Betrayal and Propriety: Considering Thiessen on Roberts

Who: Marc A. Thiessen
What: "Why are Republicans so awful at picking Supreme Court justices?", The Washington Post
When: July 2, 2012

Washington Post columnist and American Enterprise Institute fellow Marc A. Thiessen reflects on Chief Justice John Roberts' alleged betrayal of his conservative fellows in last week's health care ruling:

Just compare the records over the last three decades. Democrats have appointed four justices — Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Stephen G. Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. All have been consistent liberals on the bench. Republicans, by contrast, have picked seven justices. Of Ronald Reagan's three appointees (Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia and Anthony M. Kennedy) only Scalia has been a consistent conservative. George H.W. Bush appointed one solid conservative (Clarence Thomas) and one disastrous liberal (David Souter). With George W. Bush's appointments of Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Roberts, conservatives thought finally they had broken the mold and put two rock-ribbed conservatives on the bench — until last week, that is, when Roberts broke with the conservatives and cast the deciding vote to uphold the largest expansion of federal power in decades.

So Democrats are four-for-four — a perfect record. Republicans are not even batting .500.

Why is the Democratic record so consistent while the Republican record is so mixed? For one thing, the whole legal and political culture pushes the court to the left. Conservatives are pariahs if they vote against the left on certain issues. But if they cross over vote with the left, they are hailed as statesmen. Just look the pre-emptive attacks on the Roberts Court when everyone thought it was about to strike down Obamacare — and contrast that with all the accolades Roberts is now receiving from his erstwhile critics. Before the decision he was threatening to plunge the nation into a political crisis. Today he is praised for his "humility," "restraint," being "brave" and "judicial modesty." Meanwhile, many conservatives are twisting themselves in knots to defend or explain his vote. Not a chance the left would do the same if one of the court's liberals had voted to overturn Obamacare. There is no penalty for voting left, but there is for voting right.

One of the reasons legal and political cultures appear to push constitutional law leftward might well be the nature of left and right themselves. Too often in the twenty-first century, people treat the notions as if they have equal weight, as if having one or the other opinion is simply a matter of opinions, and the proposition of effects and implications—that is to say, results—are irrelevant to the question of equivalency.

Malpractice Insurance: Trudeau on the GOP War of the Sexes

Who: Michael Cavna
What: "'Doonesbury' creator Garry Trudeau discusses divisive strips about abortion", The Washington Post
When: March 11, 2012

Michael Cavna of The Washington Post recently interviewed Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau about an upcoming week of controversial strips covering the American reproduction debate revival:

In my 42 years with UPS, the "Silent Scream" week was the only series that the syndicate ever strongly objected to. [Syndicate president Lee Salem] felt that it would be deeply harmful to the feature and that we would lose clients permanently. They had supported me through so much for so long, I felt obliged to go with their call.

Such was not the case this week. There was no dispute over contents, just some discussion over whether to prepare a substitute week for editors who requested one [which we did].

I chose the topic of compulsory sonograms because it was in the news and because of its relevance to the broader battle over women's health currently being waged in several states. For some reason, the GOP has chosen 2012 to re-litigate reproductive freedom, an issue that was resolved decades ago. Why [Rick] Santorum, [Rush] Limbaugh et al. thought this would be a good time to declare war on half the electorate, I cannot say. But to ignore it would have been comedy malpractice.

Boiling Oil

Who: Eugene Robinson
What: "The GOP is fed up with its choices", The Washington Post
When: August 22, 2011

In theory, Democrats should be nervous about Texas Gov. Rick Perry's decision to enter the presidential race. In practice, though, it's Republicans who have zoomed up the anxiety ladder into freak-out mode.

To clarify, not all Republicans are reaching for the Xanax, just those who believe the party has to appeal to centrist independents if it hopes to defeat President Obama next year. Also, those who believe that calling Social Security "an illegal Ponzi scheme" and suggesting that Medicare is unconstitutional might not be the best way to win the votes of senior citizens.

Perhaps it seems a curious test of the nation, or, at least, the Republican Party. As ideological extremists battle for control of the GOP, there is an emerging sense that the party's presidential field is pandering so hard to the right wing that independent and moderate voters will find them inaccessible.

