Bam! Bam! Bam!

7 07 2011

Here’s an idea for the Dems:

Shoot a basic video with shots of Grover Norquist and sundry Republican leaders talking about the debt, deficit, unwillingness to consider tax hikes/closing tax loopholes, perhaps superimposed with quotes about how defaulting on the debt wouldn’t be a big deal. Note somewhere in all of this that Republicans have “pledged” fealty to Norquist.

Leave blank spots sprinkled throughout this video, allowing editors to upload shots of the local Republican representative—perhaps the quotes could be superimposed over photos of the local rep.

Find someone from that member’s district who’s willing to go on camera, give her or his name, and talk about how the cuts in spending/govt shutdown/default would devastate them.

Then end the video with a shot of the rep, and the question: So who do you work for, Representative [Republican]?  The Washington insider/lobbyist/whatever term of approbation, or [local constituent]?

This shouldn’t be that hard to do or that expensive to shoot, not if you consider that the bones of the vid need only be shot once and then distributed to the state parties for tailoring. (You could also make variations of this for radio.)

This is a no-brainer. MAKE THEM PAY!


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Shout, shout, let it all out

5 07 2011

So I erased a rant about the debt ceiling and Republicans and unreality and unicorns (don’t ask) and default, because, really, who needs another lecture in the obvious?

Then I was going to rant about the hatred evinced by our latter-day conservative public officials for the public, that their attacks on taxes, on public workers, public works, any notion that we are not merely a collection of taxpayers and consumers but compose a citizenry, is in fact an attack on the very notion of the public, and, by extension, politics itself.

Then then I thought, No, this deserves more than a rant. This hostility to even the possibility of solidarity is too goddamned serious to be spittled away in a curse-inflected screed.

So I’ll hold off, for now, and ruminate on how best to approach this.

And then I’ll bring the hammer down.

*Update* So I was looking through some old posts mining material for a job application when I realized that, duh, I’d already done this, in a variety of ways. So: nevermind.


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Chutzpah!

12 05 2011
From the New York Times Caucus blog:

May 11, 2011, 1:16 pm

Republicans Decry Tactics the Party Used in 2009

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

Yes, it’s true, Republican House freshmen say, our party did help storm town-hall-style meetings to protest changes in the Medicare plan during the debate over the health care overhaul. But they would appreciate it if Democrats did not take that page from their playbook.

On Wednesday, 11 newly elected representatives held a news conference outside the Capitol to promote a letter sent to President Obama and signed by 42 freshmen Republicans asking him “join us to stop the political rhetoric” surrounding their Medicare proposal. In asking the president to work with them to untangle the issues facing massive entitlement programs, the letter further implores Mr. Obama to “condemn the disingenuous attacks and work with this Congress to reform” the programs.

Repeatedly, the members called for a “fact-based conversation” and criticized Democrats for filling town-hall-style meetings with political operatives and citizens who complained – often loudly – about the Republican proposal on Medicare at constituent meetings over the Easter recess. The Republican proposal would convert Medicare into a program that subsidizes future retirees in private insurance plans.

The freshmen conceded that Republicans used similar organized tactics during the health care debate over the summer of 2009, when Tea Party organizers and Republican groups spoke out against the overhaul.

“I’m not going to defend anything in the past,” said Representative Adam Kinzinger, a freshman from Illinois, who led the news conference calling on Democrats to stop their public critique of the plan. “Let’s get past the past.”

Representative Nan Hayworth of New York, a former doctor, said it was time to “have a civilized conversation” and her class was “standing ready to work with the president.”

. . . .

Here’s the letter (via Talking Points Memo).

My favorite bits?

We have all been guilty, at one time or another, of playing politics with key issues facing our country.

As the freshman class, we have the opportunity to wipe the slate clean and fulfill the mandate set by the people to strengthen our country for future generations—not continue the petty politics we have seen in the past, which only creates an environment of stalemate. [. . .]

