The GOP’s Mercenary Evolution on Same-Sex Marriage (March 18, 2013)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

gay-gop

I want to clarify upfront that I am in favor of equality for all, almost regardless of how we get there. It wasn’t so long ago (I’m thinking of the 2004 George W. Bush vs. John Kerry Presidential election) that my young liberal heart feared that discrimination against the LGBTQ community would be written into our nation’s venerable Constitution.

The Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) was conceived by Republican leaders in the runup to the 2004 election as a social wedge issue. A disingenuous diversion from the real conversation many Americans wanted to have – how to resolve the Iraq quagmire, the expensive war of choice – the opportunity to use the marginalization of gay citizens as a method of uniting the right wing base ultimately proved irresistible to the era’s “compassionate” conservatives.

The story wasn’t much different by the time we came around to President Obama’s successful 2012 reelection bid. Just under two years after the historical repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy toward the enlistment of gay and lesbian soldiers, the Republican party continued to offer a platform offensive to any and all supporters of equal rights for every American. An August 29, 2012 Associated Press report directly quoted the GOP’s official stance: “The platform affirms the rights of states and the federal government not to recognize same-sex marriage. It backs a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.”

Well it’s a new year and the Republican Party would now like you to believe that its’ stance on this key issue is “evolving,” – yes, the very same sort of transition for which the party once mocked the POTUS. Christian Science Monitor published an article last week purporting to take a closer look at the discourse surrounding LGBTQ issues at the Conservative Political Action Conference. The sub-header of this piece framed the debate as an internal struggle between emerging conservative candidates who might actually like to win an election someday and the stubborn old guard committed to critically slow suicide. Brad Knickerbocker writes, “Some Republicans worry that the GOP may be alienating the next generation of young conservatives if the party continues to oppose gay marriage.”

A number of polls have confirmed that a majority of American voters now support same-sex marriage. In a normal Darwinian political climate, one might assume Republicans are coming around due to the twin influences of cultural normalization and a need for electoral survival. But that sort of logical thinking is checked when one remembers the party’s embarrassing, ongoing backslide surrounding woman’s issues. A woman’s Constitutional right to control her own body was affirmed in 1973, yet rhetoric from Republican candidates throughout the 2012 election cycle often hearkened back to 1950s water cooler talk, bemoaning hard-earned female advances in family planning autonomy.

So what is really behind the Republican party’s incremental about face on the subject of same-sex marriage? I would offer that the evolution is based on the one important resource we can always count on the GOP to covet: money. Simply put, once you remove corporate contributions and the corrosive influence of various industry lobbyists, the party of obstructionism is running out of individual donors to tap. They have successfully alienated the majority of young, female, African-American, Latino and Asian voters. Our own Jason Easley wrote a February 19 post for this site entitled, House Democrats Crush Republicans With Their Best Fundraising Month Ever. The writing is on the wall for the GOP. With an urgent need to convey the perception of populist appeal, the easiest cherry to pick is a slow warmth toward marriage parity.

As stated in the opening paragraph, whatever moves lawmakers toward the legislative codification of equality is welcome, but I stop short of lauding the Republican party for its pivot as a sign of general dogmatic progress. After all, it must be remembered that key figures like former Vice President Dick Cheney and Ohio Senator Rob Portman only threw their tenuous support behind marriage equality when it became a choice between the hard line and repudiating their own children. This is the party of unlimited greed, not human equity.

Who Needs Congress to Raise the Federal Minimum Wage? (March 6, 2013)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

poor-eat-rich

President Obama’s now legendary State of the Union address, delivered before a joint session of Congress last month, touched on several notable issues that the POTUS plans to incorporate into his second term agenda. As of midnight last Friday, we now know that one of the Presidents’ goals: the negotiation of a budgetary deal that would take the place of the unpopular sequestration maneuver, was a dismal failure. In part, the inability to secure a new plan can be blamed on an important miscalculation on the part of the POTUS. Believing (incorrectly it seems) that the GOP would place concern for the immediate cuts to defense spending above its commitment to opposing him at every turn, Obama played the waiting game – and lost.

So that’s one down from the State of the Union with many to go. The increasingly comprehensive paralysis on Capitol Hill inspires little confidence that deeply partisan issues like gun control and immigration reform will be dealt with in an expeditious and logical fashion. The majority of Americans have been placed in the same uncomfortable position as the Commander-in-Chief: gamely rooting for members of the House and Senate to do the jobs to which they’ve been elected, while suspecting a whole lot of nothing in the end. Our collective silver lining gut feeling, which is all we really have to sustain us at this point: is that somehow, someway, Congress will be divested of its ability to hold the fiscal, social and foreign policy of the nation hostage. It’s perfectly arguable that the rise of a viable third political party has never been more necessary.

We’ve grown so accustomed to our “do nothing” government as the root cause for so much of what ails our country, it’s often easy to forget that we really don’t have to depend on lawmakers to come to the rescue. Sometimes the solutions are just sitting there staring ordinary citizens and the private sector in the face.

