Inspire Political Discourse

The Partisan Credo of the GOP, and What Obama Should Do About it

As American citizens, most of us realize that once a thing gets to Washington, it is always politicized. For bad or worse, this is acceptable in American politics, but only to a degree. There is a fine line which you cross at your peril, and this week, in their egregious politicization of the stimulus plan, the G.O.P. crossed it, and then crossed it again, and again, and, well, they aren't done yet.

PARTISANSHIP IS IN THE G.O.P. CREDO, FOR THE LOVE OF PURE RANCOR - PRESIDENT OBAMA MUST LIVE IN THE MIDDLE GROUND.

“We are trying to change the tones in the state capitals -- and turn them toward bitter nastiness and partisanship. Bipartisanship is another name for date rape.”

Prominent Republican, Grover Norquist¹, expressed his feelings about partisanship in an interview with the Denver Post in 2003. In his comparison of bipartisanship to date rape, he succinctly laid out the GOP take on bipartisanship. Yes, seriously, date rape. When the interview was published, the conservative tome, The Nation, publicly squealed in delight.
From Cliff Schecter, on finding the middle ground, as the Republicans hug partisanship close:

there is a middle ground between George Bush-style, temper-tantrum-laden Deciderism and reaching out to every atavistic crank and rightwing extremist with a colourful flag lapel pin and contempt for all objective discovery post-Copernicus. It is in this middle ground where the Obama administration must live.

In other words, there is no problem sitting down with the likes of George Will and John Boehner to try and charm the opposition - although I might recommend a full-body condom and inoculations just for safety's sake. But publicly expressing your wish for 80 votes in the Senate in favour of your economic stimulus bill (which means getting the votes of slightly more than half the Republican caucus) and agreeing to more and more tax cuts that only serve as a stimulus for those who have forgotten to take their erectile dysfunction pills in corporate boardrooms and conservative conference halls is too large a price to pay with an economy on the precipice.

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FOOTNOTES: 

¹Grover Norquist - Norquist, along with Bill Kristol, Ralph E. Reed, Jr., Clint Bolick, and David McIntosh, is one of the so-called "Gang of Five" identified in Nina Easton's 2000 book by that name, which gives a history of leaders of the modern (post-Goldwater) conservative movement.Norquist was one of the co-authors of the 1994 Contract with America.
Norquist is also a close friend of Karl Rove, and of Jack Abramoff. Indeed, Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, sold their clout to Abramoff, and were tied to the Abramoff scandal. Jack Abramoff is currently incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Cumberland, Maryland.

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Political News Summary: Friday, January 30, 2009

Please Scroll Down for Today's Political News Stories

if you're currently on the IPD home page, or click on the links in this post. I've gone to publishing each story individually for SEO purposes on a trial basis. Let me know what you think by leaving a comment, please!

• Update on RNC Chair Race
• Oh oh...Samantha Power Takes on Job at the National Security Council
• John Yoo Blasts Obama for Banning Torture
• The Economy is the Proverbial Train Wreck, Reflected in the Figures Released Today by the Commerce Department
• Matt Yglesias and Rachel Maddow on Conservative Obstructionism to the Economic Recovery
• Obama's First Call for Support to Subscribers on His Email List
• Obama Says Yes to Labor and the Middle Class
• January 30, 2009 on Media Matters

Update on RNC Chair Race

:: UPDATE - 4:04PM:  Michael Steele will be the next RNC chairman, and the RNC's first African-American chairman.

:: The RNC is today electing a new chairman, with the battle seemingly between social and fiscal conservatives. Sprinkle on some issues involving race, it becomes more complicated.

Yesterday, Chip Saltzman withdrew from the race for the chairmanship of the RNC after another of his favorite little tunes was exposed, from the same cd that Saltzman distributed previously, which contained the racist song, "Barack, the Magic Negro".  This song, "The Star Spanglish Banner", is now under fire from enraged immigration groups. By the way, both songs were written by the same author, Paul Shankin.

Today, Mike Duncan, the current chairman of the RNC, appointed by Bush in 2007, has withdrawn from the race, after the third ballot,

In the lead currently is Katon Dawson, a social conservative, but MIchael Steele, the former lt. governor of Maryland, a fiscal conservative, and an African-American, is close behind him.

From HuffPost- bolding is mine:

This is shaping up to be a new direction v. social conservative showdown, one with racial components as well: Steele is African-American while Dawson once belonged to a white's only country club. The deciding factor, it seems, will be whom Anuzis and Blackwell instruct their backers to support.

