Five reasons GOP government shutdown is suicide

By Frank Moraes 

Whenever I read Ramesh Ponnuru, I wonder why it is the conservative movement can't be more like him. After all, it isn't like he is exactly reasonable. I can't usually read more than two paragraphs without being forced to sit through silly Republican talking points. For example, he never misses an opportunity to slam Obamacare as though he wouldn't be firmly on board with the program if it had been enacted by President McCain.

And last Friday, he argued that one of the reasons the recent Republican efforts (to defund Obamacare via government shutdown) will look bad is because the Republicans don't have an alternative for healthcare reform. This is just silly. As I've argued before, Obamacare was the conservative alternative to health-care reform. When they decided that it was a communist conspiracy, they left themselves with nothing. Ponnuru must know that the there is no alternative to Obamacare and thus his suggestion that the Republicans need to have one is just pure conservative propaganda.

But most of the article -- "Drop the Disastrous Plan to Defund Obamacare" -- is quite good. In it, he provided five reasons why the Republican plan to shut down the government or even default on our debt is a bad idea for the Republicans themselves:

1. Republicans are less popular than the Democrats and thus all else equal will lose partisan finger-pointing contests.
2. The executive has natural advantages over a group of legislators in a crisis atmosphere.
3. People will be naturally inclined to assume that the more anti-government party must be responsible.
4. Some Republicans will say that government shutdowns or defaults are just what the country needs, and those quotes will affect the image of all Republicans.
5. The news media will surely side with the Democrats.

I think this can all be boiled down into what I have come to think of as Biden's Law. You may remember in the vice-presidential debate that Paul Ryan was talking about the almost $600 billion taken out of Medicare. He was arguing that the Republicans were the true defenders of Medicare. Joe Biden didn't even counter the specifics; he just said, "Look, folks, use your common sense. Who do you trust on this?"


And that is why the Republicans will hurt themselves if they shut down the government. People may not be too thrilled with Obamacare, but they don't think it is so bad that the government should be shut down over it. What's more, everyone knows that the Republicans are itching to shut the government down. Only the true believers will applaud this move. In the end, people will use their common sense and decide that this is not about Obamacare at all -- it's just about the fact that the Republicans hate the government.

None of this means that the Republicans won't shut down the government and default on the debt. I think I know why conservatives are so keen on doing this -- or at least threatening to do it. In the conservative world, politics is simple. If only we sent strong willed people to Washington, all problems would be solved. (Interestingly, this is part of the authoritarian mindset.)

But that isn't the way things work when you aren't in control of the White House and Congress. So they try through force of will to get what they want. That's why the House has voted 37 times to repeal Obamacare. I heard one Republican claim that they were going to continue to vote for repeal until it happened -- as though the 37 votes would have any effect on the one vote they would take after they do have control of Washington.

The move to threaten all of government is just the next logical step for the Republicans. And it does have the advantage of being an actual strategy. It isn't just a hope and a prayer -- there is an actual mechanism by which they might win. The problem is that the very small chance they have of winning is not worth all the damage they will do to their party if they lose. As I wrote in "The Next Three Election Cycles," if the Republicans manage to destroy the world economy, they will bring on their reckoning in 2014 rather than 2018.

Ponnuru isn't the only one trying to save the Republican Party from itself. I'm just not sure what he's saying will be enough. The only argument that might stop the most radical elements of the party is to say that Obamacare will be so terrible that the people will demand its repeal once it is in effect.

The problem is that no one ever believed that argument. Republicans are saying we should repeal Obamacare right now because they know that once it is in effect people will like it. Both the extremists and the more practical members of the caucus understand that this is their last chance. The only difference between these two groups is that the practical members don't want to destroy the party for this cause. The extremists don't care; they were sent to Washington to destroy it; if it is a suicide mission, so be it. (Interestingly, destruction is also a part of the authoritarian mindset.)

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

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The truth shall set you free, Edward Snowden. Hopefully.

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Edward Snowden, stuck in Russia, keeps taking his lumps back home -- from media types who think that journalism amounts to nothing more than passing along government propaganda; from defenders of the surveillance state of all types, including the apologists on the left who are shamefully taking a stand against freedom; from Obama supporters who think the president can do no wrong and so must be right about this; from ordinary citizens who have swallowed the government's propaganda without any doubt at all.

