this episode was a central part of the dramatic legal battle between Regan and News Corp., that Murdoch was aware of it. (Regan's lawsuit against News Corp. declared that several executives in the company knew of Ailes' conversation with her.) Yet Ailes and News Corp. kept the lid on this for years, and now, I expect, they're going to pretend that lid is still there. In any other media empire, a top executive who had acted in this manner -- and who had been exposed -- would be deleted. But a spokeswoman for News Corp. told the Times, "The matter is closed."

Ailes and Murdoch contend that Fox News is a legitimate cable network, like any other (just more profitable!), that it deserves to be treated fairly by the Obama White House and be seen as reliable news provider. But it's hard to believe that the heads of CNN, MSNBC, NBC News, CBS News, or ABC News could get away with shenanigans that reveal such hypocrisy and fierce political favoritism. This sordid affair shows that, yes, there is something different about Fox.

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Government Shutdown: Who Wins -- or Loses?

David Corn — 2011-02-22T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Budget, Deep Background, Deficit, Economy, John Boehner

Is House Speaker John Boehner wilier than Newt Gingrich?

In the mid-1990s, Gingrich, then the speaker, enthusiastically charged into a budget face-off with President Clinton that led to not one but two government shutdowns. (One lasted five days; the other, 21.) Gingrich emerged wounded from the battle -- which had been waged over the GOP's calls for deep spending cuts -- and Clinton went on to win reelection in 1996; his Democrats netted nine seats in the House. The politerati's consensus since then has been that this fight was Gingrich's Waterloo, the beginning of the end for him. Now Boehner is heading into a similar tussle.

First, some background. Because Congress did not approve its appropriations bills last year -- bad, Congress, bad -- the federal government is being financed by one big cover-it-all spending measure called a continuing resolution, which funds the government at current levels. But the CR that was passed last fall had an expiration date: March 4, 2011. If no spending bill is approved by then, there will be no money for non-essential federal government services.

When this happened during the Clinton-Gingrich fight, the consequences were far-reaching. A recent Congressional Research Service report listed several examples:

- New patients were not accepted for research programs at the National Institutes of Health.

- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped their disease surveillance programs.

- Toxic waste clean-up work at 609 sites was halted.

- Recruitment and testing of law enforcement officers (including 400 border patrol agents) was delayed.

- Almost 400 national parks were closed, as were national museums and monuments.

- Visa and passport applications went unprocessed. (U.S. tourist industries and airlines lost millions of dollars.)

- Various veterans services were curtailed.

Plenty of other government services came to a grinding halt. The processing of Social Security and Medicare checks were delayed. All in all, the shutdown was not welcomed by most of the public. And Gingrich was left holding the bag. If a shutdown occurs at the end of next week, who'll get the blame -- or credit?

Last week, Boehner took a stance that could lead to such a suspension. Here's why: His House Republicans this past weekend passed a new continuing resolution with $61 billion in dramatic spending cuts affecting health, environmental, education, law enforcement, and worker and consumer safety programs. In response to these cuts, the Democrats in control of the Senate have said, fuggedaboutit. Meaning they will not rubber-stamp the House Republicans' spending bill. Consequently, the two sides have to work out a deal. But the March 4 deadline looms, and this week -- wouldn't you know! -- Congress is not in session. That leaves five days the following week to sort this out. Otherwise, ka-boom!

What would be the reasonable course of action in a situation like this? The answer is obvious: pass a short extension of the current continuing resolution -- say, for a few weeks -- to cover the time needed to hammer out a compromise between the House GOPers and Senate Democrats. And House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has done just that, proposing a stopgap bill that would fund the government at current levels until the end of March. Boehner, though, has declared he won't accept a temporary measure unless it includes spending cuts. So if he sticks to that extreme position and he and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid don't reach a compromise by March 4, much of the federal government will shut down.

In such a scenario, it would seem that Boehner would deserve most of the culpability. Just like Gingrich. But would Boehner pay the same price?

The political dynamics are different this time. And Boehner is playing to two audiences that each is looking for a different show. Much of the tea party crowd -- in and out of Congress -- would cheer a government shutdown. These folks see the federal government as the enemy. They'd be delighted to strangle it, even if only for a few days. Yet independent voters, whom both parties need to court, would probably not be as happy. These people usually want their representatives in Washington to make the system work. They aren't looking for showdowns or games of chicken. By forcing a shutdown, Boehner can appease his right -- but at the cost of potentially alienating the middle.

Of course, if a shutdown comes, Boehner will try to blame it on Democrats and President Obama, claiming that their unwillingness to accept spending cuts created the problem. He'll bash them for not listening to the people, and he'll depict himself as a champion of principle. If it comes to this, it will be the climax of the GOP's just-say-no strategy of the past two years.

Capitol Hill Democrats say Boehner is riding the Overreach Express and risks coming across more as a tea party bomb-thrower than as a responsible legislator. At least, that's their hope. It will certainly take some deft maneuvering for Boehner to cause a shutdown, accuse the Democrats, and be hailed as a spending-cut hero of the republic. But it's hard to know where the American public is these days. It generally detests overall government spending, but opposes many of the individual cuts the Republicans have passed. And though the American electorate sent a band of conservative ideologues to Washington this past November, many Americans fancy the notion of bipartisan cooperation. It's no sure bet that the public will embrace a politician who throws this switch.

Boehner might be the player who has the most to lose. Obama and the Senate Democrats are already viewed as politicians who consider government a positive force that can be used to resolve the nation's problems. If they draw a line against severe GOP cuts and ask for more time to forge a compromise, that's hardly a news story. But Boehner, who is still a new figure on the scene, has benefited by not being regarded as an ideologue. If he refuses to back a measure that keeps the government functioning while the politicians look for a bipartisan deal, he could end up becoming identified as an I-know-best, anti-government extremist. That will, no doubt, be a badge of honor in certain circles. But it may not go over well beyond those quarters.

Boehner has a choice: reasonableness or ideology. In 1996, Gingrich chose the latter and crashed. At that time, Boehner was in his third term as a House member. The next two weeks will show what lessons he learned -- if any.

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John Boehner's 'Naked Lunch' Moment

David Corn — 2011-02-18T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Deep Background, 2010 Elections, Jobs, Economy, John Boehner

Does House Speaker John Boehner have any shame? You don't have to answer. That's a rhetorical question.

This past week, the Republican from Ohio put on one of the crassest performances seen in Washington in years. In a matter of seconds, he reached a level of hypocrisy that far exceeded the standard political norm and demonstrated that (despite his habit of crying at the first sign of an emotional moment) he has little empathy for many of his fellow Americans.

You will recall that during the 2010 congressional elections, Boehner had essentially only one thing to say: "Mr. President, where are the jobs?" It didn't matter to him that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office had concluded (as of last August) that the Obama administration's recovery package had created or saved 3.3 million jobs and had lowered the unemployment rate by as much as 1.8 percent. Boehner incessantly and derisively repeated this talking point (no doubt tested with focus groups and polling) and gave up any pretense of having a serious discussion. His "where are the jobs" tag line was designed to suggest that there were no jobs -- to shortcut the facts. It was a brilliant piece of political rhetoric: misleading, but effective. He was engaged in the practice of the Big Lie. Boehner was so proud of his ability to shape -- or pervert -- the national political discourse, his office produced a video in October showing that his favorite line had become accepted and echoed throughout the mainstream media.

Asking again and again about jobs made it seem as if Boehner cared about the millions of unemployed Americans. But this week, he showed he doesn't have much compassion for the unemployed. At a press conference, he was asked about the loss of jobs that could be caused by the GOP's effort to slash $61 billion from government programs. "So be it," he replied, noting that over the past two years Obama has added 200,000 workers to the federal government.

