The Dirtiest Trick Since Robert Bork’s Stated Views Were Discussed in the Senate!
Shorter Michael Gerson: “I am outraged that Barack Obama would suggest that Republicans support any of the consequences of the long-held policies of the Republican Party.”
…see also. As for Gerson’s assertion that Obama is building a “strawman” when he notes that Republicans “believe that Medicare and Social Security “sap our initiative,” and they see this as “a nation of takers,”” I happen to have the 2012 vice presidential candidate of the Republican Party and its most influential policy voice right here:
Right now, according to the Tax Foundation, between 60 and 70 percent of Americans get more benefits from the government than they pay back in taxes. So, we’re getting towards a society where we have a net majority of takers versus makers.
Again, apologies for using the dirtiest trick in politics by quoting a Republican public official verbatim. Yet more here.
commie atheist:
January 23rd, 2013 at 12:33 am
The “perpetual war” thing must have really burned.
STH:
January 23rd, 2013 at 1:12 am
This part was particularly good:
But yes, today’s GOP and conservative movement is suffused with the conviction that there is a permanent, unchanging arrangement for governing the country that was enshrined (perhaps by Almighty God) in the Declaration of Independence (which is exactly why Obama felt constrained to reclaim that document yesterday!) and must now be implemented and preserved until the end of time via a “Cut, Cap and Balance” constitutional amendment. If this isn’t “absolutism,” then I don’t know what qualifies for the term.
And Gerson is objecting to Obama saying Republicans “see this as a nation of takers”? I guess since he didn’t specify that only 47% of them are “takers” . . . .
STH:
January 23rd, 2013 at 1:17 am
OT, but I saw this argument in favor of Prop 8 and thought of you guys:
I tell my gay friends: imagine if the Supreme Court had ordered gay marriage this past June, at the end of its 2011-2012 term. November’s game-changing electoral victories would never have happened. Gay marriage advocates would be forever stereotyped as political losers who won by running to mommy . . . . Strange but true: a favorable Supreme Court intervention next year would make us weaker, not stronger.
I guess nothing as trivial as equal rights is as important as respect from homophobic assholes.
commie atheist:
January 23rd, 2013 at 1:29 am
Rauch’s argument, apparently, is that desegregation took longer because of Brown v. Board of Education.
Yup, that’s on the same level as saying that Roe actually set back the cause of abortion rights.
commie atheist:
January 23rd, 2013 at 1:40 am
Also, too:
montag2:
January 23rd, 2013 at 3:27 am
If you want respect, son, you’ll never get it by helping a dimbulb warmonger make his lies sound more convincing.
c u n d gulag:
January 23rd, 2013 at 7:02 am
You don’t get to go into Middle Eastern wars and occupations with the President you want, you get to go into Middle Eastern wars and occupations with the President you have.
Manju:
January 23rd, 2013 at 7:29 am
The NORC data asks if one approves of laws against interracial marriage. With that one, you hit 50% in 1970.
School segregation was at 50/50 by 1956 and 60-35 by 1963 (good-evil, respectively). Segregated Transportation : 79-21 in 1963 (good-evil, again). Accommodations: 73-27 in ’63.
Krugman’s using the wrong metric. Whites may want to stick to their own and I’m quite sure many an Asian parent would disapprove of venturing out of the tribe…but thats not what civil rights laws are designed to eradicate.
Manju:
January 23rd, 2013 at 7:31 am
Source:
“Racial Attitudes in America: Trends and Interpretations” by Howard Schuman, Charlotte Steeh, Lawrence Bobo
If you google book search it, you can probably get to the charts that confirm the data above.
RedSquareBear:
January 23rd, 2013 at 7:38 am
On the contrary. Rumsfeld (of whom, it hardly needs saying, I am no fan) was stating a pragmatic fact. This is sharply at odds with the disdain that the Rove and Gerson bunch held the “reality based community” in.
