Tag: GOP Congress

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

The Age of Magical Thinking

“Magical thinking” happens when people believe that their thoughts, by themselves, can bring about change in the real world. Psychologists tell us that magical thinking is most prevalent in children between the ages of 2 and 7. An example would be, say, when a child is sad and it begins to rain, and the child attempts to make it go away by singing a happy song.

We are now living in the golden age of magical thinking, a time in which many Americans well past the age of 7 seem to think that if they believe something strongly enough, they can make it true.

For example, two Tennessee lawmakers, state Senator Mae Beavers (who else?) and state Representative Mark Pody are introducing a bill that says … well, let me just put it here, verbatim: “Natural marriage between one (1) man and one (1) woman as recognized by the people of Tennessee remains the law in Tennessee, regardless of any court decision to the contrary. Any court decision purporting to strike down natural marriage, including (a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision), is unauthoritative, void, and of no effect.”

Beavers and Pody apparently believe (1) that the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage was just a suggestion, and (2) that if they just legislate hard enough they can come up with a state bill that magically trumps the law of the land. Of course, given the proclivities of our hillbilly heroes in Nashville, this bit of foolishness will probably pass, leading to expensive legal fees for the state and much derision from the rest of the country. For Jesus, of course.

Other examples? How about Kim Davis, magically thinking that she can wish away that same Supreme Court ruling, and Mike Huckabee magically casting Davis as a persecuted Christian martyr? Or Carly Fiorina, imagining a scene that never happened from a video attacking Planned Parenthood, and using it as a cudgel in the last GOP debate? Even when confronted with the evidence of her mistake on Fox News, of all places, Fiorina determinedly held her ground. “Who you gonna believe?” she seemed to be saying. “Me or your pesky facts?”

Or the Republicans in Congress voting over and over and over again to repeal Obamacare, when they know the votes aren’t there. Math, schmath! Let’s click our heels and vote again! Real hard, this time.

The sad thing is, it doesn’t seem to matter. Much of the public seems to have confused “reality” with reality television. All Donald Trump has to do is keep wearing his “Make America Great Again!” hat, and that’s all the evidence these folks need. It’s right there in front of their eyes. So it must be true.

In the last GOP debate, Rand Paul attempted rational discourse, saying that Trump’s making fun of people’s appearance was “sophomoric.” Trump’s response? “I haven’t made fun of your appearance. And there’s a lot to work with there.” Big laughs.

Politics has been reduced to entertainment — The Bachelor, with one-liners and homelier people. Resistance appears futile. I guess we just have to let the magic happen.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Killing the ACA?

For Republicans, it sure was fun while their hopes lasted, but many have concluded the Supreme Court might not be able to kill off the Affordable Care Act (ACA) after all.

When the high court rules this spring in King v. Burwell, even a decision that would invalidate subsidies to cover health insurance in 37 states where the federal government operates exchanges may not necessarily spell doom for those subsidies or the system at all. 

Republicans are already anticipating President Obama’s response would be an executive order directing federal marketplaces to immediately belong to those states or a bill asking Congress to do the same, or at least to extend the subsidies in some form. 

Somewhere between 5 million and 7 million people, many from Republican states that refused to start exchanges, will be at risk of price hikes that could eventually torpedo the entire law. The GOP is scrambling for an appropriate response as a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll shows, in the case of a ruling against the law, that 64 percent of Americans want Congress to extend subsidies in affected states — including 40 percent of Republican respondents.

Over time, ObamaCare has morphed into a zombie Republicans cannot extinguish. 

First, there were the angry town halls in August of 2009, but then the bill passed in March of 2010. 

There was a historic, nationwide victory for Republicans in the midterm elections of 2010, resulting largely from antipathy toward ObamaCare. 

Then, to conservatives’ horror, in June 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that the taxes in the ACA were constitutional, with the deciding vote of Chief Justice John Roberts. 

Then, when there was hope of electing a GOP president to repeal the law, the party nominated someone who had created the very model for the law in Massachusetts and wouldn’t denounce it, and Obama was reelected in 2012. 

Now, Republicans have expanded their majority in the House, taken control of the Senate for the first time in eight years, and the law faces a high court review that could obliterate its very structure. The Affordable Care Act’s approval, at 40-46 positive/negative, stinks. Yet the law, no matter the ruling in June, not only could survive, but it could subsequently be improved.

