***Romney. Bush economics. Teaparty.

Why do Democrats point back to the Bush administration so often? Because the Republicans seem to have forgotten everything that they should have learned about that economic history. Or, for whatever excuse, they misrepresent that history, either by ignorance or for raw dishonesty.

Personally, I think that everyone should vote against most Republicans based on the threat of a Teaparty victory. I see their “desired programs” as “dire consequences.” The Teaparty has already taken over the Republican party so completely that their convention hardly mentioned “Teaparty” even though that was the ideology fixed in the Platform. After the sweep of 2010, Republican states worked on the TP agenda, starting with state laws that are anti-abortion, anti-union, and anti-public school. Oh, let us not forget, wide-spread efforts for “voter suppression” for 2012. It is at the national level that they act against the social contract of the last 200 years. 

Extending now to the national level, the Teaparty agenda intends …

- a continuation of GOP imprudent refusal to face up to climate change;

- the repeal of our relatively new-found rights like clean air, clean water, safe food, safe jobs, control of epidemics ... by abolishing or de-funding government regulatory agencies (with the excuse of fixing the deficit);

- further degrading of school standards – schools have long been under assault by Creationists and homophobes – under the guise of “school choice” and home schooling (this works in part by dis-empowering teachers' unions);

- more reversal of the gains since 1960 for women's autonomy (including access to birth control and abortion);

- a return to “get treated in the Emergency Room when your cancer turns critical” as the US standard of compassionate medical care;

- appointment of Supreme Court Justices whose “strict construction” will eliminate Roe v. Wade as the bare beginning to rolling back regulation and 200 years of rights (laying a legal rationale to the deficit-reduction excuses mentioned above).

That's what I come up with in a couple of days of musing. I find it unlikely that President Romney could veto bills that a Congress sends him that implement these attacks on the social contract of the last 200 years. Norquist (anti-tax, anarchist) says, “Just give us someone with fingers that can hold a pen to sign the bills.” The Teaparty is reason enough to abandon him.

Ignoring all that, polls say that some people want to trust Romney with the economy. And not just because “Obama's is doing poorly” but because they believe something positive.

To choose Romney because “he is better on the economy” is, I think, less a consequence of logic than misplaced trust in false authority. For most of their argument, they use hand-waving and misrepresentation of the present and recent past. Paul Ryan (also, Ron Paul) cite economic theory from the 1930s in place of modern economists, theory, data, and experience; but their policy details hardly vary from “supply side.”

Supply side theory has lost its intellectual credibility so thoroughly that the term is no longer mentioned by Republicans – Its theory has shrunk to a slogan that Clinton disproved in 1994, "You don't want to tax the job creators." Yep. Contrary to their most fervid predictions of catastrophe, Clinton's taxes gave us growth and the promise of budget surpluses... surpluses that W. wasted, first by intention and then by incompetence. W. promised, explicitly, that his tax cuts would raise workers' wages, and that did not happen either – The Keynesian stimulus from huge deficits bred slow growth, gains in the stock market, increases for executives' wages, but no gains for workers. Then came the deregulation-crash that ended his term and many millions of jobs. 

 

Check the fact-checkers, but be sure to read their details:

"The fact checker" column by Glenn Kessler in the Wash. Post of Sunday, Oct. 7, gives both Clinton and Obama “3 Pinocchios” (out of 4), and asks that they “retire this talking point,” that "trickle down policies" led to the economic crisis. He concludes,

We nearly made this Four Pinocchios but ultimately decided that citing deregulation in conjunction with tax cuts kept this category out of the “whopper” category. Still, in his effort to portray Romney as an echo of Bush, the president really stretches the limits here.

Okay, here are details offered by Kessler. He does accept that Romney seemingly will create a huge deficit, and that there is no evidence that he can offset the tax cut for the rich with a repeal of deductions for the rich. That surely echoes Bush.

On the other side, he says that Romney does not echo Bush because some of the deregulation happened under Clinton, including the “repeal of Glass-Steagall law that separated commercial and investment banks.” Thus, those were not simply (or solely) policies of Bush. – That seems largely irrelevant to me, except that it suggests a counter-narrative that is even more potent. Namely: Okay, Democrats proved that they were willing to try deregulation. They are not knee-jerk “anti-business.” Especially since the crash, Democrats look at evidence of cause-and-effect and want to reverse course because of the consistent testimony, … but Republicans won't change. It is surely true that Bush and Republicans embraced that de-regulation before, and that they still do. Thus, those are Bush/ Republican policies that are being echoed. They own them by adoption, if not by birth.