And the U.S. -- more specifically, the Obama Administration -- is ratcheting up the pressure. Obama stupidly called him a "hacker" recently, but, then, he has proven himself time and time again to be a proponent of the national security state, a continuation of Bush-Cheney, enabling the authoritarianism that threatens American democracy and principles of liberty enshrined in the Constitution. And Biden personally intervened to try to talk Ecuador out of providing asylum to Snowden.

The latter seems to have worked. Ecuador is now saying it won't provide asylum and that helping him was a "mistake." Oh, really? Just what threats did Biden make? Or, rather, what promises did he offer in exchange for this?

Russia, for its part, continues to protect Snowden, but one wonders for how long, and at what cost. In response to Snowden's request for asylum in Russia, Putin, finding him in a tough spot (what's worse for him: driving a wedge into relations with the U.S. or appearing to bow to U.S. pressure?), said this:

If he wants to go somewhere and they accept him, please, be my guest. If he wants to stay here, there is one condition: He must cease his work aimed at inflicting damage to our American partners, as strange as it may sound from my lips.

I would say that he is doing a great service to the U.S., and it's interesting that Putin, who has been an admirable voice on the Snowden saga, chose those words, implying that Snowden may be "inflicting damage" specifically on the U.S. government ("our American partners") but not on America beyond that, and certainly not in any universal sense.

But will Snowden comply this this? He may be on the run, but he's a whistleblower, a truth-teller, a reporter of what the powers-that-be would rather remain unreported. Would he really just... stop?

Apparently he's made a request for asylum to 15 different countries. According to an official at the Russian Foreign Ministry:

In the document Snowden reiterated once again that he is not a traitor and explained his actions only by a desire to open the world's eyes on the flagrant violations by U.S. special services not only of American citizens but also citizens of European Union including their NATO allies.

I hope he finds a welcoming home. I really do. It would be awful were he to be returned to the U.S. to face nothing like a fair trial and to be held up as a traitor for having the courage to expose the flagrant transgressions of his homeland. That would be unwarranted vindication not just for Obama but for the national security state generally, allowing the American people once more to close their eyes to what is being done in their name.

For his part, Snowden issued a statement yesterday, via Wikileaks. It concludes:

In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised — and it should be.

I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many.

This isn't just about the Obama administration, it's about what it stands for, about what it's doing. It's the national security state that is afraid -- afraid of the people, afraid of genuine democratic rule.

Be informed. Be angry. Demand constitutional government.

A lot of us stand with you, Mr. Snowden. Stay strong.

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The new gun-control movement, post-Newtown

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I wasn't terribly disappointed when the Manchin-Toomey gun bill was defeated in the Senate (even though it got well more than 50 votes, because of a Republican filibuster), because it was a bad bill. But it did include an expanded background checks provision, along with various pro-gun provisions, and so in the end it was probably better than nothing.

And yet in defeat that bill did more for the gun-control movement that it would have done had it ever become law, and in that sense a lot of good may come from what at the time seemed like a serious, embarrassing, and revealing setback.

Actually, though, it started not on April 17, 2013, but on December 14, 2012, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza, armed with a semi-automatic rifle, killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. There had been many other mass shootings previously in America, including recently at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, but Newtown was different. It was a brutal attack on a school, where parents leave their children and expect them to be safe, and the fact that so many children were killed in cold blood was simply too shocking, too powerful, too overwhelming, to ignore. (And there was a cultural/racial element to it as well. This wasn't inner-city Detroit. This was a part of America with which more Americans, including the political and media elites who shape public opinion, could identify. It's easy, sadly so, for many to ignore the plight of a city like Detroit. But if it could happen in Newtown, it could happen anywhere.)

This is not to say that the country was suddenly ready for significant gun control. That will take time. No, if not that, it was at least ready for something meaningful to be done to curb gun violence, to put a stop if at all possible to a mostly unregulated gun market that has resulted in guns, including weapons of mass destruction for which there is no reasonable justification for private ownership, falling into the wrong hands way too many times.