Boehner was dead wrong about the 200,000 figure. (Politifact.com judged it a false statement). More important was Boehner's attitude. One federal budget expert estimates that the Republican cuts could lead to 1 million people losing their jobs (650,000 of them federal workers). Boehner displayed no concern for these folks -- and no concern about the economic consequences of adding 1 million to the ranks of the unemployed. It was a callous dismissal. He didn't even grant these Americans the courtesy of crocodile tears.

It's easy to pick on federal workers. But these are the people who safeguard our food supply, protect our water and air, guide the airliners that carry us, research cures for diseases, maintain our national parks, ensure that products from overseas are safe, respond to natural disasters, and guard our leaders. Why disparage them so and treat them as if they don't matter?

Boehner and his fellow Republicans have a theory: The best way to aid the economy and create jobs is to slash government spending (while giving tax breaks to the wealthy) and reduce the deficits (which are exacerbated by those tax cuts). This notion -- which counters the idea that at a time of economic trouble the government needs to rev up the economy by spending and investing -- does not have much historical precedent. Certainly, not the Reagan years. Unemployment and inflation back then did drop after the initial Reagan recession, but Reagan added to the deficits. In fact, David Stockman, Reagan's budget guru, now contends that Reagan kick-started the process that has led to the fiscal trouble of today.

So Boehner's one big idea may be wrong and misguided. Still, if he believes it, he ought to be less Scrooge-like. His lack of sympathy for those who could lose their jobs due to the proposal he's pushing is stunning and belies his where-are-the-jobs mantra of the previous campaign. In a less-imperfect world, he'd be ridden out of Washington on a rail for such coldheartedness, his duplicity denounced far and wide (and maybe even on Fox News). But all that ensues is a day or two of bad press, with liberal partisans griping about his insensitivity. And the moment gets lost in the wash.

But it was an exchange to remember. In explaining how he had come to title a novel "Naked Lunch," William Burroughs said that beat author Jack Kerouac had suggested it and that "the title means exactly what the words say: naked lunch, a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork." This week Boehner had his naked lunch moment -- and what was on the fork was ugly and, worse, mean.

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Mitt Romney: Adult or Empty Suit?

David Corn — 2011-02-15T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Mitt Romney, 2012 President, Deep Background, 2012 Elections

Mitt Romney's crew likes to bill the straight-from-Central-Casting GOP presidential contender as the "adult" among the Republican 2012 wannabes. But the speech he delivered at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday was full of schoolyard immaturity.

The gathering itself, the most prominent annual hoedown of conservative activists, was an out-of-touch affair. While much of the world was gripped by the pro-democracy uprising in Egypt, CPAC speakers, including many GOP presidential aspirants, derided Obama as an America-hating socialist hell-bent on weakening and/or ruining this nation. Practically every bold-type name who strode to the podium ignored the inspiring and world-changing events in Egypt. Obama-bashing was more important.

For many, this was expected. (Former Sen. Rick Santorum, this means you.) But as someone who has talked up Romney's chances of winning the Republican nomination -- despite the fact he's a Mormon and a flip-flopping former Massachusetts governor who once supported health care mandates, abortion rights, gay rights, and gun control -- I was disappointed by his speech.

Certainly, Romney had to toss steak tartare to this crowd. (Think of CPAC as a zoo where you must feed the animals.) That meant slapping the president silly and braying like a conservative. He enthusiastically proceeded through such obligatory gestures. But what was most notable about his speech was that it was unserious -- especially regarding the topic that Romney, a former CEO, claims to know something about: the economy.

Romney ripped Obama for responding to the economic crisis with "the most expensive failed social experiment in modern history." What did Romney have in mind? Obama's stimulus program? By the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office's calculations, Obama's recovery legislation saved or created up to 3 million jobs. Nevertheless, Romney went on to assert that Obama "guaranteed that unemployment wouldn't go beyond 8 percent." Not so. There was no "guarantee." As Politifact.com has pointed out, in response to other GOPers claiming that Obama promised 8-percent unemployment,

What we saw from the [Obama] administration was a projection [in an economic report], not a promise, and it was a projection that came with heavy disclaimers.

"It should be understood that all of the estimates presented in this memo are subject to significant margins of error," the report states. "There is more fundamental uncertainty that comes with any estimate of the effects of a [recovery] program."

Romney was relying on a discredited talking point. That's fine for a partisan hack -- but it's not how an "adult" behaves.

Romney then exclaimed that Obama "has stood watch over the greatest job loss in modern American history." Not a peep from him about the Bush-Cheney administration, the housing crisis, the subprime credit crisis, Wall Street, or the financial collapse that occurred in September 2008, prior to Obama being elected president. Romney, like many of his GOP competitors, had absolutely nothing to say about the cause of today's economic misery. And if you're keeping score at home, job loss peaked in January 2009, when the imploding economy shed about 800,000 jobs. As this chart shows, Bush "stood watch" over a cratering economy, and Obama's first year was marked by a dramatic drop in monthly job loss.

Romney denounced Obama for ignoring the "job crisis," and he urged Republicans to blame Obama for the economic mess of the past two years. He claimed the high unemployment rate "is a moral tragedy of epic proportion," brought to you by Barack Obama.

Okay, all politicians blame the guy in charge during miserable economic times for the misery. All's fair -- and Romney was hardly blazing a new trail. He predictably decried the failure of Obama's "liberal" policies, claiming that "the president and his fellow liberals turned to Europe for their answers." Lousy answers, that is.

So what's the right answer, Mitt? What are the policy prescriptions that ought to be advanced to free Americans from the shackles of unemployment? What steps would a President Romney be adopting right this very moment to bring jobs to those millions of Americans out of work? At this point in the speech, I was ready to hear how Romney could be the white knight who rides in and puts all his years of CEOing to good use and saves the nation from its economic troubles. Cue the hero. Enter, stage right.

But here's what Romney said:

The right answer is not to believe in European solutions. The right answer is to believe in America -- to believe in free enterprise, capitalism, limited government, federalism.

That was it. Believe in America. Believe that it "is an exceptional nation of freedom and opportunity and hope." Rather than provide a single example of a pro-active measure that would help jobless Americans, this onetime corporate executive declared, "I will not apologize for America! I don't apologize for America because I believe in America!" (Those exclamation points are in the text of the speech.) Query: How does not apologizing for America create jobs?

After Romney droned on about how tough it is for the unemployed, this was his bottom-line message: Let them eat hollow rhetoric. Romney, it turned out, had nada to contribute to the national discussion about how to revive the economy. He didn't even call for tax cuts.

He offered bromides not proposals, not even vague ideas. Up until this speech, it seemed to me that Romney -- who placed second in the CPAC straw poll behind Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.), the libertarian heartthrob -- presented the strongest threat to Obama, for I assumed he could talk about the economy more convincingly than other leading candidates. After CPAC, I'm not sure. He riled up the crowd with right-wing spin and boosted his conservative street cred, a critical mission for anyone seeking the Republican nomination. But the presumptive leader of the GOP pack showed minimal leadership potential. Of course, if the economy languishes for another year and a half, any GOPer will have a shot at defeating the president. But if this was the best Romney could do, this empty suit may not wear well.

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Rumsfeld: MIA on the True Costs of the Iraq War

David Corn — 2011-02-11T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: George W. Bush, Deep Background, Iraq

I was reading Donald Rumsfeld's just-released memoir, "Known and Unknown," when I came across a passage that brought me to a dead stop:

"The U.S. military involvement in Iraq has come at a high price. Combat took the lives of thousands of American servicemen and -women and left many more wounded. The U.S. Treasury spent hundreds of billions of dollars. The prolong war also poisoned our politics at home."

