Tag Archives: Republican party

Devin Nunes Experiments With a Race to the Bottom

14 Nov 2019 By in Politics Tags: , , , , , 5 Comments


How congressman Devin Nunes behaved on the opening day of the House’s public impeachment hearings epitomizes how loyalty to Trump jeopardizes the personal honor of every House Republican while threatening the viability of the Republican Party.

The televised hearings invite a nationwide audience of millions to observe and evaluate the merits of every political actor involved in a momentous and rare Constitutional proceeding.  As the ranking Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee, Nunes used his opening statement to deliver a partisan tirade, airing longstanding grievances irrelevant to the day’s proceedings, maligning his Democratic colleagues as liars, and insulting witnesses George Kent and William Taylor, whose accomplishments and integrity plainly far exceeded Nunes’s own.

Nunes and other Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee are intent on defending President Trump, but they have not really thought far enough ahead to understand how their prejudice in his favor will come across to citizens, who are counting on Congress to examine the president’s behavior fairly and impartially.  The public hearings are a special test of Republican leadership and integrity, because millions of well-informed Americans already know that President Trump has abused his power for personal political gain–not least because the president’s official spokesman, Mick Mulvaney, has already told them so.  Likewise, millions of Americans, including some of Mr. Nunes’s constituents, undoubtedly realize that the president’s behavior is an indefensible deviation from his Constitutionally sworn duties and a challenge to Congress.  They are looking to see whether Republican lawmakers have the courage and independence to admit that Trump’s personal behavior threatens everything republican government stands for.  Will House Republicans fail to admit that Trump must be stopped?

It was doubly ironical to witness Nunes’s crude attacks on the Democrats, given that the hearings were imbued with a concern for our national security and a patriotic determination to safeguard our republican form of government–issues historically central to the strength of the GOP.  Democrats came off as patriotic defenders of our national integrity, whereas Nunes’s petty assertions must have dismayed anyone who cares about curbing Russian aggression or has been part of American efforts to support the principle of self-determination abroad.  The injury that Nunes’s strategy inflicted fell mainly on his own personal reputation, for his fellow-Republicans and he tarnished themselves in defense of indefensible things.

House Republicans may be scared.  Yet what is the nature of the hold Trump has on them?  When will they see that their own best interest lies in being silent and attending solely to the facts presented, rather than whining about the unfairness of the proceedings?  Nunes’s election margins back home in his district are diminishing;  he might fear his chances of reelection are doomed unless he can count on votes from Trump’s base.  It’s depressing to think that Republican congressmen have nothing more valuable or principled to offer voters.  When political analysts say that the Republican Party has become “the party of Trump,” this is what they mean.

Republicans have only to abandon Trump to slip free of all these difficulties.  Perhaps as the evidence mounts, Nunes and his ilk will see the wisdom of cutting Trump loose, a dramatic act that would give new life to embattled republican (and Republican) ideals.

RELATED
Impeach Trump, An Enemy of the Constitution
If the GOP Is Wise, It Will Dump Trump Now

If the GOP Is Wise, It Will Dump Trump Now

23 Oct 2019 By in Politics Tags: , , , , , , 3 Comments


From my vantage here in Chicago, I can sense the forces in favor of Donald Trump’s impeachment and removal from office building among Republicans on Capitol Hill.  Even as David Brooks has insisted that impeachment is a political mistake, even as Tamara Keith and other analysts see political “tribalism” as ineluctably binding Republican legislators to President Trump, one can read events as building toward a directly opposite result, and one very liberating and propitious for all the perplexed Republicans now “hiding in the tall grass,” uncharacteristically quiet and desiring at all costs to avoid the press.

One sign of a change in Republican sentiment is that vocal defense of the President has stopped.  Until lately, leading Republicans have eschewed impeachment as a spurious partisan maneuver, insisting in the face of the Democrat-led initiative that the president is innocent of any action meeting the Constitution’s definition of an impeachable offense (“treason, bribery, or high crimes and misdemeanors”).  Since September 19, however, when word of the President’s efforts to strong-arm Ukraine into giving him political dirt against Joe Biden began circulating, the White House has itself supplied prima facie confirmation of Trump’s determination to use his official powers for personal ends.

With remarkable speed, the president has moved from doing wrong in private to openly testing the proposition that he can do no wrong. He has breezily defended his actions as a matter of “style.”  He has gone so far as to make public statements at odds with his Constitutional duties and responsibilities, denying the legitimacy of, and declining to cooperate with, the House impeachment inquiry, and railing against the “phony” emoluments clause.

The President has moved onto dangerous new ground, all but thumbing his nose at anyone who would insist that he adhere to the Constitution.  This was the significance of Mick Mulvaney’s open admission of a quid pro quo: Trump expects his fellow Republicans to tolerate his dirty dealings and “get over it.”  As though the Constitution is something to go beyond.