Another point: Kessler thinks it is important that “tax cuts” alone did not cause the crisis... but I think nobody has ever claimed that. The citations he began with each mentioned deregulation. However, the tax-cut created deficits are not irrelevant. Kessler quotes these words and then goes on as if he never read them –

Obama campaign deputy press secretary said that “the tax cuts contributed to the crisis in multiple ways, including by driving up the deficit, ....”

If Bush had continued Clinton's taxes (and Clinton's surplus), there could have been serious thought for a larger stimulus plan, without the long term deficit looming so dire. Claiming huge, magical gains from tax cuts is entirely an echo of Bush (and Reagan!), as is the claim that the middle class would be the people who would see the benefits.

-The Bush cuts are still in effect – if they work, why aren't they working? Among tax proposals that economists expect will create jobs, income tax cuts for the rich rate near the bottom.

- Hand-waving: It is a substantial misrepresentation when Romney does not credit the stimulus with saving 3 million jobs. It is a substantial misrepresentation when he ignores the fact that projections, “predictions” by the Obama economists made before he took office, were skewed to the favorable side because the crash was worse than everyone imagined … the December numbers on jobs were worse than reported, and weren't fixed until June. On rare occasions, Romney has admitted that the recovery was about as good as expected, so this is phony hand-waving rather than simple stupidity or ignorance. (Which fault is a more serious?).

Romney has plenty of concrete promises of rosy outcomes. The policies remain the Teaparty promises: no new taxes (more cuts); deregulate Wall Street; deregulate polluters; fire government employees; abort the incipient regulation of health insurance.

This boom is supposed to appear because of a joy-of-austerity, joy of the promise of dirtier air, joy of lost medical care. And despite the sucker-punch of a million lost government jobs in regulating, teaching, etc.

If the Teaparty is not enough reason to reject Romney, his incoherent imitation and exaggeration of Bush's economics ought to be.

Foreign policy, Romney versus Obama

The debate on foreign policy confirmed half of what I expected from Mitt Romney. Romney disagrees with Obama, not on any specific policy, but on presentation. The other half of what I expected was not actively confirmed, but I think that was a failure of the event.


What I think is, Obama follows Teddy Roosevelt's line, "Speak softly, but carry a big stick"; where Romney imagines better outcome from, "Shout, and carry an even bigger stick."



Here are a couple of what someone has called "irregular conjugations."
Romney's dimension goes,
I am bold, frank, and plain-speaking;
You are a bit argumentative;
He is rude, belligerent, and overly hasty.



Obama's dimension goes,
I am thoughtful, civil, and effective;
You are sometimes not confrontational enough;
He is meek and apologetic.



It is easy enough to see how the sociology will usually work here, where the "bold, plain-speaker" will regard the quieter style of response as meek and insufficient.


Romney has repeatedly called Obama apologetic. For a couple of years, I wondered if Obama was not confrontational enough in dealing with Republicans (in particular), but I came to recognize that Obama was wiser than me in a couple of cases – being civil and thoughtful proved to be effective in ways I had not imagined.


On the other hand, during the development of the consulate crisis, Romney blurted out political pronouncements of "apologies" based on misreading a pre-event memo as a post-event response. He embraced "too hasty" as his style.

Constructing the Constitution

The strict constructionists find excuses to reverse the social contract of the last 220 years, by saying “Well, it might be nice, but it is not in the Constitution.” That philosophy not only might give us the loss of any federal help on the rights to clean air, clean water, safe food, and safe working conditions … all of which, please recognize, are already targeted by the Teaparty. The particular decision on Obamacare surprised observers in several respects. After the constructionists were impressed by the silly broccoli metaphor during oral argument, the betting odds turned against a decision allowing the program. The decision for it was a bit of a surprise, but not as surprising as its justification – Roberts' decision allowed the program, but built in an argument to weaken a rather old precedent for federal use of the commerce clause.



Not long before, the 2010 decision on Citizens' United expanded the scope of corporations. This becomes more alarming when you consider that the newer rights and entitlements (220 years of social contract) were, often, necessitated by the size and scope and social heedlessness of the corporations that employ everyone – Today's economic and material status quo stands in strong contrast to the era of the Founding Fathers when 80% of the population farmed.






There is one Constitution of 7 Articles and 27 amendments, but that is not the whole of our “constitution”. There are laws and interpretations and the principle of stare decisis, which says, “no arbitrary changes from the past.” It seems to me that modern Supreme Court justices follow stare decisis most of the time, because there is no problem; but any of them are willing to overturn precedents. In their respective confirmation hearings, Sotomayor and Kagan each argued convincingly that “judicial activism” is simply not a useful concept.



The record shows that, yes, for a couple of decades after WW II, the liberal issues, supported by liberal justices, showed more apparent activism, but for the last couple of decades, it has been the conservative issues and justices who overturn more decisions. So, “being active” is not the criterion for the folks who still object to judicial activism.



