Among progressive friends and colleagues of mine, there seems to be a consensus that the longer the Republican presidential primary continues the better for progressives. The idea is that Republican infighting weakens the ultimate nominee and exposes just how radical all of the GOP candidates are. As the domino theory goes, that will help more Americans see the ugly truth about what the Republican Party really is, which will subsequently convince more Americans to vote against the GOP, which will eventually force the GOP to moderate its politics.
Straightforward as this hypothesis is, I don’t buy it — I believe the longer the Republican primary battle continues, the more the GOP’s most extreme proposals are given a mainstream platform, the more their ideas are granted public credibility and the more conservative propaganda is invisibly woven into our most basic political assumptions. In other words, I believe in the Goldwater Principle, which suggests that while the eventual nominee may fail to win the cycle’s general election, the elongated nomination contest — with its news cycle dominance and hardcore ideological edge — will help permanently shift the supposed mainstream “center” of our public debate to the fringe right.
Consider the heated attacks Mitt Romney’s campaign is now lobbing at Rick Santorum in the run-up to Super Tuesday. By calling the former Pennsylvania senator “Big Labor’s favorite senator,” the effort aims to paint the viciously anti-union Santorum as nothing short of the flesh-and-blood reincarnation of Paul Wellstone. Romney is clearly hoping that such a portrayal will spur a GOP voter backlash, and sensational headlines across the country spur his framing on. The result is a troubling ripple effect that could transcend a single election.
Laugh all you want at the absurdity of calling Santorum union workers’ best friend, and tell yourself that it all will teach average Americans how ridiculous the GOP is, but in reality, it’s not funny and will most likely have the opposite effect: It will probably help the larger effort to undermine the once-undebatable idea of what “pro-labor” fundamentally means.
As the framing of the Republican primary debate argues, it no longer means consistently backing minimum wage increases; consistently opposing corporate-written “free” trade deals; supporting budgets that let the Labor Department enforce labor laws; opposing so-called right-to-work laws; or even casting a majority of one’s legislative votes in favor of unions’ agenda. It means the opposite: a senator who has repeatedly voted against minimum wage increases, for job-killing trade agreements, against budgets that adequately fund labor-law enforcement, and against unions’ stated priorities a whopping 88 percent of the time. It also means a presidential candidate who is actively campaigning in support of a national “right to work” law.
While this particular — and particularly ridiculous — definition of “pro-labor” might not fully stick in the American psyche, it does have a longer-term psychological effect, especially since so much media attention is focused on it. It’s part of a larger process that, over the years, gradually shifts our assumptions and definitions to the right — a process that makes Santorum into “Big Labor’s favorite senator” and by comparison, genuinely pro-labor lawmakers into wild-eyed leftists. Indeed, with Santorum depicted as Paul Wellstone, today’s conservative Democrats who sometime votes with unions are suddenly at risk of being seen as European socialists, and progressive Democrats who are actually pro-labor are almost certain to be reimagined as Marxist revolutionaries — even though nothing could be further from the truth. Meanwhile, the momentary argument over whether Santorum is pro- or anti-union bleeds out into the larger campaign to reset the political center and define both the terms “liberal” and “conservative” as something farther to the right than they were even a few years ago.
On that latter point, notice the response from the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO (emphasis added):
Rick Bloomingdale, president of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, remembered trying to schedule meetings with Santorum, but always being passed over to his staff. After appealing to the Republican Senator’s aides on the labor issue of the day, Bloomingdale said his office would receive a letter stating the senator “was opposing you on whatever that issue was.”
“His thing was, ‘I won without you.’ He’s an arrogant guy, he thinks he’s right and everyone else is wrong,” Bloomingdale said. “Calling him a labor supporter would be similar to calling Mitt Romney a conservative. They’re both ridiculous.”
So now, not only is the media forwarding the idea that Santorum is pro-labor, but labor leaders themselves are suggesting archconservative Mitt Romney is not actually conservative! For the national conservative movement, that means the whole affair — regardless of whom it helps in a given election — is a victory in the larger war to move America to the right.
This is precisely why the longer the GOP primary and these vernacular-changing skirmishes take center stage, the better it is for conservatives, and the worse it is for the progressive movement. Sure, an elongated primary battle may (and I stress may) minimally help President Obama’s reelection campaign. But over the long haul, it threatens to change the very parameters of our political discourse — and that will have consequences for many elections to come.
So when it comes to Mitt Romney’s running mate pick, I like Rob Portman’s odds, because he is incredibly boring and nothing will go disastrously wrong if Mitt Romney picks him. But on the other hand, there is a case to be made for picking Marco Rubio, and that case can be summed up as “Republicans think all Hispanics will vote for Mitt Romney if he runs with a Cuban-American.” It’s not just imagined ethnic solidarity that Rubio has in his favor, though: There’s also the machinations of the mysterious Bilderberg Group!