We ask that you stand above partisanship, condemn the disingenuous attacks and work with this Congress to reform spending on entitlement programs. [. . . ]

As new members of Congress, we are committed to having a fact-based conversation immediately. [. . .]

~~~~~~

Oh, now they want a “fact-based conversation”. . . .


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Wipeout, pt. III

4 11 2010

Do the Republicans care about ideas?

EmilyLHauser agrees that ideas are important but in a cri de coeur argues that Republicans don’t care about ideas, don’t care much about people, period:

If we, the Democrats, were fighting an ideology that was somehow bigger than “defeat the Democrats and support the rich,” I wouldn’t feel so ill. If today’s GOP were offering, you know, ideas, I wouldn’t feel so ill. If we were engaging on the merits of a case, the merits of a piece of legislation, the merits of this appointee or that bit of policy — I wouldn’t feel so ill.

But what the GOP is doing — what it has done since the Newt Gingrich House — is dragging us down to our lowest level of discourse, our basest fears, our most easily pushed buttons. They are playing us, and they are doing it magnificently. And the depth of the hypocrisy, not to mention the utter lack of concern for honest-to-God real human lives that are damaged or destroyed in the process is just mindboggling to me.

It is enough, she notes, to make me hang my head and weep.

I don’t disagree that the Repubs were nasty and mean, that they appealed to the lowest common denominator—even helped to lower that denominator—or that they impeded the progress of even noncontroversial legislation and executive appointments simply because they could, and because they thought it would hurt the President and the Democrats.

But I don’t know if that’s all they were. Yes, the notion bring-down-the-deficit-by-reducing-taxes is unsupported by the evidence and the show-solidarity-with-the-little-guy-by-helping-the-Big-Guy sensibility is incoherent at best, but that these themes are deployed to manipulate doesn’t mean they’re only manipulative.

There are people who honestly believe in supply-side economics, who think wealth actually does trickle down, so why wouldn’t they try to convince voters of the same? Why wouldn’t they try to bollix up any and all legislation or presidential maneuvers which counters their views?

In the past two years the Republicans have treated the entire executive, judicial, and legislative arenas as fields of action for Total War. Gentlemen’s agreements, practical accommodations for the sake of governance, across-the-aisle alliances for shared agendas—gone gone, gone daddy gone. Day-to-day tactics are now driven by partisan strategy and whether it is good or bad (I tend to think the latter), it is now the standard operating procedure.

The Democrats and President Obama (bless their hearts. . .) have been operating as if good-will still mattered, as if individual legislators would cross party lines in the name of a worthy cause, as if party didn’t override everything. And while they’ve been able to accomplish a great deal, much of what they have accomplished they won precisely because they, too, sought to beat back every bit of opposition to their preferences.

The key difference is that the Republicans have evolved to fight in every way, while the Dems have contented themselves to fighting bit-by-bit.

And here is the hard nut of my disagreement with Mizz Emily: The issue isn’t that the Republicans are devoid of ideology, but that they see all that they do in service to that which preserves that ideology. No, they’re not fighting idea-by-idea; they’ve gone global.

And if the Dems are going to advance their causes, they’re going either going to have to pull the GOPers back to the Dems preferred methods (unlikely, not least because it’s not clear that the Dems have a clear and effective notion of their preferred methods) or they’re  going to have to go global, too.

That doesn’t mean they have to deploy the same hatefulness as did some of the GOP campaigns, but it does mean that they will have to bring it to every.single.thing. they do. It may be ugly and awful, but it’s also necessary.

Ideas matter, but so does the strategy used to bring those ideas forth. Let’s hope the Dems figure that out before 2012.

 


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Sic ’em. Wait! No biting!

26 01 2010

Shocked—shocked!—that an group which prides itself on its unruliness is. . . unruly.

Tea Party Disputes Take Toll on Convention

From a report by Kate Zernike  in today’s NY Times:

A Tea Party convention billed as the coming together of the grass-roots groups that began sprouting up around the country a year ago is unraveling as sponsors and participants pull out to protest its expense and express concerns about “profiteering.”

The convention’s difficulties highlight the fractiousness of the Tea Party groups, and the considerable suspicions among their members of anything that suggests the establishment.

. . .

Philip Glass, the national director of the National Precinct Alliance, announced late Sunday that “amid growing controversy” around the convention, his organization would no longer participate. His group seeks to take over the Republican Party from the bottom by filling the ranks of local and state parties with grass-roots conservatives, and Mr. Glass had been scheduled to lead workshops on its strategy.