Conservatives on the far right, not surprisingly, are hoping for the insurance price death spiral should the court declare subsidies in federal exchanges illegal. Other Republicans say it would not be the responsibility of the Congress to provide any response, while still others say that preparing a thoughtful response that prevents chaos could actually smooth the way for a majority of the nine justices to rule against the subsidies.

Some Republicans describe it as the last chance for the undoing of the ACA. In order to force it into the 2016 presidential debate, one option would be the extension of subsidies that would sunset in late 2017, in order for a new president and a new Congress to fix it again or repeal it. For an extension, Republicans would want concessions like reinstating the 40-hour work week and eliminating both the employer and individual mandates.

But cajoling 13 Democrats in the Senate to override a veto seems far from likely. So does refusing to extend subsidies, because millions of those possibly affected are from red states Republicans represent or blue ones they want to keep or win. The 56th vote in the House to repeal the ACA saw three new GOP defections, from Republicans in swing districts. States potentially affected by the King v. Burwell decision include 2016 battlegrounds like Florida, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. There are Republican senators running for reelection two years from now in all five.

Five years after passage, ObamaCare is a paradox. It’s deeply unpopular — but just not enough to destroy it.

(Bryce Ashby is a Memphis-based attorney and board chair at Latino Memphis, Inc.; Michael J. LaRosa is an associate professor of history at Rhodes College.)

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Opinion Viewpoint

Republicans at the Crossroads

When it comes to the Republican Party’s immigration divide, the more things stay the same, the more they stay the same. 

The 2016 campaign has begun, and Jeb Bush, a pro-immigration-reform candidate, is believed to have raised the most money. Yet Republicans in Congress are under pressure to roll back the president’s executive action that conservatives consider amnesty. Republicans don’t have the votes to do it. The issue promises to dog the GOP from now at least until Election Day.

A few weeks back, House Republicans passed a bill that would defund parts of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in order to block President Obama’s executive order shielding up to 5 million people from deportation. The bill would restore funds that expire in February to the rest of the department. Though the bill can’t pass the Senate, with all Senate Democrats united against it, GOP leaders there promise to bring it up anyway. 

And “Plan B,” they say, doesn’t yet exist. Failure to pass a bill before February 27th will allow Democrats and the president to claim Republicans risked funding vital national security functions in a time of rising terror threats, concerns that register high in polls of voter priorities. 

Some Republicans argue a lapse in DHS funding would make little difference, because most of the department’s employees are considered essential and would remain on the job with their pay delayed. But creating an avoidable cliff, especially for GOP leaders who have promised an end to them, is foolish in light of the unavoidable cliffs that are up next on the calendar.

Conservatives are likely to fight their leaders and push for more confrontation over the debt ceiling in March, the Medicare “doc fix” in April, and the Highway Trust Fund in May — all must-pass bills that conservatives will view as opportunities to gain leverage over Obama.

Meanwhile, to soothe conservatives, the House prepped a border security bill that would effectively eliminate hope for comprehensive reform, requiring the DHS to secure the border completely — blocking 100 percent of entries — in five years. But conservatives dismissed it for failing to include interior enforcement measures for immigrants already here illegally. The bill was pulled.

The latest concession was Speaker John Boehner’s recent announcement that the House would sue the president over his executive action. It’s hard to see that token move assuaging angry conservatives.

Some momentary reflection and reconsideration of immigration followed GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s defeat in 2012 — a devastating 71 percent to 21 percent wipeout among Latino voters — but faded rapidly, and two years later, the party is more divided than it was then. The “autopsy” by the Republican National Committee suggested passing reform and stated, “It doesn’t matter what we say about education, jobs, or the economy; if Hispanics think that we do not want them here, they will close their ears to our policies.” The warning went nowhere.

But immigration reform remains a goal for those who influence and fund presidential campaigns. The New York Times reported Wednesday that Rupert Murdoch, owner of The Wall Street Journal and Fox News Channel, recently gushed at remarks by Bush on the benefits of immigration reform. Murdoch, and influential casino magnate and GOP funder Sheldon Adelson, both took the remarkable step of urging the party to pass reform in high-profile op-eds published within one day of each other, after freshman Rep. Dave Brat (R-Virginia) used the immigration issue to topple former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a June primary election.

Republicans won’t be passing any immigration reform, but it will remain the subject of contentious debate for the next two years, from the halls of Congress to the campaign trail — much to the delight of Democrats.

A.B. Stoddard writes for The Hill, where a version of this column first appeared.