Ken Vogel has the scoop in Politico, based on some very intriguing INFOWARS reporting.
Everyone knows that the elite secret society known as the Bilderberg Group is one of the means by which the Lizard People exert their control over the shadow World Government. As hero journalist Alex Jones told independent cable news network Russia Today, the elite will decide at the coming Bilderberg Conference in Virginia whether to support Obama or Romney in 2012.
That, says Jones, is just a sampling of what else he expects to be discussed. Other items, he speculates, involve the upcoming presidential race.
“Should the elite get behind Mitt Romney or Barack Obama?” is a question Jones predicts to be among those discussed. “Both men are bought and paid for by the same financial interests, and so the discussion will be which candidate can basically con the American people to lay down the tyranny for another four years.”
Jones adds that, only four years earlier, Bilderberg was the locale where America’s elite decided to back President Obama as the Democratic nominee.
But deciding the next puppet leader of the one world global fascist government is just one agenda item: They’ll also have to decide who will be the puppet leader’s puppet running mate. Rubio will not be attending (this year, anyway), but Al Kamen, journalist at the Bilderberg-sponsored Washington Post, reported that Marco Rubio’s trip to attend the Summit of the Americas in April was analogous to John Edwards’ 2004 lecture at the Bilderberg Conference, which some credited with winning him the second spot on the Democratic ticket that year. Kamen’s column was obviously meant to signal that the Bilderbergers are currently leaning toward Rubio.
But what if Rob Portman goes to Bohemian Grove? What then, Fascist World Government?
[Correction Appended] One of the Breitbart dopes has a SCOOP: Some sort of ancient press release says Barack Obama was born … in Kenya. IMPEACH. Retroactively install John McCain, we have so much Iran bombing to make up for.
This particular dope — Ben Shapiro, former boy-pundit Joel Pollak, some guy — says he is totally not a birther, at all, whatever gave you that idea, but it is very important that this forgotten old publicity pamphlet from a literary agent for a book project that never happened be unearthed and heavily hyped now, because the president was not properly “vetted” in 2008. (The idea that the president is a secret radical whose secret radicalism was not properly explored by the mainstream media is a stupid conspiracy theory that is almost as ridiculous as birtherism, by the way. We have proof that the president is not a secret radical leftist, and it is “his entire political career including his first term as president of the United States.”)
But what does producing this old booklet (that Obama did not write) with a factual error have to do with “vetting,” exactly? Well, Pollak explains that it fits a “pattern in which Obama — or the people representing and supporting him — manipulate his public persona,” by which he means “this is pointless bullshit that we’re publishing to stir up the birthers and look it worked plus we got a big Drudge link.”
Regardless of the reason for Obama’s odd biography, the Acton & Dystel booklet raises new questions as part of ongoing efforts to understand Barack Obama–who, despite four years in office remains a mystery to many Americans, thanks to the mainstream media.
IMPORTANT NEW QUESTIONS ARE BEING RAISED. This editing error that Obama had nothing, personally, to do with is part of a pattern of Obama deceiving people by allowing them to believe insane things about him.
Now, coincidentally, the Arizona secretary of state is playing the “I’m not a birther but on the other hand let’s indulge the birthers” game. The president might not be eligible to be on the Arizona ballot, because of a petition, according to Ken Bennett, an American state’s No. 2 elected official. Vetting is so fun!
So, on the one hand, we have Barack Obama’s birth certificate(s), two newspaper announcements, a couple of witnesses, and nearly every single other newspaper and media account up to the point at which the birther conspiracy was invented circa late 2007. On the other hand, we have an author’s bio he didn’t write from 1991, and a petition. Obviously there is much more “vetting” to do, before we finally find the one piece of secret buried evidence that proves that it was a horrible accident that a majority of voters picked the socialist Muslim in 2008. Wake up, sheeple, etc.
[Correction: I mistakenly attributed the Big Government story to Ben Shapiro, but it was written by Joel B. Pollak. I apologize to Ben.]
The Obama administration claims that it is deporting record numbers of illegal immigrants while focusing on those with criminal records. But new data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement shows that the number of deportation orders has declined dramatically since last summer and non-criminals comprise a growing percentage of those expelled from the country.
That wasn’t supposed to happen under a policy of “prosecutorial discretion” announced by ICE director John Morton last June. The goal of the policy, announced with much fanfare in the Spanish language media, was to spare “longtime lawful residents” from deportation and to focus on criminals.
Since then, the adminstration has deported many fewer non-criminal aliens. But non-criminals remain the vast majority of those deported. And those with no criminal record now actually comprise a slightly larger percentage of those forced to leave the country than they did before Morton’s announcement.