Two different faces on Janus.
rea:
January 23rd, 2013 at 7:56 am
See, some of those aren’t really long term policies of the Republican party. Those are policies they want to force the Democrats to adopt, so they can campaign aginst them. See, e.g., cutting Medicare and Social Security.
The Dark Avenger:
January 23rd, 2013 at 8:14 am
That doesn’t account for the fact that NV repealed their racial discrimination laws about 10 years after CA based on the Harry Bridges case Manju, when the majority of the NV population was still against interracial marriage.
Keep trying to substitute numbers for policy debate, Manju, you’re a living example of Mill’s famous statement about conservatives.
rea:
January 23rd, 2013 at 8:16 am
But you notice, it never occurred to Rumsfeld that if you don’t have the army you want to have to go to war, maybe you shouldn’t go to war?
Scott Lemieux:
January 23rd, 2013 at 8:25 am
I mean, yes, obviously, Brown by itself was insufficient. But it was also a crucial part of the process.
Cody:
January 23rd, 2013 at 8:26 am
+1 to Gerson for publicly stating his opposition to the Republican platform.
I suppose we can expect him to start denouncing Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan soon! I’ll be thinking of him next time Republicans talk about cutting SS, knowing Gerson has my back!
NonyNony:
January 23rd, 2013 at 8:32 am
Let’s also add to the fact that Rumsfeld was trying to prove his idea that you could win a war on the cheap by dropping an overwhelming force on a country and not worrying about what you do after the fact.
From a moral standpoint, Iraq was a horrible thing to do. But from a logistic standpoint if you’re going to do it, you do it right. Rumsfeld was essentially blaming the armed forces for his idea of shock and awe not working out the way he imagined it would. He was passing the buck – saying that it wasn’t his idea that was bad, it was that the armed forces that the US had were the problem.
So no, he wasn’t stating a pragmatic fact. He was passing the buck. His ideology cannot fail, it can only be failed. And the US Army failed his ideology, so it gets the blame.
RhZ:
January 23rd, 2013 at 8:44 am
Ah, using pramatic facts as ass-covering excuses?
Why, that’s quite resourceful of them. Lord knows they had no other uses for pragmatic facts.
ploeg:
January 23rd, 2013 at 8:47 am
Not correct, though: today’s GOP likes the Constitution, not the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration has a fundamental error in that it declares all men to be created equal. The Republicans see that all men are not created equal, and this fact is the cornerstone of the society that they are working toward.
Cody:
January 23rd, 2013 at 8:49 am
This is of course after he fired the General who told him it would take many more troops for this strategy to work.
Ahhh, how I don’t miss the Bush Administration.
Kurzleg:
January 23rd, 2013 at 8:52 am
I always had the impression that Rumsfeld was genuinely surprised that things turned out as they did. If anything, he (and Wolfowitz, and Cheney, and…) was a victim of his own magical thinking. I’ve never seen evidence that Rumsfeld had any doubts about the efficacy of his plan, and Shinseki’s ousting suggests that, at a minimum, they didn’t want anyone harshing their buzz.
ajay:
January 23rd, 2013 at 9:04 am
I always had the impression that Rumsfeld was genuinely surprised that things turned out as they did.
Well, possibly, but I remember reading “On the Psychology of Military Incompetence” (well worth a look) which noticed that incompetent generals tend to take inexplicable actions that make defeat even more certain. And a lot of Rumsfeld’s behaviour seems to fit this.
arguingwithsignposts:
January 23rd, 2013 at 9:12 am
I thought it was David Frum who came up with Axis of Evil ™.
Either way, Gerson is a sneering prick who should be writing for bathroom stalls and private diaries, not a national newspaper.
bradP:
January 23rd, 2013 at 9:18 am
A few points:
1. In the interview that Ryan quote came from, he spent more time talking about how helpful SS is, and how we wrong it would be to not provide the benefits people were promised, and how wrong it would be if current contributors were forced to take the 21% reduction in benefits that is set to occur by law in the future. If he is demonizing the recipients of SS, he is going about it strangely.
2. With SS now rapidly emptying out the fund that was built up, it kinda does make its beneficiaries “takers”, even if by necessity.