What's missing from this picture? A hundred thousand or so dead Iraqi civilians.

Iraq Body Count website, which keeps track of reported civilian casualties, reports that since the U.S. invasion there have been between 99,702 and 108, 854 documented civilian deaths in Iraq related to the war. Some estimates are higher. The actual number doesn't matter. Rumsfeld pays no attention to the notion that many Iraqi civilians lost their lives because of the war he supported and managed.

In his recent book, George W. Bush, also ignored this cost of the war. He wrote:

For all the difficulties that followed, America is safer without a homicidal dictator pursuing WMD and supporting terror at the heart of the Middle East. The region is more hopeful with a young democracy setting an example for others to follow. and the Iraqi people are better off with a government that answers to them instead of torturing and murdering them.

When Bush was promoting his book, he told NBC's Matt Lauer, "I will say, definitely, the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power, as are 25 million people who now have a chance to live in freedom."

Not everyone, though, is better off. As journalists Nir Rosen put it last November,

Certainly the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis are not better off. Their families aren't better off. The tens of thousands of Iraqi men who languished in American and subsequently Iraqi gulags are not better off. The children who lost their fathers aren't better off. The millions of Iraqis who lost their homes, hundreds of thousands of refugees in the region, are not better off. So there's no mathematical calculation you can make to determine who's better off and who's not.

Bush and Rumsfeld might calculate that the benefits of the war do surpass even these particular costs. But what's jarring is that the pair does not acknowledge this side of the ledger. I wonder why.

There are several possibilities. Perhaps they believe their calculus would be harder to defend if such extensive and tragic losses were recognized. This is a tremendous amount of blood to place on the scales. Or can it be that they have just not paid much attention to the matter of civilian casualties and are (perhaps willfully) ignoring the topic? The Pentagon apparently never officially kept a tally of the Iraqi civilian death count. Yet any honest accounting of the Iraq war -- or any war -- would cover this portion of the outcome. Any honest debate about the merits of a war would consider this angle.

Conservatives often hail cost-benefit analysis when it comes to government actions, such as regulations. They praise market forces. They promote the value of responsibility. At least, in the abstract. Rumsfeld's book -- and Bush's too -- is a fine example of an abandonment of such principles. The Iraq war cannot be judged without weighing these consequent deaths. But Rumsfeld and Bush duck the issue. Iraqis and citizens in other nations can be forgiven for regarding the Bushites' inability -- or unwillingness -- to recognize such a tremendous loss of life as an indication that they do not much value Iraqi lives.

It's easy for Rumsfeld, Bush, and others to proclaim that Iraqis have benefited from the war, now that the murderous Saddam and his repressive regime are gone. But Bush and Rumsfeld did not have to pay the ultimate sacrifice. They imposed it on others -- without asking their consent. They were the deciders. In Iran and Egypt, the world has seen that citizens can rise up against autocrats -- when they believe the time is right and when they are willing to accept the consequences of their defiance. The 100,000 or so dead Iraqi civilians were given no such choice.

Is it surprising that Rumsfeld and Bush do not pay even lip service to the dead Iraqi civilians? Probably not, for addressing this subject could cause a debate they'd obviously rather avoid. Better for these warriors to commit an act of moral cowardice than engage in that difficult fight.

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Glenn Beck: Should Fox Toss Him Out of the Coop?

David Corn — 2011-02-08T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Deep Background

Glenn Beck is walking toward a cliff -- or running, or skipping. The question is, will Fox News go flying over the edge with him, or give him a push?

For years, Beck has pitched various conspiracy theories with a rather predictable thrust: The left is out to take over and/or destroy the United States. (The relationship between assuming control of the country and scheming its decimation has always been a bit fuzzy.) And his targets have been sinister lefty outfits that are not household names: the Tides Foundation, ACORN, and others. As long as Beck stuck to this classic tale -- secret commies undermining this great land of ours -- he wasn't much of a problem to most conservatives and his patrons at Fox. Sure, some conservative commentators (such as David Frum) derided Beck. But Beck was more like the crazy uncle in the attic who could be ignored. And Fox News could bank the revenue Beck generated without worry. Good ratings forgive much.

But only so much.

The Egypt uprising has raised the stakes for Beck -- and Fox. In the past two weeks, Beck has viewed events in Egypt through his own rather warped filter. He claims that the rebellion is not about the people, not about democracy. Instead, he says, it's a move by radical Islamists to take over Egypt, as part of a larger plan to install a caliphate that stretches from the Middle East through Europe and toward the United States. And he contends that "uber-leftists" and Islamic extremists are "plotting together" toward this end. Last week on his radio show, he declared, "Groups from the hard-core socialist and communist left and extreme Islam will work together because they are both a common enemy of Israel and the Jew. . . . Islam wants a caliphate. Communists want a communist new world order. They'll work together, and they'll destabilize. Because they both want chaos."

Austin Powers, anyone? But it gets better. This grand cabal also includes . . . the Establishment. Beck points out that Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush refrained from bombing "ancient Babylon" during their respective wars against Iraq. "Why?" he asks. "Because the Bible tells us that that is the seat right there of power of a global evil empire," meaning that Islamic caliphate. Bush father and son each wanted to preserve the heart of a radical Islam caliphate? That seems to be what Beck is saying.

Beck depicts the Egyptian revolution as nothing more than a dark development in a covert three-dimensional global chess game that only he can suss out. The implication is that good Americans ought to fear and oppose the protests led by Egyptians calling for Hosni Mubarak's departure and democratic reforms. And conservatives who endorse the demonstrators' call for change and reforms are nothing but useful idiots doing the work of the clandestine Islamic-communist cabal.

This latest Beck craziness, now that it is not focused on lefties, has become too much for some conservatives. Bill Kristol, the top-dog neocon, gripes:

[H]ysteria is not a sign of health. When Glenn Beck rants about the caliphate taking over the Middle East from Morocco to the Philippines, and lists (invents?) the connections between caliphate-promoters and the American left, he brings to mind no one so much as Robert Welch and the John Birch Society. He's marginalizing himself, just as his predecessors did back in the early 1960s.

Beck fired back with a semi-quasi-coherent retort:

People like Bill Kristol, I don't think they actually stand for anything anymore. All they stand for is power. . . . And really, times have changed, Bill. Times have changed. It's time to see the world as it really is and to see how these big government solutions and getting into bed with dictators is really something the left does and not something that the right should do.

Get into bed with dictators? That's certainly something Kristol and the right did during the Cold War, when they supported autocratic regimes around the world, as long as these governments were anti-communist. But in this instance, Kristol is advocating opposing an autocrat in Egypt. What's Beck talking about?

Beck's problem, though, is not that Kristol has finally realized Beck is preaching nonsense. It's that now Beck has to expand his conspiracy to include Kristol, a prominent Fox News contributor, as either an active participant in the mighty plot or an unseeing buffoon exploited by the evil masters. And not just Kristol, but everybody else at Fox News who doesn't report and decry the Bush-assisted Islamic-communist plot against the United States. For Beck to be true to his cause, he will have to assail other conservatives who don't join him, for, my friends, this is about survival.

Beck cannot sustain his conspiracy mongering without roping into the conspiracy those on the right who either dare to challenge him or who are too dumb to see what's what. And that includes the rest of Fox News. After all, how could Bill O'Reilly, during his pre-Super Bowl interview with President Obama, not ask the president about his role in the left-Islam plot to create a caliphate? O'Reilly must be in on it -- or a naif. And the rest of the Fox network, too! If Beck is serious, his conspiracy theory must engulf the network that pays him.