In the three months before the policy was announced last summer ICE filed for deportation proceedings against 61,192 people of whom 15 percent had criminal records. In the first three months of 2012, ICE sought 37,659 deportations orders, 14 percent of which involved people with criminal records.
“The agency continues to be headed in the opposite direction of its stated goals,” said Susan Long, co-director of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, which collected the data from ICE via a Freedom of Information Act request.
The goal of prosecutorial discretion, Long said in a conference call with reporters, “was to target and bring before the court those with more serious criminal history. As yet we’re not seeing any change. They have not turned the ship around.”
The administration implemented prosecutorial discretion in response to complaints that young people with no criminal records continue to face deportation. But the new data will come as no surprise to student groups such as United We Dream, National Immigrant Youth Alliance and DreamActivist, which continue to highlight the cases of law-abiding young people facing deportation.
Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., has championed the case of a South Carolina man, Gabino Sánchez, a married father of two, who was arrested for driving without a license last year and now faces deportation.
“Gabino Sánchez has lived and worked and raised a family here for more than a decade and it is not in anyone’s interest to have him deported,” Rep. Gutierrez told Fox News Latino on Tuesday after a deportation hearing in North Carolina. ”I do not understand why ICE has not followed President Obama’s guidelines and decided to move on from this case to go after someone else, someone who is a threat to his community or a serious criminal.”
In response to the TRAC findings, Gutierrez said, “The president should make sure the Department of Homeland Security is actually following its own rules and he should proclaim proudly and loudly that he will not deport another DREAMer or anyone else who fits the prosecutorial discretion criteria.”
Twenty-four hour news cycles are messy and chaotic, almost never fully summarizing the zeitgeist of the moment. But today is one of those rare days where the news cycle perfectly embodies the tectonic shifts in American politics — and the friction that comes from such shifts.
In the last day, we’ve learned that America has reached a demographic tipping point. For the first time in history, there are more minority births than white births in the United States, meaning we’re closer than ever to becoming a majority minority nation.
At almost exactly the same time these numbers were being released, a top Republican lawmaker, U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo., was making national headlines with a leaked audio recording of him publicly declaring that the first African-American president is “not an American.” Here’s the audio and full quote from Coffman’s remarks at a Republican fundraiser:
“I don’t know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. I don’t know that. But I do know this, that in his heart, he’s not an American. He’s just not an American.”
Coffman has since issued a non-apology apology, saying that while he misspoke in questioning Obama’s birth certificate, he stands by his “not an American” declaration because Obama doesn’t “share my belief in American Exceptionalism — his policies reflect a philosophy that America is but one nation among many equals.”
It’s a deft misdirect — caught on tape making a nakedly demagogic play to White America’s reflexive fears of the “other” (in this case, denigrating a minority president as literally the “other” — i.e., a non-American), Coffman is pretending he was merely voicing his disagreement with Obama’s foreign policy. But don’t be fooled: The nation’s shifting demographics, as epitomized by today’s census numbers, is exactly what this is all about.
Coffman is running in a newly redrawn suburban Denver congressional district — one that is expected to be among the most contested in the 2012 election. Following the larger Republican strategy of racial fear-mongering, he’s spent the last year following in the footsteps of his anti-immigrant predecessor, U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, championing legislation to repeal parts of the Voting Rights Act and prevent non-English ballots and end birthright citizenship for immigrants.
Put Coffman’s record together with his attack on Obama (an attack that has become all too common among top GOP leaders), add in the fact that his GOP neighbor U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn recently made headlines calling the president a “tar baby,” and remember the GOP’s successful opposition last week to a high-profile civil unions bill. It becomes clear that even in the swingiest of swing states, the national Republican Party sees its path to victory as one that eschews inclusiveness and equal rights, and instead stirs fears and resentment over the quickly changing definition of Americanness.
Ultimately, that’s what all the debates over almost every policy really comes down to. We can tell ourselves we’re fighting over taxes or contraception or abortion or gay rights or immigration or food stamps — and at one level, we most certainly are. But when policy disagreements become a justification for Republicans to claim an opponent isn’t a fellow countryman, it’s clear what we’re really fighting over is the root idea of “American.” Looked at this way, almost every policy battle has been transformed into a proxy in a Republican war to define “American” as white, straight, male and wealthy — an us-versus-them war being waged ever more intensely in 2012 because changing demographics threaten to define the term on far different terms.
We can thank today’s news cycle for making that war so crystal clear; at least it’s now painfully obvious what this moment’s political conflict is truly all about.
On the one hand, it’s almost funny. Fred Davis, the man who created hilariously bad ads for losing 2010 Republicans — Carly Fiorina’s “Demon Sheep” and Christine O’Donnell’s “I am not a witch” — now wants cranky conservative billionaire Joe Ricketts to spend $10 million on an advertising campaign to take down Barack Obama. He’s teamed up with Whit Ayers, one of his collaborators on Jon Huntsman’s spectacularly terrible presidential run. Halfway through their description of “the Ricketts plan,” they describe themselves as “pirates.” Ay, matey, but are they after Obama’s booty – or Ricketts’?