Everyone who passed civics grasps that Trump is violating federal election laws.  Once fair elections go by the boards, nothing will be left of the republic, either.

As public servants who have their own oaths to uphold, their own powers to wield, Republican lawmakers can hardly fail to notice how Trump is blossoming into a fearful liability: a president without fealty to their own political needs or principles, an interloper who, having cannibalized their once “grand” party, is intent on desecrating its remains, as in his disastrous unilateral decision to withdraw US troops from Syria and abandon the Kurds.  Trump wants Republicans to do more to defend him.  Yet why should congressional Republicans remain loyal to a president deviating so wildly from his Constitutional job description, which is to execute the will of Congress and respect its laws?

Republicans are supposedly afraid of cutting Donald Trump loose.  What, really, would the downside be?  After Trump’s removal from office, the very conservative Mike Pence would be the incumbent president.  Trump’s much-talked-of base supposedly wouldn’t like this, but let’s face it, this is something no one can know.  What will Trump be, when the amplifiers are turned off?  The Republican Party is still lousy with political talent (much of it in abeyance).  Boosted back into a commanding position through a gutsy act of patriotism, the GOP could find redemption, enjoying a new and more broad-based popularity.  It could even remake itself in time to beat the Democrats in 2020.  Nikki Haley, anyone?  She’s on a long list of Republican alternates published the other day in the Rolling Stone.

Image: Black and white screen-shot of Donald Trump just before his inauguration,
© 2019 Susan Barsy

RELATED:
“If Republicans Ever Turn On Trump, It Will Happen All At Once” (FiveThirtyEight)

Will #MeToo Be The Senate’s Waterloo?

26 Sep 2018 By in The Trump Years Tags: , , , , , , ,

Something decisive will occur in the Senate this week.  Not just a nomination hearing, but a political drama crystallizing in the minds of Americans the nature of a political party, and an institution.

In a hearing set for Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will consider whether Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is a person of respectable character.  They will hear from a California psychology professor, Christine Blasey-Ford, who has come out of nowhere with a believable claim that in 1982 Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when she was 15.  Kavanaugh denies it.  Despite the perturbation the allegations are causing, Senate Republicans are intent on shielding the nominee.  Determined to treat whatever is disclosed in tomorrow’s hearing as irrelevant to his confirmation, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell anticipates that, after hearing from the two parties in a non-judicial setting, the committee will vote on the confirmation the very next day.

On the way to that vote, America will see how its leaders behave.  How do senators treat a woman whose personal story threatens the plans of President Trump and the Republican Party?  How considerate are they in sorting out this very unsavory #MeToo story, which the recent openness of women in discussing sexual assault is empowering?  To what extent have senators reckoned with the implications of sexual equality, or how badly are they out of step with the times?

President Trump and the Republican leadership in Congress have dug in their heels, exploiting their every institutional advantage in an effort to mute a damning social narrative and push Kavanaugh through.  Trump’s White House has become Kavanaugh’s sanctuary.  He has been holed up there like a wanted man, arming himself with the latest in dis-ingenuity.  Kavanaugh’s proxies have spread out on the news circuit, broadcasting doe-eyed astonishment that anyone could fail to see Judge Kavanaugh as squeaky-clean.  Meanwhile, Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), chair of the judiciary committee, has announced that an outside interlocutor, Rachel Mitchell, a sex-crimes prosecutor from Arizona, will spare Republicans members the embarrassment of figuring out how to talk with Dr. Ford.  A brilliant fix for a hearing where the goal is to avoid hearing anything she says.

Ultimately—and this is what the president and Senate don’t seem to get—, Dr. Ford’s challenge to Kavanaugh’s confirmation isn’t about legalities.  It’s about whether Kavanaugh is acceptable to society.   It’s about whether Brett Kavanaugh, who is rumored to have put his hand over a girl’s mouth while attempting to overpower her, is a socially respectable being.  Is he a gentleman?  Today, American society is ostracizing harassers of women because their behavior is anathema to equality.  The buzz surrounding Kavanaugh is alarmingly loud.

Over the centuries, the Senate has often exemplified dignity.  It has upheld courtesy as an ideal, as a source of inner order, as the secret of its prestige.  Tomorrow, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee will be called on to receive “an inconvenient rememberer” courteously.  Yet, as #MeToo comes knocking, a blinkered and insensitive Senate cowers.

RELATED ARTICLES:
Caitlin Flanagan, “I Believe Her,” The Atlantic.
Caitlin Flanagan, “The Abandoned World of 1982,” The Altantic.

From a Person without a Party

2 Jan 2018 By in Politics Tags: , , , , 6 Comments

Dawn under a cloud in Minneapolis.