Meanwhile, Fox faces a challenge: How long can it continue to air the ravings of a fellow denounced by sane conservatives? I once was a commentator at Fox News and worked with Roger Ailes. The guy likes to make money; he likes to cause trouble. But he also likes to be regarded seriously. (Ditto for Rupert Murdoch.) Beck is making it increasingly tough for Fox to claim it is a reality-based outfit (even by its standards). As Beck veers more into Bircher-land, can Fox stand behind him?

Time magazine's Joe Klein reports:

I've heard, from more than a couple of conservative sources, that prominent Republicans have approached Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes about the potential embarrassment that the paranoid-messianic rodeo clown may bring upon their brand. The speculation is that Beck is on thin ice.

Beck ought to be. Especially since his ratings are dropping.

As Beck becomes increasingly unhinged and lost in conspiracy-land, he may well become a litmus test for the right -- and a measure of whether the leaders of Fox News care about any claim to respectability. Should Fox throw him out of the coop, Beck will still have a cult-like following that he can service via his syndicated radio show, website, and books -- and still make tens of millions of dollars a year. He won't crawl off to an undisclosed location. But he will no longer have the imprimatur of the right's main media outfit. And what better confirmation that the conspiracy is vast, oh so vast.

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Where Are All the GOP 2012 Candidates? Blame Sarah Palin

David Corn — 2011-02-04T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Republicans, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, 2012 President, Deep Background, Newt Gingrich

The politerati are all a-flutter. Why are there no GOP presidential candidates yet? There sure are plenty -- it seems like dozens -- of 2012 wannabes. But so far not one of the conventional possible contenders (probable or improbable) have officially tossed a hat (or checkbook) into the ring.

By this point in the 2008 campaign, much of the Democratic and Republican field was in place -- or close to it. John Edwards (remember him?) announced his run for the presidency on Dec. 26, 2006, at an event with kids in flood-ravaged New Orleans. Hillary Rodham Clinton lifted off with a Web video posted on Jan. 20, 2007 (two years prior to the next inauguration day). Barack Obama began his campaign with a speech in frosty Springfield, Illinois, on Feb. 10. On the GOP side, Mike Huckabee took the plunge on "Meet the Press" on Jan. 28, 2007. Mitt Romney started his engine with an announcement in Michigan on Feb. 13. John McCain, who had been running since he lost to George W. Bush in the 2000 Republican primaries, informally gave the thumbs-up on David Letterman's show on Feb. 28, 2007.

This week, Romney appeared on "Letterman" and tried to hide his hand, claiming he had "no plans for" another presidential bid "at this point." Oh, the things politicians say. Of course, he has plans. In fact, he has an assortment of political action committees cooking up these plans and spreading contributions about to set up his presidential bid. Romney has signaled no ambivalence about wanting to become the CEO of the USA.

So why the slow (official) start-up for him and the others? I think I know who to blame: Sarah Palin.

She's the 800-pound grizzly. If she enters the race -- and don't ask me to wager one way or another on whether she will -- she will become the gravitational center of the contest. It's impossible to game anything out without knowing if she's a candidate. And with her appeal to grassroots social conservatives, who dominate two of the three early primaries, she probably can get away with not joining the race until late in the process. (In fact, it might be to her advantage to sit out the initial debates and then proclaim, "I haven't heard anyone say what's needing to be said, so, heck, guess I gotta run for this thing myself.")

With a field that could well include 10 or more candidates, any designated front-runner will also be the designated pinata -- attacked from all directions. Why would Romney want to be in that position any longer than necessary -- especially while Palin ducks such attacks, racking up speaking fees, pontificating on Fox News, issuing Facebook proclamations, and having the media hang on every tweet she dispatches? He's better off playing it coy, while raising mucho bucks and putting an operation into place. Besides, with Obama on a decent roll these days, does Romney want to have to address every White House move? An official, front-running candidate would be expected to do so. As a not-yet-official aspirant, he can decide when to poke at the president and when not to.

Huckabee has a similar problem. In a Palinated presidential contest, he and the former half-term Alaska governor would be competing for the same social conservatives. Huckabee won many of these primary voters in 2008. But the slogging will be tougher if he's up against the Queen of the Tea Party. His chances are far more affected by the P-factor than those of the other possible candidates.

And Huckabee has to worry about cash flow. Not his campaign's -- his own. In December, the Arkansas Times reported that he and his wife are building a $3 million home in a Florida beach development, with a $2.5 million mortgage. With such a financial burden, he probably doesn't want to give up his day job as a Fox News personality. Not too soon, at least.

Other possible GOP candidates are probably waiting to announce because they're not going to announce. But the longer they don't announce, the more publicity they will receive. Put Rep. Michele Bachmann and former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton in this category. Newt Gingrich might also be a presidential teaser who's just after the attention. Former advisers to Gingrich tell me that they think he's actually going to jump in. But can a fellow who dumped not one but two wives when they were ill truly win the nomination of the purported party of family values? (Richard Land, a prominent religious right leader, put it this way: "Two ex-wives is one ex-wife too many for most evangelicals.")

As for some of the others -- Mitch Daniels, John Thune, Haley Barbour, Rick Santorum -- it's hard to figure out what's taking so long. (Jon Huntsman just resigned as U.S. ambassador to China to enter the presidential guessing game, but can a GOPer who spent two years working for Obama and who has supported civil unions for gays and lesbians and cap-and-trade climate legislation be a credible candidate in a tea partied GOP?) And there's Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota -- he seems serious about a run, but with his low name recognition, he should have announced last summer. Any of these folks feeling cold in the feet?

Finally, why is Palin, who has turned her entire life into a reality show that earns millions, taking so long to decide? To ask the question that way is to answer it. But maybe it's also because she realizes that when it comes to the GOP presidential bus, she can sit anywhere she wants to.

You can follow David Corn's postings and media appearances via Twitter.

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Obama Hate Machine Exploits Egyptian Crisis

David Corn — 2011-02-02T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Deep Background, Conservatives, Barack Obama

It's been thrilling to watch millions of people rise up and call for free expression and democracy in Egypt. The collective courage of the demonstrators has been inspiring; the apparent spontaneity encouraging. And we could view it live on our computer screens and smartphones. At this point, there's no telling what the as-of-yet nonviolent protests will yield. Political reforms that lead to a diverse democracy? An opening that is exploited by Islamic fundamentalists? Chaos?

Rebellions can produce horrible outcomes. But the Egyptian uprising holds plenty of promise -- and is boosting the desire for democracy elsewhere in the region and the world. (China's leaders have tried to block news of the Egyptian unrest for Chinese Internet users.) But on Planet Beck and in other conservative quarters, the Egyptian revolution, sadly, has become just another vehicle for Obama-bashing.

Since the start of this uprising, President Obama has handled the matter well, demonstrating prudence while still adhering to principles. He has walked a fine line. The president inherited a three-decade-long relationship with Hosni Mubarak, which on several fronts worked to the United States' advantage. Mubarak was a tyrannical thug, but he abided by the Camp David peace accords (and received billions of dollars in U.S. aid for doing so). He has been an ally in the fight against al-Qaeda and its partners (while providing torture services in this so-called war). And the need for stability in Egypt is not just a geostrategic cliché.

The possible consequences of Obama throwing Mubarak under the bus at the get-go were stark. Such a move could have caused Mubarak to mount a bloody crackdown that could have led . . . well, who knows where. And other U.S. allies in the region who are not champions of democracy would have hardly appreciated such a precipitous move. Yet Obama could not risk being on the wrong side of this popular rebellion -- especially if it forced Mubarak's ouster. Nor did he want to be. So he praised the protesters and acknowledged that their gripes were important and fully legitimate -- and he warned Mubarak and the military not to harm them. At the same time he nudged Mubarak toward fundamental change.