Decisions are built not only on previous law, but also on understandings of science and philosophy that may go on for pages in a crucial decision. So the Constitution includes the original text with the Bill of Rights, later amendments with short changes, and important decisions, some of them with explanations. The philosophy of the Founders is taken into special account – the Declaration of Independence is a second document that is often taken as being important for widening the jurisdiction of the Constitution, to include a larger set of hopes and promises... and more federal power. The Constitution is an important anchor, but it is just a starting place for what we believe and what we follow.



I was surprised when I first heard a discussion of the United Kingdom being a "constitutional monarchy". This seems to be an useful and meaningful description, in spite of the fact that that country has no written constitution. It does have an on-going, consistent process, and they do have a very similar, resulting, rule of law that "governs" the government. When courts rule on the Constitution, more history is implicated than merely the words of the Constitution.



In the Dred Scott case in 1857, Justice Taney hoped to end the long-festering disputes about slavery. The idea of “all men being created equal” bumped up against a contradiction, in slavery. Of course, that "equal" phrase was in the Declaration, not the Constitution... Should it matter? Lincoln's Gettysburg Address pointed back (“four scores and seven years”) to the signing of the Declaration, but his argument helped to create that modern opinion that the Declaration should matter. The issue in Dred Scott was, Did a Northerner have to return a slave?



Taney wrote an opinion that decided “Yes”, based on revised "fact" – He concluded that those African American slaves were not to be considered human beings. So they had no rights. This left the South with their preferred version of laws, and left many in the North outraged. I wonder if the Civil War would have arrived even sooner if that decision had fallen the opposite way. On one side or the other, many laws would need to be changed. The Court took the course of establishing a particular “fact” that made it natural to review, to declare (even) some old laws to have been unconstitutional. The decision did so. (I don't know what Taney would have done about free blacks in the North.)



Taney argued that the people at the time of the founding of the country did not recognize blacks as people. As I read it, he was the first practitioner of construction by “original intent.” Basing a decision on “revised fact” is generally less offensive to stare decisis than a new version of law based on old facts. Taney's serious error is that the facts he used were already, in 1857, too far from true.


In Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896, the court faced a question of whether “separate but equal” treatment of blacks would meet constitutional standard for equality. This time, the court settled for a sociological “fact” of great dubiety. Could any parade of facts have shown where separate was equal, to a rational and fair audience?



Brown v. Board of Education, 1954, was explicitly based on a review of facts, documented especially in a sociological text by Gunnar Myrdal. Separate had not been equal. Laws needed to change, to recognize that the whole slew of Jim Crow legislation of 50-plus years was inherently not-constitutional. The SC did face up to the contradictions. The new facts mandated change, to enforce the constitutional guarantee of equal rights. Schools were the prominent target of immediate change.



These are examples of how facts affect law in civil rights. The provisions for “equality” in the Declaration of Independence, reinforced by explicit instructions in the 14^th Amendment, gave the national government an enormous new scope of activities to overcome injustices and promote fairness. Other phrases have seen expansion of protections, freedoms and entitlements, too. 
 

“The facts” are relevant; accept that the scope of laws can be expanded as a logical consequence. Here are several more, in very few words.



Eisenhower's building of the Interstate Highway System was justified by these "facts" – national security and national defense needed the ability to move soldiers and materiel across the country. And it needed healthy citizens to fill the ranks of an army. And there is the commerce clause that permits expansion of activities in many ways never dreamed of by the founders, who never knew any "national corporation." The health of the citizenry depends on clean air and clean water.



The constitution evolves. The new decisions become part of the wider constitution that is to be preserved.



I think I learned an important legal distinction between "facts" and "law" during the news coverage of the Appeals decision on California's Prop. 8 (gay marriage). The judge made summaries in those two categories, including 81 findings of fact. Reportedly, the SC would be almost forced to accept the judge's conclusions of fact, while they would be free to dispute his conclusions about how previous law - in this case, the Constitution - should be applied.



The daily coverage of the case indicated that the opponents of gay marriage leaned heavily on facts that were bar-room rambling (or, chat-room, these days), and history that either was a-historical or not relevant. The customs of the 1780s are not part of the constitution, but they did inform the writers. Men had rights, women and children did not. Women and children were chattel, and could own nothing. Those are facts that have changed.



Sociology may describe a tiny role for teen-revolt, but modern biology says that same-sex attraction is not a sinful choice, but (if you want this language) is the way God made some people. Competent science says that people who are homosexual are not notably criminal or insane. The defenders of Prop. 8 were reduced, it seemed, to admitting something like, "I read it somewhere on the internet."



Once the old-time asymmetry of marriage is removed (done! in the minds of the younger generation), there seems to be full justification for extending legal status, rights, protections, etc. The legal rulings from California generated great optimism on the gay-marriage side. The SC would have to do a large amount of legal twisting to avoid the natural extension of rights. However...