“We are very concerned about the appearance of T.P.N. [Tea Party Nation] profiteering and exploitation of the grass-roots movement,” he said in a statement. “We were under the impression that T.P.N. was a nonprofit organization like N.P.A., interested only in uniting and educating Tea Party activists on how to make a real difference in the political arena.”

Mr. Glass said he was also concerned about the role in the convention of groups like Tea Party Express, which has held rallies across the country through two bus tours, and FreedomWorks, a Tea Party umbrella. He called them  “Republican National Committee-related groups,” and added, “At best, it creates the appearance of an R.N.C. hijacking; at worst, it is one.”

Ha. Emphasis added.


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This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco

22 11 2009

I am not a Republican.

But, god help me, I agree with Republican Senator Lindsay Graham on at least one issue. In response to a question recently about Glenn Beck, he responded “Here’s what I worry about. How many people in my business are going to be controlled by what’s said on the radio or in a TV commercial?”

His business, of course, is the business of politics—or, more to the point, the business of governance.

It’s a key distinction, that between politics and governance, once which those who lack the responsibility for so governing find it convenient to overlook.

The NY Times notes that M. Beck, along with Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Mike Huckabee are all rallying the troops to do. . . something they want. It’s the usual boilerplate of a deracinated American conservative movement: low/flat/no taxes; low/flat/cut spending; stop illegal immigration/drug smuggling; energy independence—more drilling/mining/nuke-power production; responsible environmental stewardship; small government; victory in Iraq; keep Guantanamo open. . . are you noticing any problems here?

As in, complete incoherence? Close the borders but do so with less spending; win in Iraq and lower taxes; shrink the size of government and give it the power to torture and detain people indefinitely; no redistribution and give parents vouchers for education; tap your head and rub your tummy at the same time. . . oh, wait. . . .

There’s more, of course, and I could provide the links to their sites, but why give them the page views?

More to the point, why send you off to emptiness? There’s nothing at the Beck, Hannity, and Ingraham sites beyond a list of conflicting demands. At least Huckabee’s plans are tethered to reality, such as it is: he seeks to raise money for Republican candidates.

Then again, Huckabee is the only one of the Fab Four who has actually served in government, that is, who has actually had to take responsibility for his words and deeds.

This is what underlies Senator Graham’s lament: Beck can cry and Ingraham sneer and Hannity harrumpf and at the end of the day they leave the studio and let others clean up their kleenex and spittle. And if shit goes bad, well, it’s just fodder for tomorrow’s broadcast cannon.

I’m a big fan of the First Amendment, just as I’m a big fan of democracy, and I tend to think the fewer rules attached to either speech or participation, the better. And that goes for these bloviators and their followers, as well.

But I’m also a civic republican (note the ‘little r’), and think that politics works best as requires something more than tears and outrage from its participants; democratic politics in particular requires an engagement which goes beyond oneself.

A concept of citizenship, as it were.

This is an odd argument for someone as decidedly not-patriotic and anti-nationalist as I am, but I do recognize obligations to the those with whom I share a political space, i.e., my fellow citizens.

These obligations are basic, and don’t require much agreement with those fellows, and hardly demand one bow to to the government.

But it does require at the very least a recognition that one does share a political space, a space beyond one’s living room or therapist’s office or tavern booth, in which one might just have to set aside one’s personal concerns for a consideration of public matters.

I think most people in office get it, even the people who I’d rather not hold any office beyond that of dogcatcher (and some not even that—I’m lookin’ at you, Michelle Bachmann). They go through the hassles of campaigning because they actually want to accomplish something. Sure, they want to inflate their successes and evade their failures, but at least they put themselves through the process whereby they might in some way be held accountable for both.

But The Media Personality™? No, he or she mashes up resentment and principle and incoherence and general sky-pie-edness and then dances on by the difficulties of actual decision-making, policy-formation, and, oh, yes, governance.

This all-partying/no-hangover mentality is not, alas, confined to the right. But right now they’re the ones smashing open the kegs and spiking the kool-aid and inviting the  palin-drones and tea-baggers to Drink! Drink! Drink!

Designated drivers need not apply.


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