UPDATE - 4:00PM: Steele is now ahead by a margin of 10 votes in the 5th ballot, and is now 6 votes away from the 85 needed for victory.

UPDATE - 4:00PM: Michael Steele is the next RNC chairman; he won the final ballot by 91-77. The RNC's first African-American chairman.

Oh oh...Samantha Power Takes on Job at the National Security Council

:: Samantha Power takes position as a senior foreign policy analyst for the National Security Council. Shades of "monsters", watch out for flying shoes.
You may recall Power from when she worked for the Obama campaign, and she called Hillary Clinton a "monster". The State Dept. may become very lively with this appointment.  From Newsday.com:

Samantha Power, who earned notoriety for calling Hillary Rodham Clinton a "monster" while working to elect Barack Obama president, will take a senior foreign policy job at the White House, The Associated Press has learned. Officials say Obama has tapped Power to be senior director for multilateral affairs at the National Security Council, a job that will require close contact and potential travel with Clinton, who is now secretary of state. White House officials wouldn't provide details of Power's new role. Power, a Harvard University professor and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who has specialized in global humanitarian issues, made headlines last March when she told a Scottish newspaper that Clinton would stop at nothing to defeat Obama in the presidential primaries. "She is a monster, too," Power said. "She is stooping to anything."

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John Yoo Blasts Obama for Banning Torture

:: The author of the Bush administration legal memos on torture, Yoo predicted dire consequences in an opinion piece on The Wall Street Journal online.

Eliminating the Bush system will mean that we will get no more information from captured al Qaeda terrorists. Every prisoner will have the right to a lawyer (which they will surely demand), the right to remain silent, and the right to a speedy trial.
Relying on the civilian justice system not only robs us of the most effective intelligence tool to avert future attacks, it provides an opportunity for our enemies to obtain intelligence on us.

In fact, the Army Field Manual explicitly permits good cop-bad cop interrogations under the name of “Mutt and Jeff” interrogations, which involve two interrogators “display[ing] opposing personalities and attitudes toward the source.” The Field Manual says the “goal of this technique is to make the source identify with one of the interrogators and thereby establish[ing] rapport and cooperation.”

Response to Yoo, from Think Progress:

Yoo has no idea what he’s talking about. Nothing requires anyone to “be polite” — although the rapport building method has often proved to be interrogators’ most effective technique. And the notion that good-cop/bad-cop would be banned is simply false, Media Matters pointed out earlier this week:

It’s no secret that Yoo is an ardent torture enthusiast: He famously said that only those techniques that inflict pain equivalent to “death, organ failure or permanent damage resulting in a loss of significant body functions” constitute torture, and last year refused to agree that the president could not order a detainee buried alive. With Obama signaling a clean break from the Bush administration’s terrorism policies, it’s no wonder Yoo is desperate to restore his crumbling torture regime.

AP photo.
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The Economy is the Proverbial Train Wreck, Reflected in the Figures Released Today by the Commerce Department

 
:: The Dept. of Commerce issued the GDP figures from the 4th quarter of 2008; the drop was 3.8%, the economy shrinking at it's fastest rate in 25 years, and signaling more contraction to come. From NYT:

In the broadest official accounting of the toll of the credit crisis, the government reported that gross domestic product shrank at an annual rate of 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008. While that was less than economists’ expectations of a 5.5 percent drop, the decline would have been much steeper — more than 5 percent — if shipments of goods had fallen as sharply as orders.

Image source Wikimedia Commons. 

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Matt Yglesias and Rachel Maddow on Conservative Obstructionism to the Economic Recovery

They are both right on target. An excellent interview, well worth watching.

Hat Tip: Think Progress
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Obama's First Call for Support to Subscribers on His Email List

:: Organizing for America, the remnants of Obama's campaign apparatus, sent out an email to subscribers who had previously hosted a house party for Obama, asking them to do it again, this time in support of his economic recovery plan. Good move, Mr. Prez. In the email to supporters (full text of email after the jump):

Last year, America lost 2.6 million jobs. This week, some of our biggest companies announced plans to cut tens of thousands more.

