Culture War Over, Republicans Defeated

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The Culture War is over. The Republicans lost. Hey, don't take my word for it. I found out when I read about an interview given last week by one Dave Kochel, a former adviser to the campaign of a guy named Mitt Romney. (Remember Mitt Romney? I hear he ran for President once.)

Kochel gave an interview on a TV station in his home state of Iowa, in which he mentioned, as many others have, the "demographic shift" in the country and how younger voters want to move away from "the arguments we've been having" on the culture wars, which "the Republicans largely lost."

He described a growing number of Republicans, including former RNC Chairman and George W. Bush adviser Ken Mehlman, who are openly advocating marriage equality for gays and lesbians. Kochel also mentioned that for his children's generation, issues such as abortion and birth control are "largely settled," and not in a way that would make Rick Santorum happy.

He wound up by observing that he hears "a lot of conversation off the record, people talking about how they'd like to move on past some of these old fights we've been having, and can't talk about it."

It should be remembered that Kochel, according to his company's website, is the guy who advised Lord Mitt, the Earl of Romney, in "Iowa, Colorado, Nevada, and nationally" - all arenas in which His Lordship lost.

But don't take just his word for it either. The Boy Scouts of America abruptly announced that they're reconsidering their ban on gay members and leaders; the Defense Department finally lifted the ban on women in combat; and right wing poster girl and Culture Warrior Queen Sarah Palin got ignominiously dropped by Faux News.

Oh, and Jim Nabors, Mayberry's very own Gomer Pyle, married his male partner after 38 years.

On other fronts as well, the storm troops of the far right have begun to abandon the redoubts they once vowed to defend.

Republican and Democratic leaders got together on an immigration reform proposal that included a "path to citizenship" for the undocumented, something that was once as unthinkable to a right wing Culture Warrior as surrender would have been to a World War II-era Japanese soldier.

The House, as noted last week, passed a bill raising the debt ceiling without the spending cuts the Teahadists once claimed were the hill they'd chosen to die on (and take the U.S. economy with them) rather than surrender. Across this great land of ours, there are signs that we may be seeing The Twilight of the Wingnuts.

Now, I don't expect the most fanatical Culture Warriors to throw down their arms and greet the victors with flowers. It would take a complete chump to believe a war would end like that. I expect that there'll be some diehards and dead-enders who'll take to the hills in a sort of insurgency.

They'll probably engage in a few acts of political hostage-taking and terrorism by threatening to blow things up if they don't get their way. Metaphorically speaking, of course. At least I hope so.

And I know that for the next few years, we'll be finding islands with holdouts who refuse to admit that the war is over. In fact, I suspect we may be living on one such island right now here in North Carolina.

But demographics are inexorable. In 1992, Pat Buchanan rose from the ashes of his own defeated presidential campaign and declared the Culture War - in a speech, it should be noted, that helped move me from a moderate seriously considering voting for Bush the Elder into a confirmed Clinton liberal. But Buchanan is 74 now and finding it harder to find a network who'll let him on.

His sister Bay, also once an ubiquitous right wing pundit, has reportedly given up the fight and gotten her real estate license.

Most of the formerly reliable foot soldiers of the Culture War are getting pretty long in the tooth. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who's only crazy about 85 percent of the time, called it while in a lucid interval: "We're not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business over the long term."

So the signs give me hope that the Teahadists of the Rabid Right will continue their long decline, their Wingnutdammerung, if you will, and the Republican Party can free itself from their tyranny. Then maybe we can start having some rational debates over issues in this country.

There won't be as much material for mockery, but it's a small price to pay.

WINGNUTDAMMERUNG (Twilight of the Wingnuts)?

So, within a few days, the House passes a bill raising the debt ceiling without the draconian spending cuts the Teabagger Caucus  claimed were an absolute condition for such a raise; Sarah Palin gets ignominiously dropped by Faux News; the Defense Department lifts the ban on women in combat; Republicans and Democrats in the Senate get together on an immigration reform package that provides a "path to citizenship" for the undocumented; and the Boy Scouts of America are reported to be actively considering lifting the ban on gay members and scout leaders. A former Romney adviser admits that "the culture wars are over and Republicans largely lost."

Now, I've been fighting these wacked out, racist, homophobic, xenophobic, everything-but-them-phobic nutballs for so long, I'm not taking a victory lap just yet. There's still a lot to do. But you've got to admit, it's the best time to be a liberal  that we've seen in  a long, long time.