I used construction of the Constitution with forethought about the Teaparty mantra of "strict construction"; and about the 3 justices who endorse some version of original intent and strict construction.



What is strict construction? – adhere to the words that are written, and nothing else, using original intent, perhaps, as construed from either the authors of the Constitution, or the legislators, or the people of the time, by making use of old dictionaries when necessary. Mix-and-match to get conclusions that feel right.



Theoretically, it ought to be possible to come up with a consistent interpretation that way, given time to develop it. In practice, strict construction (to me) has been an excuse for self-indulgent decisions with a so-called conservative flavor: It serves as an excuse to pretend that no science exists beyond the 18th century, no new rights and entitlements; there are no new items of social contract embodied in 220 years of decisions. In other words, they have a program of radical retrenchment, not conservation. Because they grant themselves so much leeway, I am never too surprised at whatever those justices will decide.



The arbitrariness of strict-construction decision-makers is promoted by the novelty of their doctrine. Each Justice can choose to carve a path without much critical feedback – they are the defining authorities. The arbitrariness of their outcomes is illustrated by their disagreements on where "strict construction" leads them. I read documentation on that in a book praising Clarence Thomas.

Natural rights and social contract

The Teaparty advocates of natural rights limit their approval, it seems to me, to the negative rights. They don't want the government to interfere; but they also don't want the government to provide freedoms and entitlements that expand the social contract beyond its early days. The Founding fathers created, first, the Articles of Confederation. That made a hopelessly crippled central government. They replaced the Articles with the today's constitution, where the central government was also deprived of some power. Teapartyers today regard the latter, sometimes, as almost a holy document, while also imagining it to be as weak as the Articles. Now, I'd say that most Teapartyers do want most of the new entitlements, but they have been led to idealize powerlessness by a modern set of anarchists.


Since those early days, there has been an extensive re-working and re-writing of the social contract. It was necessary to accommodate 200 years of history. A.  Farmers are no longer 90% of the population. B. The needs and the ills of urbanization would have torn apart the country, if there were job entitlements and protections. C. Science and philosophy created new conditions, and new contradictions; doing nothing would have violated basic principles of fairness. Major changes arose or were justified when the Declaration of Independence was added as a “basic document” of our meaning of freedom and fairness. The vast increase in the wealth of society is another main source of evolution of rights and entitlements.


If someone mentions the point, I'm willing to accept that the Constitution should be re-written explicitly, or at least have some new amendments, to make it easier for the national government to do what it it needs to do. Is it really efficient to enforce a national mandate by bribing the states with federal funding, and coerce them by threatening to withhold it? But, further, I want to say, If you don't like the way that the Constitution has been re-interpreted over the years, what is needed is a set of amendments that formalize the necessary changes. It is hostile and stupid to try to throw out the newer 200 years of social contract.



Mitt Romney, in the infamous May “47%” tape, sneers at people thinking that they are entitled to health care, food and a roof over their head. As a wealthy industrial state, do we want to allow people to starve or be forced to live under bridges? I'd say that the answer is No, but that is not the consequence of his answer. We have pretty minor assurances, so far, for health, food, and shelter. We have a longer history of some other entitlements, like public schools, good roads, firemen, policemen, safe jobs. There is a shorter history of safe food, safe water, clean air, but all those are proper expectations of modern civilization.


At the root, the problem is that “paying for them” is an impediment to one's private enjoyment of wealth (worship of Mammon?). The overt excuses are separate and diverse, and never impressive. In some recent rhetoric, they implicitly class all “government jobs” as inherently fake-jobs, as compared to “private industry”, so they favor privatization. Teapartyers in Congress have resisted Obama's attempts at job creation/preservation following those rationales. They have opposed federal Recession help for localities to fund police and firemen, and national building of needed infrastructure as stimulus.

We need schools. We have free, public schools, with some standards for education. Teapartyers prefer home-schooling and charter schools, especially if they can avoid standards that teachers' unions tend to insist on, like, decent teaching of evolution, climate science, or sex education. Teapartyers have lately recorded successes in both breaking teachers' unions and in funding charter schools (unusually non-union).

We have public roads. Eisenhower justified the national roads system under the excuse of national defense. I suspect that we will yet see costly failures from the privatization of turnpikes.

Workers have the right to decent hours and conditions. – The protection agencies are among the primary targets of the Teaparty.

Cleveland has the right to a river that does not catch on fire; Pittsburgh has a right to breathable air. Generally, fishes should have a right to rivers that are liveable, and wildlife should have a right to natural environments. However, the Teaparty faction seems to be broadly committed to ending the EPA, with no mention of preserving its functions.

