Dueling Op-Eds And the Great Divide
Posted: February 26, 2012 Filed under: birth control, Congress, Elizabeth Warren Campaign, fetus fetishists, fundamentalist Christians, PLUB Pro-Life-Until-Birth, Scott Brown, The DNC, the GOP, War on Women, Women's Healthcare, Women's Rights 13 CommentsIt will be a fine fight for the Senate seat in Massachusetts and the lead up is not disappointing. The Horse Race is now turning into a duel at thirty
paces.
Elizabeth Warren offered the first volley, making her position clear on the contentious dispute over women’s access to contraception under the Healthcare Reform Act. She stated in no uncertain terms that exclusionary waivers for contraception access were outrageous. She supports President Obama’s compromise and expressed shock at Scott Brown signing onto the Blunt amendment that would allow employers deny coverage for ‘moral or religious reasons.’ Speaking to Greg Sargent last week she said:
This is an extreme attack on every one of us. It opens the door to outright discrimination. It would let insurance companies and corporations cut off pregnant women, overweight guys, older Americans, or anyone — because some executive claims it’s part of his moral code. Maybe that wouldn’t happen, but I don’t want to take the chance.
Neither do I.
But even if the language in the Blunt amendment were airtight, I’d oppose it and find the suggestion totally unacceptable. I pay taxes for wars for which I was never consulted and absolutely disagree with. That’s against my moral code. Can I get a tax refund now? I also think giving vulture oil companies subsidies is a ludicrous and immoral practice. Another refund? Oh, and those Wall Street bankers, the greed, the fraud that American taxpayers got stuck for? I want my money back, now.
We can all play this opt-out game.
So, where does Scott Brown come down on the question of women’s healthcare? Quelle surprise! He’s rubberstamping the irrational GOP position. But by doing so, he takes a 180-degree spin from his 2002 vote, when he supported a mandate on contraception, the Church be damned! Nonetheless, his answer to Warren? Through spokesman, Colin Reed:
It’s elitist for Elizabeth Warren to dictate to religious people about what they should believe and how they should act. She wants to use the power of government to force Catholics to violate the teachings of their faith. That is wrong. This issue deals with one of our most fundamental rights as a people — the freedom of religion. Like Ted Kennedy, Scott Brown supports a religious conscience exemption in health care.
Nice going, Mr. Brown. It’s wrong today but wasn’t wrong in 2002. The political winds must have been blowing differently a decade ago. And we’re conjuring up the ghost of Teddy Kennedy? Shame on you. But what I really like is the word ‘elitist,’ which is the Republican/Fox News buzzword for ‘those snooty people, who are not real Americans.’ Real Americans drive a truck like Scott Brown–back and forth to a home in Wrentham valued between $1-2.3 million.
Yup, just like average folks!
Lest we forget, there’s a reason Scott Brown was named by Forbes magazine as one of “Wall Street’s favorite senators.”
To be fair, Elizabeth Warren is no financial slouch. Both Warren and Brown have done extremely well for themselves. They’re both lawyers, educated, well-heeled professionals, standing on either side of the Great Divide we call politics. The issue of contraception has been put into play, an issue that according to all polls marks Warren’s position as the undisputed winner.
The Boston Globe ran Dueling Op-Eds on the issue. Warren’s editorial is here.
She starts with that withering image of the Republican panel that Representative Issa managed to convene—a panel of five poker-faced, middle-aged men discussing contraception and religious rights. In the optics department it was a devastating image. Out of touch much? A prime female health consideration and you fail to have women on the panel? Says everything we need to know on the Republican mindset. Elizabeth Warren then takes Scott Brown to task not only for supporting the proposed Blunt bill but fighting to get it passed.
If you are married and your employer doesn’t believe married couples should use birth control, then you could lose coverage for contraception. If you’re a pregnant woman who is single, and your employer doesn’t like it, you could be denied maternity care. This bill is about how to cut coverage for basic health care services for women.