Debt Ceiling Crisis? What Debt Ceiling Crisis?

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You know, it would be very easy to make fun of Orange John Boehner and the House Republicans over their capitulation this past Wednesday on the debt ceiling.

You may have missed the story, because the media were more obsessed in the past week with a much more important issue- namely, "Who knew that Beyonce lip-synced the national anthem, and when did they know it?"

So in case you've forgotten what the debt ceiling fuss was about, let's review.

First, just as they did during the fake "fiscal cliff" crisis, the so-called "deficit hawks" of the GOP blustered and puffed up their chests and insisted that yes, by golly, they were perfectly willing to destroy the country's credit rating and plunge us back into recession if they didn't get massive spending cuts in exchange for agreeing to pay the bills we already have.

Then, when the president said he wasn't going to knuckle under or negotiate again in the face of that kind of terrorism, they went completely hysterical, howled, "OMG! OBAMA IS WORSE THAN HITLER!" and vowed a fight to the death. So, as you can no doubt see, it'd be easy to mock them when they meekly cave in and pass a three-month extension of the debt ceiling without a single spending cut.

But I'm not going to do that.

I'm not going to do that because I think that on the rare occasion that the Republicans act like grownups, they ought to be commended for it. Besides, the one condition they did come up with actually contains the seed of a good idea.

The bill contains a provision that any house of Congress that doesn't pass a budget by April 15 doesn't get its pay. Unfortunately, the 27th Amendment says that "No law varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives shall take effect until an election of Representatives shall have intervened," so the best they could probably do would be to temporarily withhold their salaries - not, say, donate them to Planned Parenthood or the NRA or something like that.

But hey, it's a start. And at long last, we'll finally get the Republicans to do two things: (1) admit that while the president can propose a budget (and has), budgets are made by the legislative branch, and that talking about "Obama's spending" is disingenuous at best; and (2) finally come clean on exactly what it is they want to cut.

Up until now, the GOP line has been, "You Democrats have to give us spending cut proposals, so they look like your idea." They do this because they know if people saw what they really want to cut, they'd be even less popular than they are now. But now they're stuck, which is a good thing.

The only problem I have with the "no budget, no pay" idea is that under the current proposal, if one of the houses comes up with a budget, any budget, its members get paid. There's no real incentive for the Republican-controlled House to come up with a budget they know has a chance of passing the Democratic-controlled Senate, and vice versa.

Indeed, both the House's Paul Ryan and the Senate's Patty Murray have vowed to quickly come up with proposed budgets, each of which is pretty much guaranteed to give the other house's majority party the hives.

So here's my idea: If a budget isn't passed by both houses and signed by the president by April 15, nobody gets paid. Not the senators, not the representatives, not the president. No Democrats, no Republicans, no independents. If they don't come up with something everyone can live with by May 1, then the sergeants-at-arms of both houses will be ordered to remove all the chairs from the House and Senate chambers and all legislative offices. Let 'em work standing up. (I confess, I stole this last part from a legendary tale of a crusty old judge trying to motivate a hung jury to make a decision.)

If that doesn't work, by May 15, we chain the chamber doors shut with all of them inside. No budget by June 1? Cut off the air conditioning. If you've ever been in D.C. in the summer, you know what that means. We'll either get a budget arrived at by fair negotiation and compromise, or we'll need to elect a new Congress.

Frankly, I could go for either one.

The Red Dawn Fantasy

Well Said:

“… in precisely which “tactical” scenarios do all of these lunatics imagine that they’re going to use their matte-black, suppressor-fitted, flashlight-ready tactical weapons?” I think we have to talk about what I call the Red Dawn fantasy. Red Dawn of course refers to the very entertaining film in which The Wolverines, a bunch of kids from a rural western community, heroically engage a division of Cuban paratroopers and their Soviet advisors who invade the United States at the start of World War III. If you ask those who insist they must own one or more assault rifles and semi-automatic pistols with high capacity magazines, the answer you’ll hear over and over again is: I want to be ready to defend America against the Commies, the terrorists, the immigrant invaders, the United Nations, and yes, even the government of the United States of America. That’s the Red Dawn fantasy. It’s time we saw it for the paranoid delusion it is, and stop giving craziness the legitimacy of the Second Amendment. The gun debate shouldn’t be about whether we need armed guards in every school, movie theater, and place of worship. I shouldn’t be about hunting rifles or weapons for home or personal defense. Take the Red Dawn fantasy out of the equation, and we’ll have no problem coming up with a sensible gun policy in America. But as long as it persists, and as long as we let a delusional minority dictate the terms of the debate, we’re accepting more mass shootings as the price we have to pay.

h/t: TPM Editor's Blog

SWORS: A Deadly Epidemic Returns

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An epidemic is sweeping America. It has visited us before, but this January it’s come early and this strain appears to be particularly virulent, even dangerous. 