Up til Obamacare, we had a minimal level of health-care entitlement. Ron Paul was not well received when he presented the Libertarian position, that emergency rooms should not provide unpaid-for life-saving care.. I imagine that most Teapartyers do not recognize that this entitlement, as an enforceable entitlement, only dates to the 1980s, as a provision for accepting Medicare payments. (Justice Alito sniffed at a mention of this during the Obamacare case, it was reported, “And how did that happen?”) Emergency room care (only) for life-threatening emergencies (only) is inefficient, insufficient for decent health, and far behind the entitlement offered by every other advanced country.

Two other aspects of health entitlement – and social contract – deserve mention. Parents have duties towards the health of their kids, regardless of their own personal religious prejudices; children are no longer dependent property which can be treated howsoever the parents prefer. Parents cannot avoid certain vaccinations for their children. Further, they cannot deny care for critically ill children. I have not seen the Teaparty attack this part of the new social contract, unlike their visible successes against unions, public schools, and the right to an abortion.


These rights for children arose after children were recognized as having independent rights as human beings. I think it is similar to the rationale by which wives are no longer as the property of their husbands; they are independent human beings, with rights of self-determination. I wonder how many of today's young people know that child abuse practically did not “exist” before the 1950s, because the rights of parents were exclusive. We see very rare cases, these days, where parents justify injuries as the result of (literally) “beating the devil out of” a child. Teapartyers include these people but I haven't seen any fight on this issue... except, say, for the revival of physical punishment in schools (Texas, today's news report).

Somewhat similarly, it is more recent than that when it was established (generally, I think, but I am not sure) that a husband could be charged with raping his own wife. “Ownership” is no longer the accepted social contract. Here's another place where the Teapartyers have not been shouting, but their war on autonomy of women leaves me wondering how far they will go.

Women have a right to abortion. Women have a right to birth control.... which was illegal in many states until the Supreme Court expanded on a “right to privacy” which itself is derivative. These aspects of women's autonomy are particular targets of the Fundamentalist core of the Teaparty. This is seen in the last two years in dozens of laws proposed at the national level, and dozens enacted among hundreds proposed in Republican states. Several states have enacted the pre-abortion requirement of “trans-vaginal ultrasonic probes” as a form of harassment for those using their right to an abortion. And Romney (following his competitors) endorses a Person-hood Amendment, as does his formal party platform.

Unlike some newer constitutions, which are modeled on such things as UN Declaration of Rights, the US Constitution does not explicitly guarantee these rights; and it riles some people to see 220 years of the government taking on new “powers”. Well, the interpretation of the constitution has evolved. It might be neater if the Constitution did spell out more federal powers, during this time that the social contract evolved, and the notion of rights and entitlements evolved. It does spell out those rights in a series of Supreme Court decisions.

The Teaparty has listened to anarchists and concluded that taxes are bad; therefore government is bad; and let's get rid of them all. I can't see how that is compatible with maintaining civilization.

Teaparty - its recent ascendency

This is about the rise of the Teaparty, hitting the high points of its takeover of the Republican dialog and mentioning the most obvious consequences.


I take as given that the reputation of the Teaparty is not universally good within the Republican Party, and that is why I expect that the information here will help those voters to fall away from their party.


The 2010 Republican primary elections for the US House and Senate indicated a meaningful shift in several ways. First, a few incumbents were defeated by their primary opponents, which is unusual. Second, there were a number of other conventional candidates favored on the party slates, who were challenged and defeated by Teaparty opponents. Several of these came across to the GOP establishment as loose cannons at best. A few seemed like unbalanced extremists who should, for the sake of party integrity and good sense, be abandoned. I'm thinking, in particular, of Sharron Angle of Nevada ("2nd Amendment solutions") and Christine O'Donnell of Delaware ("I am not a witch").


Third, helping to lock in their institutional inroads, the Teapartyers were not abandoned by their party. I thought that I detected a crucial choice involving Karl Rove. When Christine O'Donnell won her nomination, Rove immediately was quoted in the press as opposing the idea that the party should support her; she was a terrible candidate and was almost bound to lose anyway. But within 48 hours of that, he changed his mind. – A week later, Rove announced that his PAC would have 50% more to spend for the general election that he had previously announced. I was highly suspicious at the time that those two announcements might be linked; and the two years since then has shown that Murdoch and the Koch brothers are not the only billionaires who might have played a role.