Obama Says "Yes" to Labor and the Middle Class

:: The Prez signs executive orders which reverse anti-labor orders enacted by Bush H.W. and Bush 43. He is also re-introducing Biden's task force which focuses on the middle class, and Joe will be in charge. GO, OBAMA! :)
From HUFFPOST:

Among the George W. Bush-era executive orders that Obama was to reverse was one that allowed unionized companies to post signs informing workers that they are allowed to decertify their union. Critics claimed it was unfair because nonunion businesses are not required to post signs letting workers know they are legally allowed to vote for a union.
Two Democratic sources also said Obama would prevent federal contractors from being reimbursed for expenses that were intended to influence workers' decisions to form unions or engage in collective bargaining. A third Obama order would require federal vendors with more than $100,000 in contracts to post workers' rights under the National Labor Relations Act.
The final order would require service contractors at federal buildings to offer jobs to qualified current employees when contracts changed. For instance, rank-and-file workers could continue working on the same federal project even if the administrative contract expired.

AP photo/Ron Edmunds 
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January 30, 2009 on Media Matters

 

• Media Matters: Fetishizing off-center centrism

• Brzezinski suggests "welfare" provisions in stimulus bill don't stimulate the economy -- economists disagree
• "Political Grapevine" goes sour: Fox's Baier understated Obey's response to alleged conflict of interest
• Will Dobbs retract his stimulus bill falsehood?
• Fox Business Network joins with GOP senators to further spread false ACORN attack
• AP's retracted stimulus bill falsehood finds a new home at Fox
• AP cited only single anonymous Republican official in support of stimulus falsehood

Watch for updates throughout the day.

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President Obama Signs the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act - Full Text and Video

AP report:

The bill is a response to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that said a person must file a claim of discrimination within 180 days of a company's initial decision to pay a worker less than it pays another worker doing the same job. Under the bill, every new discriminatory paycheck would extend the statute of limitations for another 180 days.

The plaintiff in the case, Lilly Ledbetter, argued that she did not become aware of the pay discrepancy until near the end of her 19-year career at a Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. plant in Gadsden, Ala.

The Bush White House and Senate Republicans blocked the legislation in the last session of Congress, but Obama strongly supports it and the Democratic-controlled Congress moved it to the top of the agenda for the new session that opened this month.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

TRANSCRIPT OF PRESIDENT OBAMA'S SPEECH:

PRES. OBAMA:
All right. Everybody please have a seat. Well, this is a wonderful day. (Applause.) First of all, it is fitting that the very first bill that I sign -- the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act -- (applause) -- that it is upholding one of this nation's founding principles: that we are all created equal, and each deserve a chance to pursue our own version of happiness.

Political News Summary: Thursday, January 29, 2009

:: The liberal groups who fought against Bush 43's most egregious acts, now supporting President Obama. The ad shown in the video below was produced and will be aired at the expense of some of these groups, and targets certain vulnerable GOP senators on the stimulus issue. From NYT:

And, in a first test of where they will fit in the new national dialogue, several of the groups that regularly battled the Bush White House are trying to sell President Obama’s economic stimulus package with a new advertising campaign designed to pressure several Republican senators to support it (unlike their House colleagues).
Sponsored by MoveOn, Americans United for Change and two labor groups – the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees – the ads will begin running this week in Iowa, Maine, New Hampshire, Alaska and Washington D.C.
The spots show a shuttered factory springing back to life as oratory from Mr. Obama plays in the background (“The first job of my administration is to put people back to work,” he says.) The spots call upon different senators in each state — Susan M. Collins and Olympia J. Snowe in Maine; Judd Gregg in New Hampshire; Chuck Grassley in Iowa and Lisa Murkowski in Alaska – to “support the Obama plan for jobs, not the failed policies of the past.”

TAGS: GOP/Republicans, President Obama, JOBS, LABOR, Economy, Stimulus,
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:: For the love of cats, the Republicans need to be made to understand that they LOST. That they are currently IRRELEVANT. An incomplete recitation of their activities today:

Political News Summary: Wednesday, January 28, 2009

:: More on HuffPost re Republican behavior (besides, I had to share this great graphic from HP). The headline over the elephant pic reads "Toeing the Party Line". Gotta admit, we Dems have a much keener sense of humor than the Repubs. Oh, and by the time you click on this link, the headline and the image may be different because it's on the HuffPost home page. From HUFFPOST:

:: On Republican behavior. From Bob Cesca (I love this guy):

Political News Summary: Tuesday, January 27, 2009

:: Rush Limbaugh copies GOP liars, makes false claim that ACORN is mentioned in the stimulus and will receive $4.19 billion. What a sad loser cherub-cheeked Rushie is...... From Media Matters:

Summary: Parroting GOP talking points, Rush Limbaugh falsely claimed $4.19 billion of President Barack Obama's economic recovery package "is going to ACORN." In fact, the bill does not mention ACORN or otherwise single it out for funding.