In public, Obama and his aides were firm without being fiery. They responsibly concocted careful phrases. At a White House briefing on Monday, press secretary Robert Gibbs said that the administration was not calling for a change in the government but "a change in the way the country works." The administration's words did not jibe with the Mubarak-must-go-right-now rhetoric of the protesters. But behind the scenes, Obama officials were leaning on Mubarak to develop an exit strategy. Shortly after Mubarak announced on Tuesday night that he would not run for "reelection" in the September election (and that he intended to remain in his homeland and "die on Egyptian soil"), Obama declared that "an orderly transition" in Egypt "must begin now." In other words, Mubarak's statement was not good enough.

The Egyptian crisis is far from over; Obama and his team can hardly be fully judged. But to date, they have represented the United States well. In fact, Republican leaders in Congress have not been complaining. Yet the Obama Hate Machine has seized on the Egyptian uprising as another opportunity to slam the president. Conservative columnist Dick Morris, who once upon a time was a consultant to President Bill Clinton, hammered Obama for failing to stand with Mubarak against Islamic "extremists" trying "to take over the country." Fox News contributor Ralph Peters blasted Obama for not sufficiently supporting the Egyptian protesters. The right-wing Washington Times editorial page slammed Obama for having "abrogated any leadership role in resolving the turmoil in Egypt," noting, "When the time calls for action, Mr. Obama sits on his hands." The newspaper suggested that Obama's moves would lead to al-Qaeda taking over Egypt. Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com published a posting by Wayne Allyn Root, a leading libertarian, that predicted that the United States would soon be hit by Egyptian-style "riots, revolt in the streets, and economic paralysis" and that Obama "might turn out to be just as intolerant to dissent as Mubarak."

Then there's Glenn Beck. In his own bizarro fashion, Beck tied the rebellion in Egypt to radical forces in the United States and elsewhere that are scheming the demise of the United States:

"We have evidence of the uber-left, the anarchists and the communists and the socialists, the radicals, sowing the seeds and helping those in Egypt. All they want is more pressure on the United States. This isn't about the people there. This is about changing the globe. . . . The storm that I've talked about for so many years is here. The coming insurrection is here."

Oh, this is far beyond Barack Obama, he added. The uber-left and the Islamicists, he asserted, "are plotting together." Presumably to destroy the United States and take over the world -- and Obama's not doing anything to stop them. (He might be rooting for them!) Beck called on his followers to prepare for food riots in the United States. This is, of course, crazy talk. But it's the filter through which millions of Americans are viewing the historic events in Egypt.

The Obama Hate Machine never takes a vacation. But its eager exploitation of the uprising in Egypt cheapens the stirring images of those brave Egyptian citizens seeking democracy and the right of free expression. This is no surprise. There's always demagoguery to wage and paranoia to fuel.

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Ronald Reagan at 100: The Darker Legacy

David Corn — 2011-01-29T22:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Deep Background, Conservatives, Analysis, Reagan Centennial, Egypt Crisis

Are you ready for Reaganpalooza? February 6 will mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ronald Reagan, and the coming week will be loaded with events, op-eds, and television packages commemorating the day and celebrating the 40th president.

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and the University of Southern California are holding an academic-star-studded conference on the Reagan legacy. Sarah Palin will deliver the keynote address at a gala being mounted at Reagan's former ranch in Santa Barbara, California.

Obama's SOTU Bargain: Cut Government to Do More With Government

David Corn — 2011-01-25T23:40:00+00:00

Filed under: State of the Union, Deep Background, Jobs, Economy, Barack Obama, 2012 Elections

Is President Obama a fierce down-sizer of government, or an ardent champion of boosting government investment in the economy? Well, he's both.

In his second State of the Union speech, delivered Tuesday night, Obama trotted the tight wire. To show he's a mighty crusader against deficits, he declared he would impose a five-year freeze on non-security discretionary spending. And to show he's (still) the rescuer of the U.S. economy, he proclaimed he wants to spend billions on -- that is, invest in -- innovative technology (such as clean energy), infrastructure (including high-speed rail and high-speed Internet) and education (including 100,000 additional science, technology, engineering, and math teachers within the next eight years), all so the United States can "win the future," as it competes with China and other economic superpowers.

Far From Humble Republicans Prep for the State of the Union

David Corn — 2011-01-25T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Republicans, Budget, Social Security, Deep Background, Medicare, Economy, John Boehner

Republicans seem a tad cocky these days. After repealing President Obama's health care law -- I mean, voting symbolically to repeal it -- they are claiming this week that they have already rescued the economy, and they are highlighting their party's most unpopular positions without concern for popular backlash. Hubris, anyone?

On Monday morning, Dow Jones reported that a quarterly survey of 84 companies conducted by the National Association for Business Economics found that 42 percent of these firms expect to hire more workers in the coming six months. Fifty-five percent reported rising demand. As soon as the report was out, the office of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) e-mailed reporters, "THERE ARE THE JOBS" -- as if the GOP could take credit for this encouraging news. But the survey was taken between Dec. 17 and Jan. 5, before the House Republicans had done anything. The trends the survey had captured had been in place for months -- and unconnected to any GOP action.

Still, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) also tried a similar stunt, during an interview with Bloomberg's Al Hunt. Here's the exchange:

HUNT: Let me talk about the Obama administration and business. Corporate profits are soaring. Goldman Sachs named 110 new partners. Bonuses are flowing. S&P has risen more than in any three-year period since the tech bubble. General Motors is -- the IPO. This isn't an anti-business administration, is it?

KYL: I would contend that, for the last two years, it's been highly anti-business. Some of the results that you just talked about, I suspect, are . . . coming from the fact that we extended tax rates that the president did not want to extend, but was willing to do so at the end of the year last year.

Reality check. The positive swing in the economic indicators occurred prior to the tax cut deal. And until that compromise was concocted last month, there was no telling which rates would be extended. (Remember, the Democrats and Obama supported extending the Bush tax cuts for mid- and low-income Americans, and the GOPers wanted to extend those tax rates plus the tax cut bonuses for the wealthy.) The math here is simple: Maintaining the tax breaks for the rich had nothing to do with the rise in corporate profits or GM's turnaround. Kyl, like Cantor, is acting like a rooster who believes its crowing is responsible for the sunrise. In this case, they're crowing in the afternoon.

The U.S. economy, believe it or not, does not move on the basis of GOP press releases. But that does not mean that Republican positions don't deserve scrutiny.

Take Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the new chairman of the House Budget Committee. The Republicans tapped him to deliver the GOP reply to Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday night. That sends a strong signal: Ryan is the Republicans' guy when it comes to the party's grand economic message. But Ryan is also a policy extremist.

Last year, he unveiled an economic plan dubbed "A Roadmap for America's Future." It is most notable for urging the privatization of Social Security and the elimination of Medicare and most of Medicaid. Citizens for Tax Justice concluded that Ryan's comprehensive scheme would lead to tax hikes for 90 percent of Americans and lower taxes for the wealthiest Americans -- and still cause massive debt. Last year, Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), now the House speaker, declined to endorse Ryan's plan. And Cantor has kept his distance from the "Roadmap," hailing only "elements" of the plan. National Review magazine reports that Boehner, Cantor, and other House GOPers "are not showing much eagerness to take up the roadmap's specifics."