None of the lousy candidates were repudiated by the national party. I noticed that there were local politicians in Nevada who were mentioned as disclaiming Angle, and I hope that other states had people with some good sense even though I never saw them mentioned. Will GOP endorsements mean anything in the future? Unfortunately, this corruption of "endorsing" on the national stage seems to have fallen beneath the active notice of the media. Worse, I saw a case where reporters re-interpreted non-endorsement as a personal thing, on top of "winning is everything" – In November, 2010, a few days before the elections, Obama pointedly failed to endorse the Democratic candidate for governor of Rhode Island. The CNN reporters of the non-endorsement cynically wondered who Obama might be rewarding in the GOP establishment... even though the same news cycle did have the vulgar retort of that candidate to the news. That candidate's reaction seemed to me to give sufficient evidence, by itself, that this fellow was not suited for high office.



Throughout the 2010 election season, the GOP granted these candidates a certain degree of gravitas. And all of them seemed happy to enter the national debate by extending the official Republican lie that "Obamacare is a takeover by the national government of medical care in the US."


Now, it did happen that both Angle and O'Donnell lost. Had Democrats been facing the folks that they beat in the primaries, there's a good chance that the Democrats would have lost both those races, and lost control of the Senate. As I imagine it, dedicated Teapartyers had little or no regret for the total outcome – Elevating the Teaparty profile was worthwhile to them, even at that cost. In their perspective, the "conventional Republicans" who they beat were very little better than the Democrats who won.


Now I will reach back to the early days of the Obama administration for the early impetus of the Teaparty. Before the street demonstrations and faces on Fox News, there was the now-famous agreement between Republican factions to "oppose everything Obama tries to do, deny him any success." I am not sure how immediately important that was; the folks we now know as Teaparty were going to oppose any expenditures, ... and undoubtedly would have given McCain a hard time if he had been elected. This seems to me to have been a ploy from the "win-at-any-cost" segment of the conventional party which dragged in the whole party.


With some tacit approval of party leadership, the GOP opposition to Obama was more abrasive and stupid and dishonest than might otherwise have been allowed. In particular, when Obama shifted from opposition to adopting the GOP's capitalistic program of reducing pollution through "cap-and-trade", instead of direct control, the new GOP stance became (1) calling cap-and-trade socialistic, and (2) backing up to pretend that, after all, there must not be any problem of global warming. Generally, they adopted a position that, "Not only is there 'no problem,' but there is not a strong suggestion of a problem which would call for prudent contingency planning."


I already mentioned opposition to Obamacare, which is a clone of Romneycare, that was built on GOP ideas from 1995, and never seriously opposed until 2009.


A few other issues worked out similarly, where the old Republican main-line is apparently off-line; and sensible, far-sighted approaches are no longer Politically Correct to even suggest. Campaign finance reform? Not even public exposure of contributors. Immigration reform? Certainly, no tuition support for illegal aliens.



A separate consequence of the 2010 elections was the GOP takeover of dozens of state governments, by governor and both houses. This has been followed by literally hundreds of bills to restrict abortions and access to abortions, and attempts to slip in "legal" government interference with the right to abortions. That does include "trans-vaginal probes" that some states require that women pay for and obtain, clearly intended as an objectionable nuisance. (It is ironical that these legislators, on other days, complain of intrusive government.) That does include laws to require doctors to misinform women about risks of abortion ("leads to suicide and cancer") and to permit doctors to lie to women about genetic defects, if lying might avoid an abortion. There have also been attacks on unions; attacks on public schools: curriculum on the one hand, charter schools on the other. And a win-at-any-cost effort at voter suppression, mainly for the sake of this 2012 election. (Attacking fraud would focus on absentee ballots.)


Finally, there is the hardening of Teaparty positions into GOP political-correctness during the 2011-2012 Presidential campaign season. Everybody signs the (totally irresponsible) Tax Pledge of Norquist. Everybody ends up endorsing the Personhood amendment, intended to ban all abortions and birth control pills and IUDs. Everybody is (seemingly) denying global climate change. (However, I do find the similar statements by Romney and Gingrich to be equivocations ... more on that later.) See
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/30/gop-platform-highlights-the-partys-drastic-shift-on-energy-climate-issues/


These things are in the GOP platform. Norquist, the no-tax anarchist, says something like, Just give us a Republican who has enough fingers to grasp a pen and we will give him the laws.

Accidental lies. "It's effectively the same thing."

The campaign of 2012 has more lies and accusations of lying that the usual campaign. This fits oddly with the newly widespread presence of journalists and other groups who are marking and complaining about lies. Part of the problem is that the fact-checkers themselves are not beyond error.

Part of the problem is the Rove-reversal that is now a (GOP) standard technique, that whatever you are accused of, you accuse your accuser, regardless of how silly it may seem. Karl Rove doesn't like to see any potent material go unanswered, and if his GOP advisees can't answer directly, then they can (at worst) confuse the most casual and ignorant viewers by laying the same claim against the other side.