3. Gerson is apparently wrong about the strawman. The strawman is that conservatives want takers to be diers. Most conservatives argue that government spending is more inefficient than private spending, and therefore results in fewer opportunities for people to make it into that maker category.
Uncle Kvetch:
January 23rd, 2013 at 9:20 am
Strange but true: a favorable Supreme Court intervention next year would make us weaker, not stronger.
What do you mean “we,” asshole?
Uncle Kvetch:
January 23rd, 2013 at 9:22 am
Or “us,” for that matter?
Malaclypse:
January 23rd, 2013 at 9:27 am
In the interview that Ryan quote came from, he spent more time talking about how helpful SS is, and how we wrong it would be to not provide the benefits people were promised, and how wrong it would be if current contributors were forced to take the 21% reduction in benefits that is set to occur by law in the future
And yet, strangely enough, the “budget” he proposed does actually and for true cut SS. But I guess we should listen to what he says in response to softball questions instead.
With SS now rapidly emptying out the fund that was built up, it kinda does make its beneficiaries “takers”, even if by necessity.
Brad, when you go to the doctor’s office, are you a “taker,” or are you using the insurance you paid for? You do realize that the Fund is designed to empty out, right?
Uncle Kvetch:
January 23rd, 2013 at 9:36 am
If he is demonizing the recipients of SS, he is going about it strangely.
I’ll concede the point, brad. He’s not demonizing the recipients of SS; he’s lying through his teeth. Better?
sibusisodan:
January 23rd, 2013 at 9:38 am
Not going to talk about (1), but re: (2) – no, just no.
‘Taker’ != recipient, in this sense, as far as I can tell. ‘Taker’ implies somebody who has given nothing in return. This is not the case for the recipients of SS.
By the same token, ‘maker’ is used to denote somebody who produces without having first received in same sense. Because the ‘makers’ are beholden to nobody, apparently.
Neither term has a real referent, only imaginary ones.
TT:
January 23rd, 2013 at 9:41 am
So we should pay attention only to what politicians say and not what they do? Paul Ryan waxes endlessly to mainstream media outlets about the need to help the poor and the vulnerable, but his budgets differ somewhat from his rhetoric.
David Hunt:
January 23rd, 2013 at 9:42 am
I suspect there’s a tongue planted in your cheek there, but I’m going to state the obvious anyway. The cuts to Medicare & SS are both medium term policy goals and something that they want to force Democrats to do so that they can attack them for it. Long-term goal is to completely eliminate the programs.
The GOP knows that attacks on those programs are extremely unpopular so the goal is to get the Dems to do their dirtywork for them. That way the GOP’s fingerprints aren’t on the murder weapon.
rea:
January 23rd, 2013 at 9:47 am
Yeah, the plan is to threaten to shut down the federal government unless Obama and the Democrats cut Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, and then campaign against the Democrats in ’14 and ’16 on the basis that they cut those programs. This is what they did in ’10. This is why they call for reduced spending, but demand that Obama be the one to propose budget cuts.
DrDick:
January 23rd, 2013 at 10:01 am
Not to mention the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
DrDick:
January 23rd, 2013 at 10:04 am
There you go again with your facts and logic. You know how those male Libertarians’ heads hirt. It is also a dastardly example of exactly what this post is about, the crime of holding a conservative (especially a Libertarian!) accountable for their own words and actions (see, Paul, Ron or Rand).
brewmn:
January 23rd, 2013 at 10:05 am
Anyone not interpreting Ryan’s comments in the light most favorable to him might also point out that at least one reason he goes out of his way to reassure current and near-term recipients of SS that they will continue to receive their benefits is because they are the same people who comprise his most reliable base of political support.
Of course, that would also require making Ryan explain why SS is a perfectly good program for those who were born before, say, 1956, and an unsustainable monstrosity for those born afterwards. I’m guessing that is a circle Paulie would rather not square.