Yet the Republicans have placed Mr. Roadmap in the spotlight, consequently providing Democrats the opportunity to deploy one of their all-time favorite arguments: Republicans want to take down Social Security. And grab that opportunity the D's have. On Monday, the office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) fired out a statement blasting Ryan:

In an unsettling development for America's seniors, ending Social Security and Medicare is now the official position of the Republican Party. Republicans tapped Rep. Ryan, the architect of a plan to end Social Security and Medicare, to deliver their response to the President's State of the Union.

The Reid statement exclaimed that "Republicans are not only endorsing Rep. Ryan's extreme plan, but giving him unprecedented power to carry it out." That was something of a stretch. But providing Ryan this coveted and high-profile spot does prompt an inconvenient question for Boehner, Cantor, and other Republican leaders: Do they or do they not support Ryan's proposal to privatize Social Security and end Medicare?

By anointing Ryan their pointman, the Republicans are inviting trouble. And by claiming that they are responsible for recent economic progress -- if only by mere presence alone -- they invite the charge of arrogance. When Boehner was sworn in as speaker of the House, he said that Republicans will "now move forward humble in our demeanor." Did he really mean it?

You can follow David Corn's postings and media appearances via Twitter.

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What Progressives Want From Obama's State of the Union Address: Fighting Words

David Corn — 2011-01-21T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Obama Administration, Deep Background, Barack Obama

An editor asked me a simple question: What do progressives want from President Obama when he delivers his State of the Union speech on Tuesday night? I'm no spokesperson for the left. But here's my hunch: fight.

The first two years of Obama's presidency have yielded mixed feelings among many of his supporters. He succeeded in scoring big legislative victories with his stimulus package, the health care bill, and the Wall Street reform law. But these initiatives all were marked by compromises that disappointed progressives. The stimulus bill was too small; the health care legislation did not include a public option; and the Wall Street measure was not as tough on Big Finance as it could have been. Moreover, Obama failed or fell short on other top-priority items for progressives: He didn't shut down Gitmo; he expanded the war in Afghanistan; and he didn't pass a climate change bill or broker an international accord with strict limits on greenhouse gas emissions. (On the hooray side: START ratification and "Don't ask, don't tell" repeal.)

In many of these episodes, progressives saw Obama toiling hard but not fighting fiercely enough. On health care, he spent much time courting a few Republicans who ended up not helping the bill pass. At the same time, Republicans and conservatives pummeled Obama, falsely calling the bill a "government takeover" of health care and decrying "death panels" that did not exist. It did not seem a fair face-off. Regarding the recovery package, Republican leaders asserted that the measure did not create a single new job. That was not true. (The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has stated that the stimulus measure saved or created up to 3 million jobs.) The Obama White House did try to talk up the success of the package. But what infuriated progressives was that the president and his crew were not able to punch back in kind. Facing Republican obfuscation, obstruction, and prevarication, Obama and his aides, perhaps trying too hard to be reasonable and responsible, kept losing the narrative wars. The president was slogging it out on Capitol Hill, but not confronting the right-wing attack machine with sufficient might.

This was frustrating for Obama's loyalists. And the grand climax came with the tax cut compromise Obama struck with the GOPers last month. As a candidate and as a president, he had pledged to oppose extending the Bush tax cut bonuses for the well-to-do. Then -- poof! -- he was hailing a package that included this extension (while still proclaiming his opposition to that provision). It again appeared as if the president had not been willing to slug it out with the other side.

The compromise might have well been the best Obama could have achieved, and it ended up as something of a second stimulus, including plenty of measures -- such as extended unemployment benefits and additional tax cuts for middle- and low-income Americans -- that progressives could cheer. But because the public tussle had focused almost entirely on the tax cuts for the wealthy, the final deal reinforced the concern that Obama was not tough enough. The Obama administration had screwed up its messaging. It had never signaled publicly that it was attempting to force the Republicans to accept these other provisions, which were larger than the tax cuts for the rich. Had the White House done so, then the initial media coverage and liberal reaction to the deal might have been different, with Obama coming out a winner, or, at least, a quasi-winner.

Progressives will be listening on Tuesday night to what Obama has to say about policy matters -- Social Security, job creation, Afghanistan. They will be quite sensitive to any hints that he's willing to follow the suggestions of deficit hawks on Social Security and budget cuts. (In this speech, Obama will continue his tightrope walk: hailing government efforts to keep the anemic recovery going, while calling for a path toward balancing the government's books.) But most of all, they will be looking for signs that Obama is willing to battle the conservative and Republican forces that politically outmaneuvered him this past year.

Sending out that signal may not be easy. In the aftermath of the Tucson massacre, Obama has called for uplifting the public discourse. He also needs to woo back those fickle independent voters, who like it when he talks about transcending partisan bickering -- and when he actually does so (as he did with the tax cut deal). These folks don't yearn for bare-knuckles brawling in Washington. So if Obama wants to rev up lefties and win over indies, he will have to thread a needle. He could well decide to disappoint the libs for the time being and appeal to them later, perhaps during the fights with the GOP that are expected to emerge over budget cuts and extending the tax-cut extension for the rich.

During the State of the Union address, Obama will probably do what most presidents do: cover a laundry list of accomplishments and present a shopping list of policy initiatives. In those details, there will be much for progressives to applaud. But tone will trump specifics. The overarching question many progressives have about Obama, I'm guessing, is this: How vigorously will he fight the newly empowered Republicans for what we believe in? On Tuesday night, they want to see him flex.

You can follow David Corn's postings and media appearances via Twitter.

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Obamas Host China's President Hu at Glitzy White House State Dinner

Annie Groer — 2011-01-19T23:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Bill Clinton, Obama Administration, Deep Background, Michelle Obama, Republic of Dish, White House, Barack Obama, China

President and Mrs. Obama welcomed China's President Hu Jintao to a glittery state dinner for 225 Wednesday night, with guests ranging from Wall Street titans to a human rights champion, to a pair of former presidents -- Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton -- and a clutch of entertainers and business leaders.

The event also featured an all-American dinner capped by apple pie and ice cream and the news flash from Obama that China will let Washington's National Zoo keep Mei Xiang and Tian Tian, its adorable loaner pandas, for another five years. After the toasts came a jazz concert.

Most guests arrived via a ground floor entrance and walked across the marble floor past a media scrum -- there was no red carpet, this being the White House, not the Golden Globes -- and it's not clear whether any of them noticed the dozens of protestors across Pennsylvania Avenue. The protestors spent much of the day demonstrating against China's crackdown on the religious group Falun Gong and against China's tough policies in Tibet.

Kenneth Roth, who heads Human Rights Watch, stopped to talk to reporters on his way to cocktails and addressed that very issue when he said, "I take it that was the reason I was invited, as a statement to President Hu. . . . These days the Chinese accept human rights as a topic of conversation. That is a step forward from the past."

This state dinner was the smallest of the three the Obamas have hosted -- there were more than 300 guests at the 2009 dinner for the Indian prime minister and some 260 honoring the Mexican president. This is also the first one held exclusively inside the White House, rather than under an enormous tent outdoors.

Guests were seated in three adjoining rooms, and although a state dinner invitation is, by definition, a hot ticket, best bragging rights arguably went to those in the State Dining Room. The Obamas and Hu -- who eschewed a tux for a dark business suit and necktie -- sat at a long rectangular head table for 20. Ten smaller round tables were arranged throughout the room. The rest of the guests were in the Red and Blue Rooms, which where equipped with large TV monitors so everyone could see and hear the toasts that came at the end of a long day of events dealing with trade and security.

