To some of us, it’s now become as welcome as the sound of chalk screeching as a teacher slowly scrawls on a blackboard. It’s today’s world of mega partisanship 24/7 — it’s a world Americans dabbled in before, but with the new media, the efficacy of over-the-top and at times provocative rhetoric to mobilize partisans, a non-ending seemingly “looped” news cycle, it’s now becoming trite and predictable. The question: is there a “silent majority” that will indicate it’s had enough of this at the polls?
Here are a few tidbits that can easily motivate an independent voter who has belonged to both parties to stay an independent voter — which means holding one’s nose and voting for the party that offends you least on election day. Right now the ones in the news that are today’s solid turnoffs involve Republicans. A few of them:
I had predicted that despite press coverage suggesting that financial reform would be a shoo in for bipartisan support and rapid action, in the end talk show hosts would start to tie it in with the narrative about a Socialist Obama, GOP leaders would meet with Wall Street bigwigs, and Republicans would emerge to seek to water down any White House plan and then charge the White House with not listening to them at all. The GOPers would offer lawyer like explanations why they were now against something that political stories written by reporters who had sources in both parties on the hill just months earlier indicated would have bipartisan support.
And the situation today?
Here’s today’s summary at First Read:
*** The next big battle: But before Obama turns to NASA and space tomorrow, he will deal with the next big policy fight on Capitol Hill: financial reform. At 10:45 am, Obama and Vice President will discuss the issue at the White House with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Minority Leader John Boehner, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. This meeting comes one day after McConnell criticized the Democratic financial reform in the bill in the Senate of perpetuating Wall Street bailouts, a charge that Democrats deny. The meeting also comes after the news that Republicans McConnell and John Cornyn met with Wall Street executives last week to help map out a way to prevent the legislation from becoming law. McConnell may have a tougher challenge than Reid on this issue; keeping every Republican in line on this vote will be a LOT harder than it was on health care. There’s more than one Olympia Snowe-like legislator in the GOP caucus when it comes to the issue of financial reform.
Meanwhile, the Politico has a story about the issue becoming partisan that contains some paragraphs I could have written and put on the TMV timer weeks ago:
The chances of a bipartisan compromise on financial reform took another significant hit Tuesday as top Senate Republicans accused the White House of derailing a deal on derivatives trading and bashed the Democratic legislation as perpetuating Wall Street bailouts.
The Republican attacks drew a quick rebuke from the White House and pushed an issue long viewed as ripe for bipartisan agreement deeper into partisan territory. The sharp turn in the tone of the debate suggests Democrats might have to struggle to peel off more than a handful of Republican votes, if that.
After meeting with his members, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he had “naively” assumed the bill would move forward on a bipartisan basis, and he predicted the overhaul legislation written by Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) would face “overwhelming Republican opposition.”
“I would say all signs we get from the White House is they’re not interested in talking, they’re not interested in making a deal with us,” McConnell told reporters. “They want to jam through a totally partisan bill. And if they do that, and it looks like the Dodd bill, it will guarantee perpetual taxpayer bailouts of Wall Street banks.”
Republicans are gravitating toward a strategy that defies the conventional wisdom held by Democrats — that the GOP, from a political standpoint, cannot throw up uniform opposition to Wall Street reform as it did with health care reform. A senior Senate Republican aide said the conference believes it has “a strong case to make as to why the bill is bad.”
“People expect us to say no to really bad ideas,” said Sen. John Cornyn, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “The Dodd bill … has a lot of problems.”
Here’s a Reuters factbox on financial reform proposals so you can make up your own mind.
ABC News adds some more perspective:
A senior Obama administration official says that at today’s meeting with the Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and Senate, focused on financial regulatory reform, the president “will make the fight for strong oversight of derivatives– the same financial products that led to near collapse of AIG and a part of Wall Street reform many Republicans have been fighting to weaken–a central part of his argument during the bipartisan meeting.”
Republicans have indeed been fighting the change, but it’s worth pointing out that the notion of regulating derivatives was pushed long before the financial crisis — and was fought tooth and nail in the late 1990s by President Obama’s current director of the National Economic Council, Larry Summers, who was then deputy Secretary of the Treasury Department under President Clinton.
As meticulously and grippingly documented by PBS’s Frontline, in the late 90s, Summers, then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and then-Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan pushed back against the efforts of Brooksley Born, then the chair of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, to regulate derivatives.
In any case, President Obama will push for the shift today at a White House meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, and House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.
“Enacting Wall Street reform has been a goal of President Obama’s since well before taking office, and he will discuss the choice he sees in this debate — whether to stand with the American people or stand on the side of the status quo,” a White House official said, “We believe momentum is on the side of greater accountability for Wall Street and strong protections for consumers and we hope Republicans in Congress will join us in a constructive conversation about how to move a strong bill forward.”
Obama says he is confident a bipartisan agreement can be reached.
Right-wing sites misleadingly crop Obama remarks on being “a dominant military superpower”
Right-wing media misleadingly cropped remarks made by President Obama at the Nuclear Security Summit to suggest Obama is opposed to America remaining “a dominant military superpower.” In fact, Obama said that as a “military superpower,” the U.S. has an interest in reducing tensions between foreign nations because violent conflict abroad inevitably “ends up costing” the United States “significantly in terms of both blood and treasure.”
Hoft, Fox Nation quote 12 words to suggest Obama dislikes being “a dominant military superpower”
Hoft: Obama “really believes America is the enemy.” In an April 14 post on Gateway Pundit, Hoft wrote:”Yesterday, Dick Morris said, ‘We may have the first anti-American president we’ve ever had.’ He was being nice. At his nuclear conference yesterday Barack Obama told Americans, ‘Whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower.’ Thanks for the pep talk, Barack.” Hoft then linked to a clip of Obama’s remarks and concluded, “He really believes America is the enemy.”
Fox Nation headline: “Obama: ‘Whether We Like It or Not, We Remain a Dominant Military Superpower.’ ” On April 14, the Fox Nation posted the same video clip from Gateway Pundit under the headline, “Obama: ‘Whether We Like It or Not, We Remain a Dominant Military Superpower.’ “
Media Matters explains:
In fact, Obama’s remarks show he was referring to cost of getting “pulled into” violent international conflicts
Obama discussed “cost” of getting “pulled into” violent conflicts abroad. Obama’s remarks came in response to the question: “Given the progress you have cited in recent days on your foreign policy agenda, to what extent do you feel like you have gained political capital with which to take further to the international stage for the rest of this year, to perhaps rejuvenate some initiatives in trouble spots such as the Middle East and elsewhere?” In his answer, Obama stated that “[i]t is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them. And that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure.”
To anyone listening to Obama’s comments, it was clear that’s what he meant. If not, Buchanan would have jumped all over it at the time. Go to the link to read the Media Matters post in full detail.
That’s in fact that has happened in the case of black Congressmen who said they were called the N-word at a tea party rally. Read John Amato here for details (and he has some links.)
What’s notable in this instance is that tea party organizers and supporters could have handled these allegations quite easily.
They could have rightfully said that the tea party movement has thousands or millions (they could have picked either number) and that the actions of a few people were regrettable but did not and should not reflect on the bulk of people who go to rallies to protest big government.
But rather than do that the style in the 21st century is to try to discredit someone who disagrees with you or who made trouble for you. In this case, talk show and some cybserspace pundits insisted it was all a lie. The subtext to their followers was this: How can you believe those Democrats who are just saying this to make us look bad? Do you ever think anyone would ever say that on our side? How ridiculous!
THE REALITY IS: any group may have people or factions that cast it in a bad light but don’t reflect the sentiment of the entire group. In the case of the tea party movement, there have been new polls showing that it has wider support than some in the media and Democrats have suggested.
But that doesn’t obscure the fact that it has some members who seem residents of the Twlight Zone or who are not exactly…ahem…the best image for it. Just as it most assuredly would have somewhere in its ranks members so stirred up by CostCo sized red-meat portions tossed to them that they might use the N word or spit on a Congressman or call a gay Congressman a “faggot.”
Here are three examples that show that – yes– it is possible in the WHOLE context of the Tea Party movement to find some people out there who should not be hired as their p.r. spokesmen or who provide imagery for the movement that will not help it win support from the country’s “center”:
(1)Buffalo, NY businessman Carl Paladino, a multimillionaire Tea Party candidate running for Governor is in hot water for sending out racist, sexually explicit anti-Obama emails. (If someone examined my emails they see a lot of incoming ones telling me I need an “enlargement.”)
(2)Racist Twitters by a Tea Party leader in Ohio are in the news there and not helpful to the movement’s image. The tweets on the local Springboro Tea Party’s Twitter page reportedly led to “cancellations by several local and statewide candidates and elected officials” who were scheduled to speak at an upcoming Ohio Tea Party rally.
(3)Some tea party leaders and conservatives are calling for the creation of a militia in Oklahoma — but here is the good news: the state GOP is rejecting the idea:
Frustrated by recent political setbacks, tea-party leaders and some conservative members of the Oklahoma Legislature say they would like to create a volunteer militia to help defend against what they say are improper federal infringements on state sovereignty.
Tea-party leaders say they’ve discussed the idea with several supportive lawmakers and hope to introduce legislation next year to recognize a new volunteer force. They say the unit would not resemble militia groups that have been raided for allegedly plotting attacks on law-enforcement officers.
In response, state Republican leaders say supporters of a militia have no place in the GOP.
In a phone interview with Politico.com, state Republican Party Chairman Gary Jones said the tea-party activists are talking about forming a militia only because “they are trying to make themselves out to be bigger than they are.”
“A lot of these people don’t care about being the majority, they just want a megaphone. They want a voice,” Jones said. “Once they get a reporter to cover a story they have a megaphone, and they get pretty loud.”
Jones insisted that Oklahoma Republicans will not follow this “small faction within the party.”
“They’re going to look back and see there are not a whole lot of folks following them in this direction,” he said.
With a little bit of luck, that statement “They’re going to look back and see there are not a whole lot of folks following them” will also apply to the toxic path of partisanship and rhetorical partisan escalation upon which some in the U.S. now seen determined to head.
UPDATE: Republican Michelle Bachmann helps define this rather clearly: she says she hope’s Obama’s “policies will not succeed.” Rooting against jobs? Against preventing another financial melt down? Against people losing their homes? So is she rooting for a return to the policies of the Bush administration? You have to assume that’s what it is since she does not offer any specific policies in detail that voters could consider if they are not totally happy with Obama. Rooting against government success on the economy? If there was a time when the GOP could use an affirmative, “happy warrior,” the time is now.
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.