Oh, you thought I meant the flu? Well, yeah, that’s bad too, but what I’m talking about here is another outbreak of SWORS: Spasmodic Wingnut Outrage Syndrome. 

As you regular readers know, SWORS is a disease of the central nervous system particularly prevalent among members of the American right wing. SWORS sufferers experience a significant degradation in upper level brain function, leading to a near-total loss of any sense of proportion. They become prone to manic outbursts of indignation and rage over trivial or even imaginary events.

The latest outbreak can be traced to a remark made by Vice President Joe Biden while speaking about the plan he was working on to curb gun violence in the wake of the horrific school shootings in Newtown Connecticut. Part of the plan, Biden said, might include “executive orders” by the President, actions taken under the power of his office that didn’t need to be voted on by Congress. 

Now, anyone who knows anything about this country’s Constitutional separation of powers would realize that what can be done purely by executive order is limited, and certainly do not include a blanket ban on semi-automatic weapons or high capacity magazines. You can at least rest assured that Barack Obama, a former Constitutional Law professor, knows this. This did not stop SWORS sufferers from immediately concluding that “the plan might include executive orders” meant that Biden was actually saying “OBAMA’S GONNA TAKE ALL YOUR GUNS! BWAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!”

Reaction followed the classic pattern of SWORS, including overly dramatic public statements of irrationally disproportionate anger. Washed up rocker and gun advocate Ted Nugent claimed gun owners were going to be “the new Rosa Parks.” Tennessee resident James Yeager, CEO of a company that trains people in “tactical skills” and who has an online shop selling “tactical” equipment, put up a YouTube video in which he stared into the camera with what I suppose was supposed to be a look of fierce determination but actually more closely resembled psychotic rage. 

“I’m not [bad word] putting up with this,” Yeager snapped during a profanity-laced tirade. “I’m not letting my country be ruled by a dictator. I’m not letting anybody take my guns! If it goes one inch further, I’m going to start killing people.” The state of Tennessee promptly suspended Yeager’s gun permit. Hint: when you go on YouTube loudly announcing that you plan to start killing people, don’t get all surprised if the state acts like you might be serious. 

Yeager later apologized. According to the Huffington Post, he stated "It's not time to shoot anybody," while sitting next to a lawyer (who no doubt, wished fervently that Yeager had come to him before openly making terrorist threats on the Internet).

When the proposed plan was revealed on Wednesday, the “executive order” provisions had nothing on confiscation or banning of any guns. They promised that the Executive Branch would, among other things, “nominate an ATF Director"; “develop model emergency response plans for schools, houses of worship and institutions of higher education," and "issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations." Any  limitations on types of weapons or high capacity magazines would be left to the Congress, although the President did call upon the Congress to enact those, which given the makeup of the current Congress, is a pretty long shot, so to speak.  Expansion of the background check requirement to include gun shows stands a better chance, but the President still left that up to Congress, while issuing executive orders that would make information more readily available for those. 

 Hardly the sort of stuff to send the citizenry to the barricades. Sadly, however, another symptom of SWORS is the inability to hear what someone has actually said. Instead, the SWORS victim reacts to a voice which apparently only they can hear. Republican representative Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, for example, demanded that the Obama Administration “enforce current laws,” apparently not noticing that some of the executive orders called for just that: they require  that the government “maximize enforcement efforts to prevent gun violence and prosecute gun crime” and “require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations.” RNC Chairman Reince Preibus called the plan an “executive power grab,”  while failing to specify a single one of the executive orders that does not fall squarely within the President’s Executive authority. 

Sadly, there is no known cure for SWORS, since it renders its victims incapable of logic or persuasion. Even more sadly, it’s not just the infected person who suffers. It’s all of us. 

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