GOP Health Care Plan: More Repeal Than Replace

David Corn — 2011-01-18T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: House, Republicans, Health Care, Deep Background

Late on a damp and chilly night, a few weeks before the midterm elections, I was strolling down Lexington Avenue, returning to my hotel, when I heard a voice from the street call out, "Hey, it's David Corn of Mother Jones." I turned and encountered a middle-aged fellow who was part of a work crew laying fiber-optic cable beneath New York City's streets. I said hello, he told me he was a regular watcher of MSNBC, and introduced me to the two other members of his gang. We immediately started talking politics. These three guys, who each belonged to a Queens local of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, were dismayed by the prospect of the electorate handing the keys to the House to the Republicans.

"What are people thinking?" one of the men said. He told me that thanks to the health care reform bill President Obama and the Democrats had passed, he could now keep an adult son on his health insurance plan, rather than pay for separate coverage. "This is saving me thousands of dollars," this IBEW worker said. "Much more than any tax cut. And they want to take that away?"

It was as if I had walked on to the set of a Democratic Party campaign commercial. But these voters were as real as it gets. (They offered to take me into the manhole and show me the wild underworld of below-street wiring in NYC. Given that I was wearing a suit, I politely demurred.) And, yes, the Republicans do want to take that away. At least, that's the House GOPers' official position this week. On Tuesday, Boehner's Band begins debating its first major piece of legislation: repealing the health care law, lock, stock, and pre-existing conditions.

The obvious analysis is that the newly empowered Republicans are throwing one big bag to their tea party backers. After all, the Democrats who control the Senate won't repeal a bill they passed, and Obama would veto any such measure. Repeal is a moot issue. But the GOPers know that they will soon have to take several dives: They will not propose a budget that meets their promise of cutting $100 billion from the federal budget this year, and they will probably end up supporting a boost in the national debt ceiling (for otherwise the United States will default and possibly trigger a global financial crisis). They're doing what they can now, so later they can tell disappointed and angry tea partiers, "Hey, remember that health care repeal vote?"

Still, there's more to life than the tea party. Isn't there? Even for Republicans? And as the GOPers rush ahead with this symbolic vote to smother the health care law, non-tea partiers -- especially the millions of Americans who have started to benefit from reforms in the package -- might wonder: What about the "replace" in the Republicans' health care battle cry, "Repeal and Replace"?

There is no replace. There's only eradicate. Yank apart. Lash out. The GOPers do not have a substitute. This ought not be shocking. When they controlled Congress during the George W. Bush years -- and before -- they never showed much interest in addressing the extensive woes of the health care system, countering the abusive practices of insurance companies, or extending coverage to the tens of millions who go without. The House Republicans do intend to pass a non-binding resolution that will announce to the world their broad health-care aims and instruct four different House committees to develop proposals. But this is the thinnest of cover. Why are there not GOP proposals ready to go? Health care reform is hardly a new matter.

But we already know what the Republicans will propose: tax credits and medical malpractice reform, with a large dose of free-market rhetoric. Tax credits would make it easier for some Americans to buy insurance -- but they will not cause insurance companies to become more consumer-friendly. Nor will they address a fundamental problem of the system: Insurance companies make more money when they provide fewer services and keep sick people (who need a lot of services) off their rolls.

As for the details of any GOP plan, that's anybody's guess. In the last Congress, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the new chairman of the House Budget Committee, proposed a deficit reduction scheme that included a plan to privatize Medicare and Medicaid. Under Ryan's blueprint, the federal government would give the elderly and poor tax credits and payments they could use to purchase coverage -- instead of guaranteeing particularly health care coverage no matter the cost. Talk about rationing. Under this system, the poor and older Americans could be thrown under the gurney after spending down the amount of money available for their care.

Ryan's proposal may not make it into any GOP package. (These guys aren't that foolish.) But there's no telling what will be in it -- if anything. There's no guarantee the House Republicans will serve up any comprehensive health care reforms. "Replacing Obamacare is not something we can accomplish overnight," Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), the new chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told The Washington Post. Yet ripping it to shreds can be done overnight. Even if that would mean that millions of Americans would have their adult children kicked off their plans and would have to contend with insurance companies tossing them aside due to pre-existing conditions.

Once again, the Republicans are calculating they can beat something with nothing. That worked fine when they were decrying non-existent death panels. And it worked in the 2010 elections. This time around, though, their spiteful and rash assault on the health care law might come with a cost. No longer are they merely trying to obstruct; they are now trying to destroy and, more important, trying to take away reforms that mean much to that cable guy and many others.

You can follow David Corn's postings and media appearances via Twitter.

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Worst Thing Said This Week: Rush Limbaugh Wins in This Category

David Corn — 2011-01-14T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Deep Background

At the memorial service in Tucson on Wednesday night, President Obama delivered a moving speech -- one of the best of his political career -- and fulfilled the role of leader. He called on Americans to debate our policy and political differences with honesty and respect, noting that "a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to the challenges of our nation." It is the president's job to inspire and encourage what Abraham Lincoln described as "the better angels of our nature."

But the problem that remains and confounds is this: What happens when someone doesn't play by these rules? It is rather tough to have the sort of discourse the president rightfully urges with a party that engages in name-calling and tosses about extreme and violent rhetoric. And when such a person or institution earns a profit from that sort of behavior, it is especially difficult to nudge him or it toward better-nature territory.

With that in mind, allow me -- respectfully -- to point out what was possibly the worst thing said this week by a major player in the national discourse. No, it's not Sarah Palin's "blood libel" remark. As I've pointed out elsewhere, she was wrong and off-base in so many ways. After all, for Palin to equate the criticism she received after the Tucson rampage (for having marked Rep. Gabrielle Giffords district with cross-hairs on a list of Democrats she targeted for defeat in November) with the genocidal persecution of an entire people demonstrated either ignorance or narcissism. Or both. (My hunch: She didn't know what "blood libel" meant and thought it was just a visceral way to say really libel-y.) Still, this comment was a silly charge that only undermined Palin's argument that her foes on the left had rushed to tie her directly to the massacre before the full facts were known.

Surpassing Palin in debasing the debate this week was none other than Rush Limbaugh. I know, you're shocked. On his radio show, Limbaugh declared,

What Mr. Loughner knows is that he has the full support of a major political party in this country. He's sitting there in jail. He knows what's going on, he knows that. . . . The Democrat party is attempting to find anybody but him to blame. He knows if he plays his cards right, he's just a victim. . . . That smiling mug shot -- this guy clearly understands he's getting all the attention and he understands he's got a political party doing everything it can, plus a local sheriff doing everything that they can to make sure he's not convicted of murder -- but something lesser."

Limbaugh was suggesting --no, make that stating as a fact -- that the Democrats want to help Jared Lee Loughner escape full justice for allegedly murdering six people (including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl) and attempting to kill Giffords, a Democrat quite popular within her party. What could Limbaugh be thinking?

Then again, it's not truly a rational thought process that derives such a conclusion. Would he have his audience of ditto-heads believe that the leading Democrats who have visited Giffords in her hospital room -- Nancy Pelosi, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Kristen Gillibrand -- want to help the man who nearly killed their friend to get off easy? Limbaugh has no evidence to cite, because there is nothing to back up his ranting. This is craziness. Hateful craziness.

Does Limbaugh even believe this swill? He could be saying it merely to satisfy the red-meat yearnings of his followers. That would render him perhaps the biggest cynic on the American landscape. (For such care and feeding, Limbaugh earns at least $50 million a year.) Yet if he truly thinks that Pelosi is plotting to assist the assassin who put a bullet into the head of a friend, he is delusional.

There is no other explanation: panderer-for-profit or nutcase. I realize this is not a civil way of describing someone. But there are moments when civility prevents us from serving and protecting the truth. Mendacity, ignorance, provocation -- sometimes these must be called out by name. Otherwise, those who would use or exploit such means to pervert the national discourse gain an advantage.