TAGS: Rush Limbaugh, Conservative Pundits, GOP/Republicans, President Obama, LIES,
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Political News Summary: Monday, January 26, 2009

:: Geithner confirmed as Treasury Secretary. From HUFFPOST:

WASHINGTON — The Senate has confirmed New York Fed chief Timothy Geithner to be President Barack Obama's secretary of the treasury.
The 60-34 vote puts Geithner at the helm of Obama's plan to rescue the economy from the worst financial crisis in three generations.
Obama and others supporting Geithner's nomination said the nation couldn't afford to wait for Obama to search for another nominee to run the Treasury Department.

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:: The US to engage in diplomacy with Iran. From HUFFPOST:

United Nations — President Barack Obama's administration will engage in "direct diplomacy" with Iran, the newly installed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said Monday.

Not since before the 1979 Iranian revolution are U.S. officials believed to have conducted wide-ranging direct diplomacy with Iranian officials. But U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice warned that Iran must meet U.N. Security Council demands to suspend uranium enrichment before any talks on its nuclear program.

AP photo.
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Take it to the People

Never mind the damn Republican obstructers, and the Blue Dog Democrats. Screw 'em. They wish to play politics when this country is in deeply serious trouble, tell 'em to take their balls and go home, because they aren't working for the people who not only voted them in to office, but pay their freaking salaries!.Take it to the people, Obama!

That really is all you need to do.

UPDATE - Jan. 26 - One of the "eggers-on" of the obstructionists, Bill Kristol, seemingly lost his position as a columnist at the NYT. For further info, read Jason Linkins on the HuffPost, and to view Kristol's last, pathetic lying column, click here. So long, Billy, we will not miss ya. In my collage below, Kristol is Old Neocon No.3.

UPDATE - Jan. 26 - Nobel prize winning economist, Paul Krugman weighs in. Bolding is mine. From the Int. Herald Tribune (NYT global):

As the debate over President Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan gets under way, one thing is certain: Many of the plan's opponents aren't arguing in good faith. Conservatives really, really don't want to see a second New Deal, and they certainly don't want to see government activism vindicated. So they are reaching for any stick they can find with which to beat proposals for increased government spending.

 

Joe Scarborough on the Inauguration of Barack Obama

I was very surprised to read this post by Scarborough on the Huffington Post today. It was surprisingly touching. In his final statement, Scarborough says “But speaking as an American, all I can say is that I'm damn proud to be a part of this great republic.”

What can a good Republican say about the week that has unfolded?
I'm not sure.
Barack Obama has captured the imagination not only of Washington and America, but also of the world.
He has delivered the most compelling inaugural speech in 48 years.
He has brought an era of good feelings to Washington that Pat Buchanan says he has never seen in his seven decades in Washington.

Obama and the Neocons Who Dined

Obama's neocon dinner companions turn out to be the proverbial snakes in the grass.
Some of the neocons (except perhaps McCain, was actually honored at a dinner by Obama) that Obama had dinner with last week. They went on to brag about it afterwards, and then apparently, due to shaky self-esteem issues perhaps, proceeded to lambaste Obama's stimulus plan. FYI, neocon snakes, you were wrong on nearly everything throughout the past eight years. Certainly, no one is really going to listen to you now, and dialogue with you is impossible because you refuse to desist from the partisan crap. From Think Progress:

Just one week later, Obama’s right-wing acquaintances have already shown the futility of engaging in a good-faith dialogue with them. While Obama pushes his vision for the economic recovery package — his first real battle against the conservative establishment — the dinner’s attendees are on a no-holds-barred offensive against it:

VIDEO: Petition Attorney General-designate Eric Holder to Appoint a Special Prosecutor

Former Bush Speechwriter, David Frum, Slams Republican Leadership

Bush speechwriter, David Frum: GOP "leaders cocoon themselves, refuse to hear unwelcome news, and reward yesmanship." Amen.
This is more than obvious to those of us on the left, Mr. Frum. The problem is not just with your leaders however, your far right-wing/evangelical followers suffer from the same lack of ability to self-examine, and their ability to see and tell the truth appears to be at an all-time low. And, that is putting it in very polite terms. From NewMajority:

Our party has been crippled by an all-pervading assumption at the center that if you just don’t talk about bad news, it will go away: whether it’s an extravagant wardrobe decision - or a bad job creation record. Our leaders cocoon themselves, refuse to hear unwelcome news, and reward yesmanship.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons