Hey, he said it, I didn’t. But may I use the word “ditto?” Martin Longman in a post says “The spectacle of stupid goes on and on.” And he offers two examples (read his posts in full).
(1) Republicans once again rejected a budget put forward by President Barack Obama, an event that happens almost on automatic pilot in this era when compromise is seen as partisan treason and consensus is seen as something for wusses. You can’t blame this on Cruz control since its group political think (if you want to use that word). Longman writes: “We ought to be a laughing stock for letting the Republicans control any lever of power in Washington DC. Check that. I guess we are a laughing stock.” In terms of how this is seen in the rest of the world (which matters nothing to hyperpartisans), y-e-s.
(2)Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint decided to give a (lousy) history lesson in a speech peppered with (ahem) questionable historical assertions — which are probably hysterical assertions to history teachers, including those in elementary schools. The breathtakingly this-is-not-SNL-TheOnion-or-MadMagazine one: that big government didn’t free the slaves.
“Well the reason that the slaves were eventually freed was the Constitution, it was like the conscience of the American people. Unfortunately there were some court decisions like Dred Scott and others that defined some people as property, but the Constitution kept calling us back to ‘all men are created equal and we have inalienable rights’ in the minds of God. But a lot of the move to free the slaves came from the people, it did not come from the federal government. It came from a growing movement among the people, particularly people of faith, that this was wrong. People like Wilberforce who persisted for years because of his faith and because of his love for people. So no liberal is going to win a debate that big government freed the slaves. In fact, it was Abraham Lincoln, the very first Republican, who took this on as a cause and a lot of it was based on a love in his heart that comes from God.”
-Fmr. Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, April 2014
Has he studied history– or even seen the movie “Lincoln”?
But this is an era when in struggling to advance an ideological argument it doesn’t matter what you say, it matters that you flap your lips and say something, and if it’s inaccurate or flat out wrong your political tribe will defend you and attack those who suggest the emperor has no intellectual clothes. Longman again nails it in summarizing this comment by the leader of a once-respected think tank:
It’s almost as if DeMint and Sarah Palin are both graduates of the same finishing school for garbled buffoonery. I think this comment belongs on a plaque in the Smithsonian as a living testament to what has become of conservative “thought leaders” in this country.
Of course, those who will defend DeMint will point their fingers and sneer the word “liberal” or “Democrat,” as if that somehow changes a theory about freeing the slaves that likely would have gotten DeMint a D in a junior high school history class. But no, quite a few others including many thoughtful Republicans will shake their heads.
And of course it will inevitably be suggested only a few websites that must be in league with MSNBC, the DNC and George Soros must be conspiring when they report his comments. GO HERE to see the see of stories. A sampling:
—The Wire:
So here’s the thing about Abraham Lincoln: He was, at the time of the Civil War, the president of the United States. DeMint’s argument here would be like someone saying that the recent expansion of health insurance had nothing to do with the government, it was simply the result of “a love in Obama’s heart.”
When he was a senator — from South Carolina, the first state to secede from the union at the outset of that war — DeMint advocated for the reduction of the size of government. That earned him his current position, at the increasingly conservative Heritage Foundation. Small government advocacy has been the focal point of DeMint’s career, including, at one point, advocacy for reducing the size of the military.
From a rhetorical standpoint, if you want to minimize the role of government in general, it’s easy to point out that ending slavery was something of an outlier in government activism, the sort of thing that you don’t really need to do on a regular basis.
But it seems ridiculous for him to suggest that government played no role in ending slavery. While it’s true that public opinion shifted against slavery, there were a number of states (including DeMint’s) which used the continuation of slavery as a rationale to form their own distinct country.
Jim DeMint, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation and latest spiritual guru of the tea party, told a Christian radio host last week completely un-ironically that “the conscience of the American people” freed the slaves in the 1860’s, not “big government.”
—Salon’s Elias Isquith details some of the errors in DeMint’s larger speech. They suggest DeMint might want to cut out some talk radio appearances and use the time to take an online history course — not that accuracy will matter to members of his political choir:
*The Constitution makes no mention of “all men are created equal,” a paraphrase of one of the most famous lines in the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration of Independence is not the Constitution, which is one of the key reasons why most historians and otherwise educated people call it the Declaration of Independence instead of calling it the Constitution. Because, again, they’re not the same thing.
*In fact, what mention the Constitution does make of slavery is mostly value-neutral. There’s the infamous three-fifths clause, of course; there’s also the explicit ban on legislation intended to stop the United States’ involvement in the slave trade before 1808. And, most tellingly of all, is the Fugitive Slave Clause, which required that slaves who tried to escape from one state to another in order to attain freedom be returned to their masters.
*William Wilberforce, a British politician whom DeMint says deserves more credit for ending chattel slavery than the federal government, died decades before the first shots on Fort Sumter were fired in DeMint’s home state of South Carolina and the Civil War officially began.
*Further, while there’s no question that the abolitionist movement was infused with religious fervor, it’s also true that many religious figures in the antebellum American South argued strenuously that slavery was not only acceptable in god’s eyes but downright preferable. The Civil War split America’s religious community along sectional lines, just as it did for nearly everyone else.
*The Emancipation Proclamation was a military order delivered by the commander-in-chief of what was at the time the largest army in the history of the world. This massive fighting force was created through an expansion of presidential powers as well as the implementation of the first federal income tax in U.S. history. At the time and indeed to this day, many argued that the proclamation was a power-grab by Lincoln that assigned him powers that were theretofore limited by the Constitution.
*Last but not least, the emancipation of the slaves and the end of (most forms of) slavery in America was ultimately enacted and guaranteed by amendments to the U.S. Constitution. These were undertaken in large part by members of the federal government (though they required approval from three-fourths of the states) and were opposed most vociferously by Northern Democrats, who tended to appeal to “states’ rights” far more than their Republican counterparts.
But the motif of the 21st century seems to be that hyperpartisans and hyper ideologists often could care less about facts. It’s saying something. If it’s not true, hurl a political label at those criticizing you and go on the attack.
DeMint sparked a tweetstorm. Just a small sampling:
Surprise! Jim DeMint doens't understand anything about slavery http://t.co/hvrS8y0Nko via @thinkprogress
— Henry Decker (@HenryADecker) April 10, 2014
Head of think tank makes woefully inaccurate statement about how slavery came to an end in the US: http://t.co/61tc5jY8Pt
— Dr. Darren R. Reid (@ThatHistorian) April 10, 2014
Note to Jim DeMint: Ending slavery was a Big Government police action, by @DavidOAtkins http://t.co/9hAeCsh9Ox
— digby (@digby56) April 10, 2014
If a prospective American knew as little about slavery as former Senator Jim Demint would they pass their citizenship test?
— Erin Gloria Ryan (@morninggloria) April 9, 2014
But lest we think the stupid goes on and on only in one party, it seems as if Democrats are poised to once again go through their traditional dance:
**Some party members will be disillusioned by the way things are going so they won’t vote in a mid-term.
***Some party members will be angry at their party over and issue or more so they won’t vote to show their anger.
***Republicans will turn out in droves due to political red meat hurled at them by GOPers running for re-election or working for a Republican win (for instance the Republican conservative political media industry).
***Republicans will win considerably power and use the power they won at the polls and Democrats will express dismay as they halt even more parts of the Democratic agenda, get parts of the GOP agenda in place, and use any power they can to influence the makeup of the judiciary at all levels.
The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza provides evidence that the Dems are about to do it (to themselves) again:
A GW Battleground poll showed that 64 percent of Republicans are “extremely likely” to vote while 57 percent of Democrats said the same. In a CBS News-New York Times poll 81 percent of Republican registered voters said they would “definitely” vote in November versus 68 percent of Democrats.
President Obama and his fellow Democrats are well aware of the party’s enthusiasm problem. It’s why at every fundraiser President Obama speaks at, he makes sure to include a line about how Democrats aren’t as good at Republicans about turning out in midterms and how they need to get better at it. It’s why Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid takes to the Senate floor at least once a week to attack David and Charles Koch. The party’s leaders are trying desperately to find a way to get their side excited about the elections and fully briefed on what’s at stake.
The problem? Political enthusiasm is hard to create from out of nowhere. And, typically, the side most passionate about politics is the one motivated by negative emotions. Republicans hate Obamacare and don’t like President Obama much either. (The same was true in 2006 with Democrats and George W. Bush.) There’s no corresponding figure for Democrats to rally their dislike around. And, the positive emotions that drove Obama into office in 2008 have dissipated considerably over these past five years even within the Democratic base.
Some Republicans will twist themselves into rhetorical pretzels to defend something DeMint or someone else on their side says, no matter how inaccurate or downright dumb it is.
Some Democrats will not bother to vote, then act shocked, as the votes come in and blame their party, the news media, Republicans and talk radio for combining to create a seemingly hopeless political situation for Democrats.
The bottom line?
There are a lot of Motimer Snerds running around in both parties.
And the party with the most Mortimers that does the most damage to itself, loses the 2014 election.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.