Let’s be clear what this proposed law is not about: This is not about Catholic institutions or the rights of Catholics to follow their faith. President Obama has already made sure religious institutions will not be forced to cover contraception – at the same time that he has made sure women can get the health care they need directly from their health care insurers. Carol Keehan, the president and CEO of Catholic Health Association, said that Obama’s approach “protects the religious liberty and conscience rights of Catholic institutions.
And Scott Brown’s answer: It’s a matter of fundamental fairness. Really?
Here’s the beginning of Brown’s statement:
The new ObamaCare mandate forcing religious organizations to offer insurance coverage for practices that violate the teachings of their church gives the government control over the most personal aspects of our lives. It also erodes one of the basic protections of the Constitution – the right to practice religion without government interference.
The federal government is now saying to religious hospitals and charities, “Just do what you’re told, and leave the moral questions to us.’’ This over-reaching dictation from Washington is one reason I opposed and voted to repeal ObamaCare.
Which, of course, fails to answer the earlier question: why was a mandate A-okay in 2002, yet oh so wrong now? Possibly because then it concerned RomneyCare. The name makes all the difference in the world! Interesting, too, that according to Think Progress:
Brown also voted for a 2005 bill mandating hospitals to offer emergency contraception to rape victims, even after lawmakers defeated his amendment to allow religious hospitals to opt out of the requirement. Brown split with then-Gov. Mitt Romney on the matter and joined the legislature in overriding his veto.
And the American public? The polling numbers on the issue of contraception and subsequent WH compromise are revealing:
Obama’s compromise takes this politically charged issue off the table for mainstream Americans, most of whom side with Obama. A Fox News poll conducted last week before Obama’s Friday announcement found that 61 percent of voters believe employer health plans should be required to cover birth control for women, while 34 percent disagreed. Among women, two thirds approved of the requirement.
Rush Limbaugh may scoff at the issue. But for women? This is a very big deal. Because birth control means reaching this point in our lives:
When we’re ready.
And Mr. Brown? You’re not only a hypocrite on the issue, you’re definitely on the wrong side of history.
Open Thread: Republicans don’t *have* to be Mean-Spirited like Karl Rove
Posted: February 6, 2012 Filed under: open thread, Republican politics, the GOP, U.S. Politics | Tags: auto bailout, Chrysler, Clint Eastwood, Karl Rove, Superbowl 15 CommentsI admit I didn’t watch a single Superbowl ad. I didn’t watch the halftime show either. I just can’t stand to. I did hear that there was an ad with Clint Eastwood in it, and I decided to watch it after I heard that Karl Rove was “offended” by it. From Raw Story:
Fox News host Jon Scott on Monday told Rove that Democrats were celebrating the ad as evidence of the effectiveness of President Barack Obama’s bold decision to bailout the auto companies instead of letting them go under.
“This is a sign of what happens when you have government getting in bed with big business like the bailout of the auto companies,” Rove complained. “The leadership of the auto companies feel they need to do something to repay their political patrons.”
“I was, frankly, offended by it,” he added. “I’m a huge fan of Clint Eastwood. I thought it was an extremely well-done ad, but it is a sign of what happens when you have Chicago-style politics. And the president of the United States and his political minions are, in essence, using our tax dollars to buy corporate advertising.”
As the article points out, Rove’s old boss Dubya provided General Motors with $17.4 billion in government loans before Obama was President. Was he offended by that?
We’ve actually reached the point where Republicans are “offended” by improvement in the U.S. economy and are doing everything in their power to bring it down again. As for Clint Eastwood, who is a registered Republican, I thank him for not only doing the ad but also for standing up for LGBT rights.