This argument, though, presumes an abstract political center, and that might be an error.

If Only ....

Who: Pat Garofalo
What: "Boehner Claims S&P Downgrade Happened Because Democrats Blocked The GOP's Attempt To Eliminate Medicare", ThinkProgress
When: August 10, 2011

If only those dirty, lowdown Democrats would have let the GOP destroy Medicare ....

Ever since the credit rating agency S&P downgraded U.S. credit to AA+ on Friday night, Republicans have desperately trying to pin the blame on President Obama, even though, as National Journal put it, "it's hard to read the S&P analysis as anything other than a blast at Republicans." S&P called out the GOP for using the debt ceiling as a political football and for its flat refusal to consider new revenue as part of any plan to reduce long-term deficits.

Earlier this week Rep. Allen West (R-FL) claimed that the S&P downgrade "has nothing to do with increasing revenues," while some Republicans have said that passing a Balanced Budget Amendment would have prevented the downgrade, both of which S&P disagreed with. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) yesterday jumped into the same pool, saying that the downgrade could have been avoided if only Democrats had embraced the House Republican budget and its plan to eliminate Medicare:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) blamed President Obama and the Democrats Tuesday for the recent downgrading of the U.S. credit rating, saying that if Democrats had joined with Republicans in passing the GOP budget, which the House passed in April, "it's unlikely anyone would be talking about the United States being downgraded today." [...] "S&P said in its own report Friday that entitlement reform is the key to long-term financial stability. We passed a budget through the House in April that includes entitlement reform, and cuts more than $6 trillion. The Democrat-controlled Senate and President Obama have prevented most of those reforms from happening. And that's why we have a downgrade, Boehner said in an excerpt of his prepared remarks obtained by The Hill. [...] "The President and the Democratic leadership in Washington are trying to blame the tea party, because they know this downgrade is on [the Democrats]. When we took the bold step of proposing entitlement reforms, they reacted not by embracing them and joining us, but by demonizing those proposals for political gain," Boehner said.

Notes on the Debt Ceiling Debate

Notes on the debt ceiling debate:

Some market observers speculate that a downgrade would be a non-event: Japan, for example, went from a rating of AAA to AA without much drama. Others suggest that a downgrade would increase Treasury’s borrowing costs by $100 billion a year or more, making our already unsustainable deficit trajectory even worse.

There are no rules to define what is systemic and what isn’t — or to accurately predict the consequences of an economic shock. Each crisis is unique. How exactly it will affect financial markets, companies and our economy is impossible to know. Nonetheless, recent examples offer guidance.

In 2008, a number of once-cherished beliefs were turned upside down: (1) that home prices in America would never fall; (2) that AAA-rated subprime securities are money-good; (3) that a major investment bank would never fail. Consumers, investors and companies allocated capital according to these truths. When the beliefs were revealed to be false, massive shocks were inflicted on the economy as financial markets rapidly adjusted to account for these new risks.

Neel Kashkari's analysis of potential impacts for The Washington Post is worth a read. And as long as we're pausing to think about credit ratings, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich offers up his own opinion thereof:

... Standard & Poor's has gone a step further: It says even if the debt ceiling is raised next week, it might still lower the nation's credit rating -- unless the deal also contains a credible, bipartisan plan to reduce the long-term budget deficit by $4 trillion. This is something neither Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's nor House Speaker John Boehner's plans would accomplish.

Now I don't mean to be impertinent, but as long as America pays its debts on time, who is Standard & Poor's to tell America how much debt it has to shed and by when?

Until the eve of Wall Street's collapse in late 2007, S&P gave triple-A ratings to what turned out to be some of the Street's riskiest packages of mortgage-backed securities.

Had S&P done its job, we wouldn't have had the debt and housing bubbles to begin with. That means taxpayers wouldn't have had to bail out Wall Street. We probably wouldn't have had a Great Recession. Millions of Americans wouldn't be jobless and collecting unemployment benefits. There'd be no need for the stimulus that saved 3 million other jobs. And far more tax revenue would have been pouring into the Treasury.