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Opinion The Last Word

The Rant (October 1, 2014)

CREDIT: Mark Nassal | Dreamstime.com

Mark Nassal | Dreamstime.com

John Boehner

So now they expect you to reward them. The most unproductive, polarized, ineffective, and despised Congress in American history has abandoned the nation’s business in order to focus on convincing you that they are worthy of your support for reelection. After a five-week summer recess and a grueling eight days back in session, the congressional Republicans just said, “Fuck it,” and lit out for the territories, leaving trivial matters such as war and peace to wait until after the mid-term elections.

Indulge me in a hypothesis: Let’s say that you are the personnel manager of a large hospital, and right in the middle of a measles outbreak, all your employees decided to return home to prepare for their performance reviews. When they came back after the epidemic had worsened, would you rehire them?

And yet, the noise on the right has grown so deafening, they think they’re winning. Republicans are as confident as Mitt Romney on election night. The hammer-locked Congress, led by the fearsome tag-team of “Blubbering John” Boehner and Mitch “The Obamacare Assassin” McConnell, don’t even realize that their strategy of destroying the president at the expense of the country hasn’t worked. Even after Obama’s reelection and Eric Cantor’s loss, they still didn’t get the message and continued with their destructive agenda.

The goose-stepping Congressional Republicans have obstructed, delayed, blocked, and filibustered every single initiative offered by the president, costing countless numbers of desperately needed jobs, and now they want your vote. Republicans have loudly criticized the president for taking executive actions and then they leave town during an international crisis, abdicating their Constitutional responsibilities.

The British Parliament’s debate was fascinating, but Congressman Bubba from Birmingham can’t be called away from his fish fry. There are donors’ hands to shake. Can you imagine if John McCain and Sarah Palin were elected in 2012? We’d be dropping nukes on the Kremlin screaming, “We’re all Ukrainians now,” although recent events have shown we may have used the Palin family fistfight diplomacy first.

While Obama was securing a unanimous vote by the UN Security Council to crack down on foreign fighters joining ISIS, only the second U.S. president in history to chair such a committee, right-wing media exploded in outrage over his salute to a marine while holding a coffee cup. Fox News went wild with indignation, even though this militaristic gesture of saluting while exiting a helicopter was initiated only 30 years ago by the Hollywood warrior, Ronald Reagan.

Then, the usual Fox suspects exulted at the resignation of Eric Holder, like the 7th Cavalry claiming a scalp, while vilifying the attorney general for his presumed “racial favoritism.” Holder once said that when it comes to discussing matters of race, we are “a nation of cowards.” His choice of words may have been combative, but he was right. Or, maybe half-right. We don’t discuss race across color lines, but that never stopped the Caucasian Party from discussing it among themselves.

To believe the GOP, you’d think that roving gangs of displaced Acorn volunteers and welfare cheats were conspiring to vote under false names to steal the next election. Just listen to their rhetoric: A Fox News host said that Holder was, “one of the most dangerous … men in America,” who, “ran the Department of Justice much like the Black Panthers would.” The morally bankrupt Dick Cheney claimed Obama “would much rather spend money on food stamps … than defending our troops.” And Old Faithful, Palin, telling a recent audience how to combat liberals who “scream racism just to end debate,” uttered this gem: “Well, don’t retreat. You reload with truth, which I know is an endangered species at 1400 Pennsylvania Avenue.” Her verbal bomb fell about two blocks short of its target. For the sake of sane government, these right-wing obstructionists are richly deserving of being swept from office. If they can’t win fairly, they cheat. They demand new documentation as a condition for voting, they restrict days and hours to make it difficult for the poor to vote, they gerrymander districts to ensure a Republican majority, and they lie. All the time.

In these dark days, what we are witnessing is the last gasp of white supremacy in this nation. That’s what all this “we want our country back” stuff is about. But the GOP is willing to burn down the country club before they’ll admit any of these mixed-race aliens into their midst. Largely based in the South, the Republican Party is now the last bastion of the old Confederate mentality. Regardless of who controls the Congress in 2014 or even wins the presidency in 2016, this is the last spasm of the philosophy of white entitlement. 

Ultimately, leaders will come along who see the value of diversity and replace the agenda-driven, politicized, corporate-owned justices on the Supreme Court and restore honor to the term “public servant.” No time soon, however. The Fox News demographic may be aging, but not fast enough. Die-hard viewers of the corporate propaganda outlet still think Obama is the anti-Christ.