- I have seen Sarah Palin say (a) that the Democrats need to be more careful in vetting VP candidates; and (b) in another news-bite, that Democrats, unlike Republicans, were prone to say nasty things about their opponents. This post is written with the idea that people can learn to distinguish some of the prominent lies on their own.

Lie (1). Paul Ryan's early plan on Medicare. Interpretations of it did not jell until the Congressional Budget Office reported that it was effectively the same thing as a voucher system. Democrats had been trying various assessments, but that one was sufficiently concise and negative that they could go with it. Plus, it came from a source that is not partisan. Republicans disliked what the Democrats liked, but the media universally decided that the judgment was sound enough. So we could call it a voucher system. And by easy extension, it would be the end of Medicare as we have known it.

See http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2011/dec/20/lie-year-democrats-claims-republicans-voted-end-me/

However, the immediate advertising by some Democrats went a bit further, to say that "Republicans have voted to end Medicare" without tacking on, "as we have known it." Since the vote was explicitly to replace Medicare, not to end it, the assertion, "end it," was not literally true. Moreover, Republicans protested this abuse.

PolitiFact.com is perhaps the biggest name among the fact-checking sources. After reporting on 9 versions of that claim recorded over several months, they ended up pronouncing that particular Lie as their “2011 Lie of the Year.” That choice was, in its turn, protested by some Democrats. They argued (and still do) that it was "effectively the same thing." Well, sometimes a Truth does not have to have the literal fact behind it, but by my standards, you can't persist with the claim – in a fair debate or discussion – when the opponents can point to the literal inaccuracy, and claim that it matters. Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, whom I usually agree with, was wrong in protesting this particular verdict from PolitiFact.com. She did use the wording that what Ryan's plan does "is really the same thing" and treated that as sufficient.

Lie (2). Before the 2010 elections, Republicans all across the country ran for the U.S. House and Senate on the claim that "Obamacare represents a government take-over of medical care." This was easily assessed as a lie by everyone who cared; and it eventually was named by PolitiFact.com as their 2010 "Lie of the Year." I am not sure that the language started out as an intentional lie, but it did end up that way.

“The same thing.” A copy of Britain's National Health Service would be a clear take-over of of health care and would be “the same thing.” In the NHS, the government does run the hospitals and pay the doctors. - I don't think that sort of reform lasted past the Democrat's first cocktail party discussion of what might be done.

“Almost the same thing.” Another prospect that is still bandied about is Single Payer, which would replace all insurance companies. Especially if you already deem that the insurance companies have taken over health care in the US (except for the 50 million people without insurance), a Single Payer system might be called a national take-over of the health system. For a long time in the months while health reform percolated in Congress, it was not clear that Single Payer would not be proposed. People who are more literal-minded (or, I don't know, maybe they have discussed these things more than I have, and they are more particular) might object to labeling Single Payer as a national take-over. Personally, I would still consider that fair. Many, many millions of advertising dollars were spent in protesting the developing program before it became clear that Single Player was never going to be written down and proposed as an alternative.

“Not the same thing.” As far as I can judge, and what seems to be the judgment of everyone rating lies, we don't have a "national take-over of health-care" so long as the insurance companies are in place. However, I can describe one part of the process that helped it take root. As Obamacare took shape, there was the necessary creation of coverage for the un-insurable. In early planning, the potential existed that the federal government would be the insurer-of-last resort. In a real sense, it might provide competition to existing companies. I know that I heard at least one ad which asserted, not entirely unfairly, that this federal role could be a wedge that led the government to take over all insurance if companies failed to compete.

In response to that sort of criticism from Republicans, that last-resort-insurer was re-designed so that the states would have the primary role in providing that extra insurance; and there would be heavy subsidies to push the states into doing so, instead of letting the care default to a federal organization. That extra layer of protection was included in the law.

In the end, Obamacare was modeled after the Republican plan from 1995, pretty much as implemented by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts in 2005, drawing on advice from Romney's experts; and as modified by GOP criticism in Congress. So it is pretty thoroughly a Republican plan, despite the Republican refusal to vote for it.

- However, what happened to the debate, as I see it, is that Republicans found from experience how potent the "national take-over" phrase was. Did anybody ever feel that Romney-care is "essentially the same thing" as a state takeover of the health system in Massachusetts? Of course not.

What we do see is that Republicans kept on using the line, regardless of its status as a thoroughly demonstrated misrepresentation. They did not suffer for it, except for a loss of reputation and honor (for those who care). I don't know how big a part this played in the GOP successes in 2010, but I know that it was a big feature in the ads by Toomey, here in Pennsylvania. 

Lie (3). That Republican-owned 2010 Lie of the Year is still current. I don't know if Fox News still helps its promotion, but another politician echoed it again today. I have drawn a conclusion from this example and several others – to Republicans these days, Winning is more important than being fair or honest.