Tuesday Reads
Posted: January 31, 2012 Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney, morning reads, Newt Gingrich, the GOP, U.S. Politics | Tags: animal hoarding, Florida primary, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, pets, rescue workers 41 Comments
Good Morning!! Tonight is the Florida Republican primary, and we’ll be live blogging it later on. This post is going to be a quickie, because I worked way too long on the one I put up last night. Still, I do have some interesting reads to recommend.
A couple of days ago, I read a fascinating piece by Emily Yoffe at Slate about the difficulty of adopting pets these days. It seems that if you want to adopt a pet from a rescue place, you have to fill out endless forms and go to great lengths to prove you’re worthy before you can be granted the privilege of taking home a cat or dog–or even a bird or hamster!
The article is really interesting and funny, so check it out. You won’t regret it. One of the most surprising facts Yoffe reveals is that 25% of people who are identified as animal hoarders are either past or present rescue workers!
I’m sure you’ve heard that Mitt Romney has been using a scorched earth policy against Newt Gingrich in Florida. The NYT had an interesting article on the reasons for Romney’s change in strategy.
In a call last Sunday morning, just hours after Mr. Romney’s double-digit loss to Mr. Gingrich in the South Carolina primary, the Romney team outlined the new approach to the candidate. Put aside the more acute focus on President Obama and narrow in on Mr. Gingrich.
Find lines of attack that could goad Mr. Gingrich into angry responses and rally mainstream Republicans. Swarm Gingrich campaign events to rattle him. Have Mr. Romney drop his above-the-fray persona and carry the fight directly to his opponent, especially in two critical debates scheduled for the week.
The results of that strategy, carried out by a veteran squad of strategists and operatives assembled by Mr. Romney to deal with just this kind of moment, have been on striking display here.
By this weekend, Mr. Romney’s aides were on the offensive and increasingly confident, with some combination of their strategy and Mr. Gingrich’s own performance swinging polls in Mr. Romney’s direction. Even as it acknowledged the damage inflicted on Mr. Romney by the past several weeks, his team suggested that it had learned a lesson about never letting up on rivals, especially if Mr. Romney wins the nomination and confronts Mr. Obama in the general election.
Some conservatives are really upset about what Romney is doing to Gingrich. They say he may win the Florida primary, but he’s hurting the GOP and probably making himself a weaker candidate against Obama. Here’s an excerpt from a post by William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection:
If you asked me even a couple of weeks ago whether the Republican Party could heal from the wounds of this election cycle in time to unite against Obama, I would have said ”Yes.”
I’m not so sure anymore. After the South Carolina primary the Republican establishment, and media supporters like Matt Drudge, launched Scorched Earth II on Newt, while pro-Romney pundits like Ann Coulter heaped scorn on the conservative and Tea Party voters who sided with Newt.
It may just be “not-beanbag” to the Romney campaign and its supporters, but people hear them loud and clear.
Two lines of attack have exposed a schism between the Republican political haves and have nots which will not easily heal: The attempt to rewrite the history of the Reagan revolution and the embrace of Nancy Pelosi’s partisan ethics attack and blackmail.
Another conservative writer and talk show host, John Batchelor says Romney and Gingrich are “setting the GOP on a path to destruction.”
The primary campaign nastiness between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich is exhausting Republican loyalists. What in Iowa was a feisty contest between the haughty Mr. Romney and the operatic Mr. Gingrich turned hollow in New Hampshire and harsh in South Carolina. By the close of the Florida scramble, with the Herman Cain Express back from the repair yard to hitch onto the Newt baggage car, what remains of the Republican dialogue does not appear likely to be of much worth for the fall campaign.
The solution to the puzzle may be to admit that the GOP has forfeited 2012 before the general election even starts. How did this happen so suddenly?
“That’s the great mystery of 2012,” a senior Republican journalist told me while watching the brouhaha in Florida. “We have the weakest incumbent president in 32 years, running on the weakest record in 32 years… and who’s taking the stage in South Carolina and Florida? It has to be the weakest field I can remember. Each of these candidates has in his character, in his history, in his idea set—never mind disqualifying—a guarantee for self-destruction. If Newt is the candidate, he’ll lose badly. If Mitt is the candidate, he’ll lose slightly less badly … So what you have is an almost complete guarantee that if these are the candidates, Barack Obama will be reelected.”