President Obama himself took the lead. In an incredibly moving vigil in Newtown a few days after the shooting, he said:

We can't tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change.

And this: 

Charlotte, Daniel, Olivia, Josephine, Ana, Dylan, Madeline, Catherine, Chase, Jesse, James, Grace, Emilie, Jack, Noah, Caroline, Jessica, Benjamin, Avielle, Allison, God has called them all home. 

For those of us who remain, let us find the strength to carry on and make our country worthy of their memory.

Yes, the country was finally ready, at least for expanded background checks, and perhaps for much more, and they overwhelmingly expressed that in poll after poll. 

And then, when Manchin-Toomey failed, despite a solid majority in the Senate and popular support in the 90s, enough was enough. It wasn't just that Washington was behaving like Washington, Congress behaving like Congress, the dysfunction laughable, the system embarrassing, it was that the country's leading representatives had directly failed the people who put them there.

It has often been that way, but this was too much even for a largely apathetic electorate. Washington, and specifically Republican senators most of whom are deeply in the pockets of the NRA and the rest of the gun lobby, had given the American people the finger.

And the American people pushed back.

As Alec MacGillis writes in a must-read piece at The New Republic: 

In the Senate, the backlash had an effect. Some Republicans who had opposed the bill, such as Johnny Isakson of Georgia and Jeff Flake of Arizona, signaled they might be open to changing their minds. Majority Leader Harry Reid, once a dependable NRA ally, spoke about taking the rare step of bringing the bill back for another vote. Senator Joe Manchin, the bill's Democratic co-sponsor, is still actively courting support from his colleagues. "It's not going away," he told me.

Why did these developments take so many elected officials and pundits by surprise? As New York Times columnist Tom Edsall has pointed out, political science research shows that politicians consistently overestimate the conservatism of their constituents. But in this case, there was something more debilitating at work. The political class often lets old assumptions blind it to shifting realities.And the absolute power of the NRA is one of the oldest and least-tested assumptions in Washington.

And so there's a sort of perfect storm emerging out of the horror of Newtown: A mass shooting took hold of the popular consciousness, building overwhelming support for reform (at least for background checks); leaders like President Obama and Vice President Biden realized that something meaningful had to be done; there has been greater awareness of the plague of gun violence as a result of social media; the mainstream news media are paying attention; and the gun-control movement has finally built up the strength, propelled by Newtown, to push back against the NRA and its influence in Washington, with the realization now that the NRA is an extremist group that opposes even the most reasonable, sensible gun-control efforts and concerns itself mostly with the profits of the gun industry.

As MacGillis writes:

[F]or some time now, the NRA's power has been more a matter of entrenched wisdom than actual fact. Gun ownership is declining -- from half of households in the 1970s to a third today. A slew of senators and governors have won campaigns in red or purple states despite NRA F ratings, including Tim Kaine (Virginia), Kay Hagan (North Carolina), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Claire McCaskill (Missouri), and Bill Nelson (Florida), who has campaigned on gun control but has won majorities even in deeply conservative Panhandle counties. Senator Chris Murphy, a rookie Connecticut Democrat who has taken a lead on the issue since the Newtown massacre, points out that, of the 16 Senate races the NRA participated in last year, 13 of its candidates lost. "The NRA is just all mythology," he says. "The NRA does not win elections anymore."

And so reality is finally taking over from false perception.

And then came Newtown. We are so resigned to seeing mass shootings come and go without any attempt to fix gun laws, but after Adam Lanza killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook, something really did change. At long last and against all expectations, a viable movement for gun regulation is emerging. It is a development that not only bodes ill for the gun lobby and its Republican patrons, but will also complicate matters for elements of the Democratic Party who have been content to accede to the status quo. The narrow defeat of the background-check bill, it turns out, was not the end of hopes for gun reform, but the beginning.

And hopefully the beginning of great success in future, though of course a great deal remains to be done and there can be no rest in the long, hard fight for gun control.

Maybe, just maybe, the era of the NRA is over. And maybe, just maybe, America will have the serious gun laws it so desperately needs.

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