I find it lonely, not being able to identify with either the Republican or the Democratic party.  I regret that they have left me behind.  Each is hurtling forward along on an increasingly weird and alienating rhetorical arc, becoming ever more oriented toward the constituencies who still find the establishment line urgent and interesting.  Both parties are curiously bereft of talent, of true leadership and direction.  I see no one I want to follow.  For the first time in my life, I feel that there is no one out ahead of the rest of us, articulating what we need to be doing, where we should be going now.  I look at the strange pass that the two parties have come to, at their increasingly desperate struggle for supremacy, and I wonder how much more time will pass before they collapse and fail.

What do I mean by a “weird and alienating rhetorical arc”?  In the case of the Republicans, I mean an opportunism and a style of revenge politics that is ignoble, unchristian, unpatriotic, and downright damaging to the nation.  Trump is too small a man to leave the sound policies of his predecessor in place, while Republicans in Congress, determined to destroy the Affordable Care Act, have shown a callousness toward ordinary citizens that few initiatives in American politics can match.  (Remember the heat Reagan took when he went after school lunches?)  In Alabama, voters for Roy Moore showed the same willingness to throw moral scruples aside for the sake of partisan advantage.

Meanwhile, the Democrats, doubling down on the very points that doomed them in 2016, are blazing a weirdly alienating arc of their own.  Democratic-leaning commentators are back to reading poll-numbers like tea-leaves.  They have not gone out to get to know the “fly-over zone.”  They are back in their privileged haunts, pontificating.  In the face of Trump’s victory, and given the many heinous aspects of the President’s behavior, the Democrats have found an excuse to ignore the legitimate frustrations of Trump’s voter base.  That Democrats need to win over some of these voters hasn’t kept them from behaving like patronizing snobs.  Democrats who believe they can write off the white vote, or the rural vote, or the vote of people who are working-class and uneducated, are as callous and provincial as their Republican foes.  Circumstances have thrust Democrats in a defensive posture.  If they can’t break out of it and review what America needs, they’ll be in big trouble in 2018.

Personally, I expect to remain ambivalent about the parties until I hear someone articulating a politics that is plausible, efficient, and broadly humane.  I want to hear from candidates whose interests are truly national: who have fresh ideas about wringing prosperity from our own resources while mitigating the degradation of the natural world.  I want to hear from candidates who want to beautify and uplift local economies, who care about bridging the urban-rural divide.  I want to hear from candidates about bringing immigrants out of the shadows, giving every inhabitant of our country a legal status, and controlling our borders in ways that are smart and modern.  I want to hear from candidates with new ideas about public schooling and work, who believe the US can become a new kind of “maker nation,” one whose future is more creditable and peaceable than its past.  Bring on a capacious and inclusive vision, and save us from the desiccated remnants ruling the republic now.

Rename and Repair “Affordable Care”

14 Aug 2017 By in Affordable Care Act Tags: , , , , 2 Comments


The struggle over the future of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), popularly known as Obamacare, ended a crucial round last month, when, in the Senate, three Republicans–Susan Collins, John McCain, and Lisa Murkowski–joined Democrats in voting down the so-called “skinny repeal.”  Despite Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, and despite the president’s scornful goading, the GOP has at long last stopped in its tracks: it has heard, from far off in the hinterland, the howl of the people.  To repeal the Affordable Care Act, to discontinue its hallmark features, has become politically unacceptable in the US.

Partisan representations of the bill notwithstanding, the guarantee of affordable medical coverage for all, which is at the heart of “Obamacare,” has become a grail to the American people.  Kate Zernike and Abby Goodnough of the New York Times co-authored a fascinating article describing how a sea-change in popular sentiment, running increasingly in support of the ACA, has occurred along with its threatened repeal.  First-hand understanding of the bill’s provisions and benefits are driving Americans to an acceptance of universal coverage that makes the GOP’s top-down rhetoric a tougher sell.  Americans do not want to return to the “bad old days” when insurers could turn sick or at-risk customers away.  They do not want millions of Americans who are now insured to lose the benefits guaranteed them under the ACA.

Politically, then, the President and the GOP face the issue of how to Affordable Care their own.  (After all, it has the makings of a smashing success!)  During the presidential campaign, then-candidate Trump wasn’t at the forefront of those calling for the ACA’s repeal.  He was the reasonable candidate then, wanting to find solutions that would remedy the defects of the legislation.  During the debates, he suggested eliminating state-level restrictions to allow insurers to create pools across state lines.  Ironically, President Trump has since decided that scapegoating others is essential to his popularity, a conviction that has led him away from an approach to health care that was more constructive and reasoned.  Has the President never heard the saying, “Revenge is a dish that is best served cold”?

Were I a Republican, I would vow never to utter the word “Obamacare” again.  Members of the Republican Party stand to become heroes by repairing the Affordable Care Act and re-branding it to heighten its associations with compassion and inclusion.  Forget about wreaking revenge on Obama.  Listen to the people.  Collaborate with Democrats.  Deliver a shared triumph to the nation.  It will matter far more than any partisan loss.

Image: from this source.
“The National Dime Museum” by Bernhard Gillam
is a send-up of leading American politicians circa 1884.