It seems to me that the GOP is experiencing a major schism like the one that spit the Democratic party in 2008. This will be interesting to watch.
Mitt Romney appeared on the Today Show yesterday to defend his new campaign strategy. I can’t embed the NBC video here, but you can watch it at this Atlantic Wire link. I think Romney comes off as both arrogant and passive aggressive. He also addresses (but doesn’t really deal with) Tom Brokaw’s objections to being used in a Romney attack ad.
“We’ll sit down with the lawyers, talk to the folks at NBC, and make a decision on that front,” Romney told the Today show’s Matt Lauer when asked if he would pull the TV spot heavily featuring a 1997 Tom Brokaw newscast about Newt Gingrich. What Romney said on Today sounded a bit more unsure than the Romney staffer who over the weekend said the campaign would not be taking down the ad.
Last night, Romney continued to “ridicule” Gingrich, according to Reuters.
A confident Mitt Romney solidified his lead in Florida polls and ridiculed Republican rival Newt Gingrich on Monday, calling his opponent’s attacks “sad” and “painfully revealing” the day before the state’s crucial presidential primary.
Romney’s self-assuredness was on full display during a campaign tour that felt at times like a victory lap, with the front-runner telling a crowd of 2,000 in Dunedin, Florida: “With a turnout like this I got a feeling we might win tomorrow.”
I can’t help but wish that Florida voters would wipe that self-satisfied smile off Romney’s face tonight. Amazingly, Andrew Sullivan shares my feelings.
I didn’t watch 60 Minutes on Sunday night, but Glenn Greenwald did: Leon Panetta’s explicitly authoritarian decree. Read it and weep.
That’s about all I’ve got. I’ll end with Charlie Pierce’s latest: Romney, Basking in a Ray of Reality, Faces Real Test It’s his take on the NYT piece.
I am supposed to write now about how Willard Romney, the only presidential candidate in history to run as his own animatronic double, got his swerve on, his mojo back, and his engorged pen… no, wait, let me start again. I am supposed to write about how Willard Romney, a man with the charisma of grass seed and the political principles of a moray eel, became a newly formidable candidate after his thumping by Newt Gingrich among the holy-rolling swamp-runners in South Carolina. I read in yesterday’s New York Times that, after failing the ultimate test of his Gooberhood, Willard fled to one of his several Fortresses of Solitude, only to emerge in Florida as a lean, mean pompadoured war beast:
It was a call to arms employing all the visible and invisible tactics of political warfare.
(Ed. Note: Did they paint their faces blue and eat the still-beating hearts out of live elk?)
Now you can go read the rest at Charlie’s blog, and then come back and share what you’re reading and blogging about.
The Big Ugly
Posted: January 23, 2012 Filed under: 2012 primaries, Injustice system, just because, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, right wing hate grouups, The DNC, the GOP, U.S. Politics | Tags: 2012 presidential election, Barack Obama, Financial Crisis, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, U.S. Economy 25 CommentsHard to say what’s been worse this past week—putting up with a stomach virus or watching the ongoing GOP train wreck. In years past, the 
Gingrich factor would have been an instant tonic because the possibility that Newt Gingrich would pitch himself and his tainted legacy against a sitting Democratic President would be too, too delicious.
But that was then. This is now.
Though I’m no Mitt Romney fan, the very idea of Uncle Newt in the oval office makes me shudder. Though I’m no Barack Obama fan, Uncle Newt makes POTUS look immensely attractive. No small feat.
So where I might have jumped with joy in the past [oh please, let the Republicans nominate the ugliest, least electable candidate of the bunch], instead I’ve been thrown into a miserable funk.