DrDick:
January 23rd, 2013 at 10:07 am
More to the point, SS is NOT running out of money and to the extent that funds are declining, it is a function of the shift in income to the top 1%, where it is not taxed owing to the income cap on payroll taxes. Secondly, SS is a federally administered pension plan, already paid for by the recipients. That Republicans (and Libertarians like Brad), want to do what the corporations do and steal those pension funds to pay for tax cuts to the rich is irrelevant to the solvency of the program itself.
gmack:
January 23rd, 2013 at 10:36 am
Right. I think the quote above is precisely correct. The meaning of a law or a Supreme Court ruling is largely dependent on the aftermath and how various groups struggle over it. But this fact in no way implies that, say, civil rights activists would have been better off had there been no ruling about school segregation, or if the Court had ruled school segregation to be constitutional. To think this is, to put the matter as mildly as I can, is contrarian cleverness.
Barry:
January 23rd, 2013 at 11:02 am
And as far as we can tell, Rumsfeld did zilch to help the situation, and much to make it worse.
We did not fail in Iraq because of ‘the Army we had’, we failed because the leadership didn’t really give two rat’s @sses about actually winning the war.
njorl:
January 23rd, 2013 at 11:05 am
Rumsfeld was probably genuinely surprised that Bush insisted on an occupation after the war. Rumsfeld wanted to destroy Iraq’s ruling structure, and leave. That was never the administration’s plan, but Rumsfeld probably thought that when the difficulty of an occupation became apparent, the administration would come around. All along, Rumsfeld pushed for the minimum possible invasion force so as to make occupation as difficult as possible.
Scott Lemieux:
January 23rd, 2013 at 11:39 am
Right. This starts to run into the biggest problem with The Hollow Hope. It’s true that Little Rock generated more attention and probably did more to shift public opinion than Brown itself, but of course Brown and Little Rock aren’t independent events.
Scott Lemieux:
January 23rd, 2013 at 11:44 am
The strawman is that conservatives want takers to be diers.
The problem here is caring about what conservatives “want.” People who don’t have health insurance are more likely to die unnecessarily, and the market simply does not provide health care for a lot of people. That a lot of conservatives would prefer that 2) didn’t lead to 1) is beside the point, leaving aside the fact that there are few assertions more lacking in empirical support than the idea that private health insurance is more efficient than public insurance.
gmack:
January 23rd, 2013 at 11:51 am
Indeed. If I may go a bit more off-topic, I think it’s useful to remind some political theorists that there are important questions that go beyond whether a formal law or court decision is legitimate, and that political battles don’t just end when a formal decision-making body makes its ruling, or when a legislature passes a law. However, this theoretical point, which is in my view absolutely true and too often forgotten among some political philosophers, far too often leads some to conclude that formal institutions/decision-making bodies are irrelevant or pernicious (in that they only function to re-entrench hierarchies, inequalities, or in that they sap “radically democratic energies” and whatnot. Sure, these bad things can happen, but when we push this argument too far, the consequence can be that we simply abandon activist engagement with these formal institutions).
herr doktor bimler:
January 23rd, 2013 at 1:42 pm
between 60 and 70 percent of Americans get more benefits from the government than they pay back in taxes
Shirley this is a natural outcome of a skewed income distribution.
herr doktor bimler:
January 23rd, 2013 at 1:43 pm
government spending is more inefficient than private spending
How so? The money somehow gets spent less?
DrDick:
January 23rd, 2013 at 2:37 pm
The real problem is that conservatives (especially Libertarians) simply do not care about anybody else, with the possible exception of the people who give them money.
DrDick:
January 23rd, 2013 at 2:38 pm
And oddly enough, governments spend more on direct services and less on administration and the like than the private sector.
Manju:
January 23rd, 2013 at 2:52 pm
cite for the marriage stat please.
Warren Terra:
January 23rd, 2013 at 3:08 pm
Alternately, Rumsfeld and the Bushies seemed surprised that a robust Chalabist political infrastructure that had been lying in readiness, waiting for its moment, didn’t rise up to administer the place. Echoes of the Michael Caine movie The Billion Dollar Brain, right down to the Texas Oil connection.