By contrast, Democrats rather quickly and pretty thoroughly (from what I've seen) retired the 2011 Lie of the Year, "end of Medicare." They are not always accurate in all other details, but the overall assertion, these days, is almost always "the end of Medicare as we know it"; or, "replace Medicare with a voucher system." If you read the PolitiFact.com discussion, you may note that they did not approve very much of the revised statements, either, but that was for reasons less clear.

My conclusion is that I this is one of the important sources of disagreement, which starts out as legitimate. The response is not legitimate when the opponent re-asserts the lie. (This is a habit, this year, of the GOP... and not so much the Democrats.)

Teaparty components

There are a number of political strands that make up the Teaparty. If you ask them, what they share is a distaste for "too much government” but they don't have to agree on all the details. I figure them as making up a sort of conspiracy of outsiders, each group of whom previously held less respect and authority in the Republican Party than they thought they deserved. That is why they are often described as "angry"-- it is directed at other Republicans. They are mad at what seemed like getting lip-service and not enough laws. Later on, I will get into more about what they have received. I think that the Party did give them more actual concessions than they yet recognize – There are at least 3 Justices of the Supreme Court who were chosen from the furthest fringe that could win confirmation; unconfirmed nominee Bork was beyond the fringe.

The largest man-in-the-street component of the Teaparty comprises fundamentalist Christians. Their first issues are abortion and Creationism, which readily expand to include opposition to birth control and hostility to public schools. They don't care fervently about corporate taxes, income taxes, estate taxes. They don't care fervently about regulation of corporations, whether for air pollution or Wall Street speculation. They sometimes care about homosexuals, though many may recognize that as a lost issue by today. They sometimes pledge almost as much faith in their readings of the Constitution as their readings of the Bible.

The big-money component of the Teaparty is dominated by a small number of billionaires. That contrasts to the old-line GOP alignment with Chamber of Commerce major industrial lobby groups … thus reducing the influence of reason and argument. The biggest influences on policy up to now are reputedly the Koch brothers (gas and oil) and Rupert Murdoch (Wall Street Journal, Fox tv networks). Murdoch promoted the development of the Teaparty on his stations; his agenda seems to be taxes but he was not pleased with candidate Romney. Though they down-talk the connections, the Koch brothers are said to have provided seed money in small amounts to each of thousands of local groups, thus winning an early and persistent allegiance. The Koches are concerned especially with preserving profits for their industry – low taxes; and getting rid of regulations relevant to oil, gas, and chemical exploitation. I don't know that they care at all about the principle issues of the fundamentalists.

 The closest thing to an intellectual side of the Teaparty is probably the anarchist, nihilistic politicians that make up Libertarianism (Ron Paul) and Objectivism. Paul Ryan, VP candidate, has lately disowned Objectivism and its founder, Ayn Rand. She was a Russian emigre who was firmly atheistic and pro-abortion, in addition to adoring hero-led-capitalism. I will say a little more about each of these.

Libertarians in 1980 celebrated with the slogan, "Taxation is theft." That slogan was invented about the same time that the Libertarian Party was formed, 1972. This was not an ironic reflection of Proudhon's 1840 anarchist/ socialist slogan, "Property is theft." I sometimes do like to muse on the latter, but what I find more useful is a pertinent quotation from Justice Holmes, 1908, "Taxes are the price that we pay for civilization." I wondered about Libertarianism back in the 1970s; I concluded that it was impossible to accept its weakness in preserving rights and justice, because it depended on individuals suing in courts. But in the sarcastic sentiment of Anatole France, "Sure, the law is even-handed. It prohibits both rich men and poor men from sleeping under bridges and begging in the street." I don't know if Libertarians dropped their recipe for preserving rights because it was too unlikely, or if they buried that argument as a price for peace with the George W. Bush's platform goal of "tort reform".

On Objectivism – Alan Freedman was once an acolyte of Rand's. Finally as leader of the Federal Reserve, he preached Free Markets to a wide audience, for decades. I wished that the media had made more of it when he announced (more or less) that the 2008 market crash had cured him of 40 years of error, in imagining that "free markets" could do no evil. He now recognizes that regulation is, indeed, necessary. His apostasy should have been bigger news. On other issues: Libertarians have been traditionally in favor of abortion and no rules on sex, including homosexual behavior – I thought – but this year's campaigner Ron Paul took relevant stands compliant with the Teaparty fundamentalists.

 Libertarians and Objectivists seem united in opposing active roles of government in almost anything except Defense.

There are other smaller strands of the Teaparty. I will mention just one more, the National Rifle Association. This group, as a group, does not seem to speak on other issues besides the wide distribution of guns and ammunition, but they pioneered the narrow-focus intimidation of politicians, especially in GOP primaries, that is coming to define the whole party.