The choices suck, the conversations continue to move to the extreme right and the American electorate flails in desperation.
If there’s any bright spot it is this: the longer Uncle Newt basks in glory, the more ugly he will reveal, namely the Republican penchant for the politics of petty grievances—the howl of the entitled patriarchy, still wounded by Paradise Lost; the claim of religious bigotry—the war on Christianity—while dismissing or denigrating any religion but their own; and the aggressive promise that if they can’t win, they’ll make damn sure no one else does. In addition, Newt’s recent success exposes the Tea Party for what it has truly become—a group of mindless obstructionists.
Sorry, you cannot make lemonade out of this one. Not when a voting group is willing to endorse and support a serial liar, a hypocrite without shame, a man willing to blow the dog whistle on all the old prejudices and wounds of race and gender, or conjure up the ghost of Andrew Jackson, a man Gingrich says knew how to deal with his enemies: he killed ‘em.
Native Americans, I suspect, have a different take.
Uncle Newt’s declarations might sound good in a John Wayne movie but not for the White House, not in the year 2012 when the country and the world is precariously perched on a knife edge.
But there’s more. The Newtster has taken on capitalism itself, exposing the underbelly of Republican economics—the mythical ‘free’ market, the unchained melody that without restraint will bring a Renaissance of prosperity and goodwill to hardworking Americans. Or so the tune goes.
Sing that to the unemployed, the homeless. Better yet, belt the lyrics out loud and clear to the nearly 50 million Americans now collecting food stamps, Uncle Newt’s favorite whipping boy. Or sing that discordant lullaby to the children [over 20%] now designated food insecure. Because unfettered capitalism has been the GOP’s clarion call for the last 40 years. Think about ‘trickle down’ economics, stagnating wages, the unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the call for ever-lower taxes because the ‘job creators’ need that extra revenue to make things right. Now recall the financial meltdown of 2008, where Wall St. took the unregulated ball and ran right off the cliff. Screaming ‘liberty’ on the way down doesn’t quite cut it for most of us.
This is the plus side of a Newt Gingrich, who with a magician’s flourish has pulled back the curtain on the Big Ugly. The lie is massive and cruel. The lie has inflicted pain and suffering on millions, both here and abroad.
The Hopemeister
The counter to all this is convincing the public that Barack Obama is a socialist/Marxist in hiding. President Obama is many things but a socialist and/or Marxist he is not. Barack Obama is a brand, a man marketed to the American public as a national savior. He was and is not. He’s simply a marker for the status quo.
And that’s where my ongoing funk comes in. On one side, we have Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul all extolling the Big Lie as the disease that will cure us. And on the other side we have President Obama pretending he’s Teddy Roosevelt reborn, ready to slay the Dragons of Monopoly. Only his words do not match his actions. They never did.
And then there’s us, the American electorate, the Consumer Nation brought low by dwindling expectations, the super-power made suddenly and irrefutably mortal. Will the election of 2012 rouse us from the trance that brought us to this moment? Will we see the Big Ugly for what it is rather than what we dreamt it to be?
Or will we tumble back into a dark and endless sleep?
Not to be overly depressing, there are glimmers of light on the horizon. Citizens are standing up, questioning the lack of justice in the system, the ongoing extraction of wealth by the top 1%. Despite the lack of coverage, the Occupy Wall St. movement still survives in small towns and cities across the country. Grassroot efforts are pushing ahead to remove the influence of money in government—Superpacs writ large. Several Constitutional amendments are gaining signatures and support to upend the Supreme Court’s ‘corporations are people’ decision and more and more voices are rising up in books and magazines, on the blogs and in tweets to push back the Robber Baron mentality of our corporate, government and financial institutions.
Will it be enough? I don’t know. The Big Ugly has a hell of a head start. But if Aesop is any guide, the Hare who dismisses the Tortoise should be well advised: We’re coming. Slow and steady, We the People, are coming nonetheless.
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