Obama is correct: To advance the national interest, Americans must mount rigorous debates in the best terms possible. But you cannot have an honest debate with a mud-thrower. (My father used to tell me, there's no fair fight with a skunk.) Those who purposefully undermine reasonable and necessary discourse do not deserve a pass in the name of civility. Limbaugh, as he so often has done, resorted to extreme rhetoric and a big lie in an attempt to undercut or destroy a political adversary. He made a dark week even darker.

You can follow David Corn's posts and media appearances via Twitter and Facebook.

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When It Comes to the Rhetoric of Rage, the Right Has the Edge

David Corn — 2011-01-11T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Democrats, Republicans, Deep Background, Conservatives, Tea Party

It was inevitable. A horrific shooting in Arizona has prompted a vitriolic debate about vitriolic political discourse. Nanoseconds after Jared Lee Loughner attempted to kill Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), murdering six other people and wounding over a dozen, including the congresswoman, commentators on the left accused the right of creating a rage-filled political atmosphere that could lead to violence. Noting that Sarah Palin's political action committee had named Giffords a "target" and literally placed her in cross-hairs, blogger Andrew Sullivan maintained that "her recklessly violent and inflammatory rhetoric has poisoned the discourse and has long run the risk of empowering the deranged." Partisans on the right immediately charged that the left was using this tragedy to force conservatives to shut up. Rush Limbaugh huffed (in paranoid fashion), "Do not kid yourself. What this is all about is shutting down conservative media. That's what this is all about. Shutting down any and all political opposition." Neocon godfather Bill Kristol accused the critics of the right (particularly those assailing Palin) of "McCarthyism," asserting that "the attempt to exploit this tragedy is distasteful."

Over at Mother Jones, several reporters and I spent the 36 hours after the shooting not playing the blame game, but reporting on the massacre, and we obtained an exclusive interview with Bryce Tierney, a longtime close friend of Loughner. Tierney described to us Loughner's years-long grudge against Giffords and his descent into detachment. Over the course of years, the alleged gunman had become obsessed with dreams, believing they were an alternative reality he could inhabit and control. Tierney noted that Loughner hated government, but that he had not, in Tierney's presence, voiced any particular partisan or ideological views. Tierney wasn't sure what had brought Loughner to this point, but he said he believes it was a nihilistic desire for chaos:

"More chaos, maybe," [Tierney] says. "I think the reason he did it was mainly to just promote chaos. He wanted the media to freak out about this whole thing. He wanted exactly what's happening. He wants all of that." Tierney thinks that Loughner's mindset was like the Joker's in the most recent Batman movie: "He f---- things up to f--- s--- up, there's no rhyme or reason, he wants to watch the world burn."

There's certainly a chance that evidence will emerge linking Loughner to extremists of some ideological stripe. But judging from Tierney's description -- and from a conversation I had with another Loughner associate -- I'd say this nightmare was more a matter of pathology than politics. So the Tucson massacre might not lend itself to a left-right debate. That said, the brawl that has ensued has been unavoidable and fascinating. One notable element is the claim repeatedly cited that there's extremism on both sides, as if neither the left nor the right bears any greater culpability.

This is a false equivalence. I'll explain why. But first here's an example of this cheap calculation. On "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Rep. Raul Labrador, a tea party GOPer from Idaho, was asked if the tea party's rhetoric contributed to "the security threats that members of Congress can experience?" He replied,

We have to be careful not to blame one side or the other because both sides are guilty of this. You have extremes on both sides. You have crazy people on both sides. . . . The American people need to understand that during the Bush administration, we had a bunch of people on the left who were using the same kind of vitriol that some people on the right are using now against Obama. So it's, it's not something that either party is guilty by themselves or either party is innocent of. And we have to make sure that we, we take care of it.

As someone who wrote a book that asserted (proved, I like to think) that George W. Bush was a serial liar, I'm quite familiar with the tough language deployed during the Bush years by his critics. Still, the angry rhetoric of the right has gone farther in recent years -- in that it has been adopted and embraced by leaders of the Republican Party. Here are some examples:

- In November 2009, House Republican leaders -- including now-Speaker John Boehner -- hosted and appeared at a Capitol Hill rally, where angry tea partiers were protesting against the health care reform bill. During that demonstration, the crowd, referring to the Democrats, shouted, "Nazis, Nazis." Neither Boehner nor any of the other House GOPers left the stage. They went along with the crowd, and did not denounce this hatred. Can anyone point to a similar event, when top elected Democratic leaders cheerfully appeared before -- and encouraged -- such a hate-driven crowd?

- Palin, as it's been widely noted, has routinely used gun-related rhetoric -- "Don't retreat, RELOAD" -- in speeches and on her Twitter feed. Has John Kerry or Al Gore, failed (sort of) national Democratic candidates, resorted to such violence-tainted language?

- While Sharron Angle was running for the U.S. Senate seat held by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) last year, she raised the prospect of armed insurrection: "If this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying, 'My goodness, what can we do to turn this country around?' " Such talk did not stop the right and the GOP from rushing to help her crusade against Reid. Can you point to a mainstream Democratic Senate candidate who has openly referred to armed violence as an acceptable means to redress policy disputes?

- After Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), a tea party candidate, was elected this past November, he hired a local talk show host named Joyce Kaufman to be his chief of staff. Months earlier, at a Fourth of July event, Kaufman had declared, "If ballots don't work, then bullets will." She went on: "I've never in my life thought that the day would come that I would tell individual citizens that you are responsible for being the militia that the Founding Fathers designed -- they were very specific. You need to be prepared to fight tyranny, whether it comes from outside or it comes from inside." Like Angle, Kaufman was suggesting that citizens might have to take up arms to deal with a government rendering decisions they opposed. After Kaufman drew media attention for this and other incendiary remarks, she resigned as West's chief of staff. But last week, West was still defending his decision to place her on his staff. Has any Democratic member of the House or Senate hired someone who has called for political change via bullets?

There is indeed over-the-top talk on the left. During the Bush years, far-left protesters at anti-war rallies referred to Bush and Dick Cheney as fascists. Conspiracy theorists on the left claimed the Bush-Cheney crew had started the Afghanistan and Iraq wars to enrich their pals in the oil and contracting industries. Some lefties (and righties) accused the president of having staged 9/11 -- or of allowing it to happen -- so he'd have a pretext for war. It was hateful stuff. But this rhetoric tended not to imply violence or insurrection. More to the point, such excessive rhetoric was not adopted and/or accepted by Democratic leaders.

In the past 2½ years, prominent Republicans have stoked the fires of extremism. During the 2008 campaign, Palin accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists." A dozen House Republicans have backed the birthers who claim Obama was not born in the United States. In 2008, Rep. Michele Bachman (R-Minn.), who now leads the tea party caucus in the House, called on the media to investigate "anti-American" House members. She also noted she was "very concerned that [Obama] may have anti-American views." Have Democratic officials called for such witch hunts of political foes? Have they embraced and advanced the nutty talk that can pop up on the far left? By the way, what do you do with anti-American terrorist-pals who have conned their way into the ultimate power?

The Republicans have institutionalized their side's craziness. Rep. Labrador, and others who equate left and right extremism, have it wrong. When it comes to such excess, there's not an even-steven trade-off between the right and the left. At the moment, it doesn't appear that Loughner is a product of either right hate-mongering or left hate-mongering. Still, the debate over who's perverting and undermining our national discourse continues. And the winner of this blame-game is obvious: The right is the better shooter.

You can follow David Corn's postings and media appearances via Twitter.

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