Davis, Ayers and friends should remember that Obama sent in special ops to take out Somali pirates in 2010. These pirates’ fate might be similar. Politically, of course. I’m not suggesting anyone use violence against them. And they’re not suggesting anyone use violence against Obama, of course — although their pitch is chock-full of eliminationist rhetoric. From its title, which promises to “stop [Obama's] spending for good,” to its description of being “locked, loaded and ready” to “hit Barack right between the eyes” and bring about “his demise,” the memo the New York Times released today is right-wing hate porn, designed for maximum titillation to Ricketts, its intended audience. It may not have worked on Ricketts, whose PAC disavowed the plan Thursday afternoon after a day of negative publicity. But will it work on anyone else?
I doubt it. The 54-page PowerPoint is certainly a quick, fun read, a guide to the profiteering right-wing id. I loved the idea that they wanted to unveil the whole campaign in Charlotte during the Democratic convention: I can’t think of anything that would get the oft-divided Democratic Party fired up better than right-wingers with flyover Rev. Wright hate porn. Although the plan is supposedly designed to demonstrate Obama’s “incompetence,” it’s hard to see what Wright’s views have to do with Obama’s competence – unless you’re of the opinion that nothing says “incompetence” like a black man having something to do with another black man. The writers reassure Ricketts they’ve minimized the risk of being charged with racism by lining up a “highly literate” (that must have been hard) black spokesman, Larry Elder, whom they’re paying $25,000 to serve as frontman. (If I were Larry, I’d talk to an employment discrimination lawyer: I think a white guy would get more than $25,000 to front a $10 million ad campaign. Not to mention to sell his soul.)
Can the Wright fear-mongering work? I think it mainly plays with people who wouldn’t vote for the president, anyway. I’m one of the few liberals who wrote with concern about the Wright revelations back in 2008. I didn’t want to believe that Obama looked the other way as Wright preached the unredeemable evil of the United States (and most white people), along with self-defeating theories of black difference and downright lies about genocide. But I never believed Obama shared those opinions. I assumed he admired Trinity’s social work and political connections. I didn’t think he spent a whole lot of time in its pews or listening to Wright’s views. Still, I thought it was fair to look at what Obama’s ties to Wright told us about his politics – and like most people, I quickly decided: not much.
Four years later, independents are able to see that Obama has in fact been a fairly hawkish president, whose foreign policy certainly didn’t come from the Jeremiah Wright hymnal. In fact, his expansion of drone warfare, with its inevitable civilian casualties, is precisely the kind of thing Wright and other foreign policy critics think can result in “chickens coming home to roost.” And it’s not like the media ignored Wright, either. Remember that whole race speech candidate Obama had to make in March 2008 – against the advice of strategists who worried it would backfire?
The notion that the Wright mess didn’t get adequate attention comes down to one fact: that John McCain wouldn’t greenlight a lurid strategy to blacken Obama (literally and figuratively) with scary ads about Wright. For that, McCain earns derision from his former campaign advisors: They call him “a crusty old politician who often seemed confused, burdened with a campaign just as confused.”
What is Mitt Romney saying about the so-called Ricketts plan? He told reporters this morning he hadn’t had time to read the papers (typical Romney bravery), although he’d already done his own Wright-baiting in a February interview with Sean Hannity. By this afternoon, the Romney campaign released a statement disavowing the proposal (and Romney himself then told the conservative Townhall site that he would “repudiate” the Super PAC’s ad strategy). Even Ricketts did the same, in a statement from his PAC saying “he is neither the author nor the funder of the so-called Ricketts Plan to defeat Mr. Obama that The New York Times wrote about this morning…. [I]t reflects an approach to politics that Mr. Ricketts rejects and it was never a plan to be accepted but only a suggestion for a direction to take.” (Jeff Zeleny of the Times later Tweeted that a reference on page 46 of the plan suggests that it had received tentative approval at a meeting in New York.)
You can decide whether or not you believe that. I think it’s good news that even Joe Ricketts can be shamed out of such a crude and racialized appeal. That doesn’t mean we won’t see such appeals in the months to come, just that they probably won’t come with a prominent billionaire’s name on them.
(Credit: AP/Tony Dejak/Gerald Herbert) 
Marco Rubio and Mitt Romney (Credit: AP/Jae C. Hong) 
President Obama (Credit: AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) 
A man in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, stands next to the border fence as two U.S. law enforcement officers look on from the U.S. side of the fence. (Credit: AP/Raymundo Ruiz) 
Mike Coffman (Credit: AP/Ed Andrieski) 
Jeremiah Wright (Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite) 