In other words, had S&P done its job, the federal budget deficit would likely be far smaller than it is today -- and S&P wouldn't be threatening the United States with a downgrade if we didn't come up with a plan for shrinking it.

And why has S&P decided to get into public policy now anyway? Where was it when President George W. Bush turned a $5 trillion budget surplus bequeathed to him by Bill Clinton into a gaping deficit?

Of course, this is what happens when we play by marketplace rules intended not for the benefit of the marketplace, but, rather, those who wish to control it.

Republicans Put the United States of America in Their Crosshairs

Who: Eugene Robinson
What: "Why progressives need a Big Idea", The Washington Post
When: July 28, 2011

Those who would chronicle events in Washington can find no richer source of analogy and metaphor than the Three Stooges. These days, I’m thinking of the times when an exasperated Moe, having suffered the indignity of an accidental spritzing or clobbering, turns to Larry or Curly and demands, “What’s the big idea?”

The premise of the debt-ceiling fight is too far-fetched for a Stooges film, since no audience could imagine leaders of a great nation stumbling into such a mess. Moe’s trademark line is still relevant, however, even if it’s not followed by the two-fingered poke in the eyes that our elected officials richly deserve ....

.... Conservatives are on a winning streak because they have a Big Idea that serves as an animating, motivating, unifying force. It happens to be a very bad idea, but it’s better than nothing — which, sadly, is what progressives have.

The simplistic Big Idea that defines today’s Republican Party is that taxes are always too high and government spending is always wasteful. Therefore, both taxes and spending need to be reduced.

That’s basically it. There are a couple of asterisks: Many conservatives, perhaps most, don’t consider the military a part of “government” per se and are more amenable to defense spending; and even a Tea Party freshman is more likely to keep an open mind about the publicly funded infrastructure project in his or her own district. There is also an overarching philosophy about the relationship between government and the individual, and some conservatives imagine a “return” to a Jeffersonian Arcadia that never was.

In terms of the ongoing rivalry between Democrats and Republicans generally, Robinson is absolutely correct that Democrats have no "Big Idea" to pitch to voters.

But I think the key word above is that Robinson is describing the simplistic Big Idea of the GOP. Consider what we have long heard from Republicans about government, taxes, and entitlement. And then consider what happens if that simplistic Big Idea comes true. The two conditions coincide.

To put it bluntly, the GOP is presently attempting nothing more than the destruction of the United States government.

Missing the Point

What does it look like when a nationally-respected journalist misses the point? Dana Milbank, of the Washington Post demonstrates:

There is something rich about the president of the United States and the speaker of the House pretending that they are somehow not part of Washington. If these two aren't Washington, what is? The International Spy Museum? Ben's Chili Bowl? Wolf Blitzer?

Generally, people presume professional journalists aren't so superficial. Mr. Milbank corrects that mistaken notion without much room for question.

Making Excuses for the GOP

Who: Eugene Robinson
What: "Don't blame 'both sides' for debt impasse", Washington Post
When: July 11, 2011

Washington has many lazy habits, and one of the worst is a reflexive tendency to see equivalence where none exists. Hence the nonsense, being peddled by politicians and commentators who should know better, that "both sides" are equally at fault in the deadlocked talks over the debt ceiling.

This is patently false. The truth is that Democrats have made clear they are open to a compromise deal on budget cuts and revenue increases. Republicans have made clear they are not.

Put another way, Democrats reacted to the "grand bargain" proposed by President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner by squawking, complaining and highlighting elements they didn’t like. This is known throughout the world as the way to begin a process of negotiation.

Republicans, by contrast, answered with a definitive "no" and then covered their ears. Given the looming Aug. 2 deadline for default if the debt ceiling is not raised, the proper term for this approach is blackmail.

Yet the "both sides are to blame" narrative somehow gained currency after Boehner announced Saturday that House Republicans would not support any increase in revenue, period. A false equivalence was drawn between the absolute Republican rejection of "revenue-positive" tax reform and the less-than-absolute Democratic opposition to "benefit cuts" in Medicare and Social Security.

The bogus story line is that the radical right-wing base of the GOP and the radical left-wing base of the Democratic Party are equally to blame for sinking the deal.