Cheap Wino:
January 23rd, 2013 at 3:40 pm
This is one of the most pernicious lies to permeate our culture thanks to right-wing media. I wish more people, or at least people with more sway, other the Krugman would repeatedly and forcefully point this out.
The Dark Avenger:
January 23rd, 2013 at 4:46 pm
They were repealed in 1959, and Gallup polling on this subject was initially done in 1958:
And, of course the way Sammy Davis Jr. was treated in Las Vegas before Sinatra stood up for his is a matter of record:
Sometimes, people fight against the numbers and they win.
My parents were refused by a clerk in Reno, NV, in 1956, because my mother included Chinese in her response to a question about her racial background by said clerk. They drove to Carson City, where my mothers’ answer was the all-inclusive(and technically correct) self-designation as an American.
BigHank53:
January 23rd, 2013 at 9:36 pm
Eh, they like the Declaration the same way they like the Bible: easy to mine for quotes to support your position…but not a legal document, so one can feel free to ignore all the bits that you don’t like.
RhZ:
January 23rd, 2013 at 9:46 pm
To sum up, the Bushies were constantly surprised at their own incompetence. But that never led to them re-evaluating their intelligence…
Kyle:
January 24th, 2013 at 12:48 am
Having worked in both kinds of organizations, my anecdotal experience is that this statement is, to use the scientific term, “complete BS”.
Funny how lies that put more money in the pockets of corporations are so widely propagated and perpetuated by the corporate media.
Kyle:
January 24th, 2013 at 12:59 am
The Bushiites employed the same toxic brew of impulsiveness, self-dealing, arrogant ideology and magical thinking that they brought to every other aspect of American governance. Thinking “What would a spoiled, angry five-year old do?” was a fairly good guide to predicting the Cheney/Bush approach to anything.
I imagine Bush wrecked Iraq because 9/11 left him itching to wreck something, and Cheney figured their crony Chalabi would step in and rule like a docile American vassal state, Halliburton would cash in big on the oil, easy peasy. And anyone who pointed out problems with this scenario was buzzkilling their fantasy and had to be destroyed.
Manju:
January 24th, 2013 at 4:21 pm
OK, so you don’t have any data on NV. Gallup is national and does not ask about laws against interracial marriage.
Either way, marriage (and housing) were laggards compared to accommodations, school segregation, etc. so its likely NV voters opposed. But then again, the big question is how much the south bought down the national average. The bigger the North-South gap, the more likely NV approved. Thats why I asked for the data.
But you don’t have it. Other than your contempt for the facts (“substitute numbers”) i don’t have any problem with what your writing so I don’t think there is anything to debate.
The Dark Avenger:
January 25th, 2013 at 8:17 am
Gallup is national and does not ask about laws against interracial marriage.
4% of the population was against interracial marriage, in 1958, Manju, if you bothered to follow the link. Do you really think that Nevada would’ve polled differently than say, Montana or Utah or Idaho?
You’re the one with contempt for anything that can’t be reduced to numbers, Manju.
Manju:
January 25th, 2013 at 9:27 am
That’s amazing. So, we’ve been going backwards then.
Everything everyone knew about civil rights is wrong.
Anonymous:
January 25th, 2013 at 11:16 am
Surely EVERY American who is not in prison or living on the streets gets more back from government than s/he pays in taxes. Government provides the basic services that make civilization, domestic tranquility and a productive economy possible.
That’s why the US is better off than, say, Somalia.
Has Hobbes been entirely forgotten?
Aaron:
January 26th, 2013 at 12:14 am
I believe Frum came up with “Axis of hatred”, which was deemed insufficiently demagogic by his then boss, Gerson.
The Dark Avenger:
January 26th, 2013 at 2:15 am
That should be 4% were in favor of interracial marriage in 1958.
Manju:
January 26th, 2013 at 8:06 am
Anyway, the more relevant NORC data starts in ’63, and has 62% favoring laws against interracial marriage. 38% opposed.