Take, for example, President Obama’s stated intent to advocate for an increase in the Federal minimum wage. During this portion of the State of the Union address, the President framed the issue in this context: “Tonight, let’s declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9.00 an hour…This single step would raise the incomes of millions of working families.”

The minimum wage, which currently sits at $7.25 an hour, has held steady since 2009. The President is proposing an increase to $9.00 that would take effect in 2015. This is the sort of common sense idea that one might expect could be embraced by members occupying both side of the political spectrum. Of course, that’s not true. The opposition from the business community is to be expected, and upon remembering that most of the Republican Party rests comfortably inside the corporate pocket, most of us are well prepared for yet another showdown.

But in considering the potential squashing of another effort to assist the beleaguered working and middle classes, it occurs to me that this isn’t an issue that should require Congressional intervention. In anyone else tired of reading about the record-breaking profits and hoards of cash enjoyed by American companies, even as workers struggle to hold onto jobs that pay them flat wages?

Call me naive but I’d like to see the media machine hold some freaking feet to the fire. For example, why is pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb planning to layoff nearly 500 additional workers, when 2012 fourth quarter profits were up over 22 percent? Why isn’t Anderson Cooper keeping the company and scores of other greedy operations like it, honest with these types of questions? Why is it continually viable to discuss making the economy work for business, without any concern for the people who are responsible for the flush state of a company’s bottom line?

Against the backdrop of a government “for the people, by the people” which does seem to serve all parties except individuals’ sense that revolution is inevitable grows more palpable. With regard to the increase of the Federal minimum wage, with a little partnership from the media, we shouldn’t need Congress to act. The Tea Party is supposedly all about individual initiative, right?

Republicans Confront the Reality That America Just Isn’t That Into Them (February 26, 2013)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

listening-elephant

There is so much to talk about this week. Those of us not living under a rock are well aware that the budgetary disaster otherwise known as sequestration will go into effect this Friday in the absence of a bipartisan Congressional resolution. I am going to take a rare break from my genuine, liberal defensiveness and point the finger at both parties for allowing it to come to this.

It is unfathomable that playing the blame game as to who must own responsibility for developing the plan has taken precedence over coming up with a viable alternative. Further, it now seems that Democrats and Republicans may just take their chances with the sequester and let the voting public decide who’s most at fault. The theory goes that the party who is assigned the largest portion of accountability will have to scream “uncle” and ultimately compromise their position.

Well these types of tactical moves may play well in Poker and Risk, but this the real world. Real people stand to lose real jobs, and a fledgling U.S. economy just starting to show signs of life may be sent back to the precipice from which it stood in late 2008. Shame, shame, shame on this pathetic excuse for representation of the peoples’ will. I am about ready to declare big picture, long term planning completely obsolete on Capitol Hill.

And while we’re on the subject of regressive thinking, the GOP continues to wrestle with a four-month old question to which finding the answer would change nothing. The Republican Party is still wasting time and resources trying to figure out why it is that Mitt Romney lost the 2012 Presidential election in the first place. The party of fantasy, having gotten nowhere blaming voters for their unfathomable desire to put their own economic survival ahead of big business interests, and the settled question of a woman’s right to control her own body, have found a new target: technology.

Mitt Romney’s former top strategist, Stuart Stevens, has been everywhere in the media in recent days. Stevens has canvassed print and television news outlets, defending himself from the latest charges directed at the Romney campaign, to try to account for what many Republicans still view as a incomprehensible rejection of their chosen candidate. Conventional right wing wisdom has reevaluated the Obama’s mastery of viral messaging across social media, YouTube, and campaign websites and come up with one conclusion: the Romney Team’s dearth of tech savvy cost them the vote.

Sounding more common sense than reactionary, Stevens has challenged the party to look deeper for its failure to connect with the electorate. Among other arguments Stevens made in an Op-Ed published in The Washington Post earlier this week, the strategist called upon his partymates to admit that the answers are not that simple. He wrote, “There seems to be a desire to blame Republicans’ electoral difficulties and the Romney campaign’s loss on technological failings. I wish this were the problem, because it would be relatively easy to fix. But it’s not.”

Instead Stevens joins a growing chorus of GOP leaders who seem to be waking up the simple unpopularity of the party platform. ABC News summarized the operative’s view as follows: Stevens “argue[s] that it was a generation and message gap that ailed the GOP last year and ultimately paved the way for President Obama’s victory over Romney. The Democrats’ superior technology – and Republicans’ weaknesses in this area – was only part of the problem.” Ya think?

Leave it to the modern Republican Party to turn anywhere to avoid the obvious truth: Americans just aren’t that into you anymore. Stevens went on to caution the right against adopting the belief that more effective Tweeting and the right software package would be enough to convince alienated voters to give the GOP another try. He said, ” “Technology is something to a large degree you can go out and purchase, and if we think there’s an off the shelf solution that you can with the Republican Party it’s wrong.”

We know by now that the 21st century Republican ilk retreats from facts and logic when it comes to pursuing its own agenda, but it seems that they’ve only really succeeded in fooling themselves. If they haven’t learned by now that continued legislative intransigence and a loose relationship with reality is a strategy destined to fail, may they be reminded during the 2014 midterm elections.

 

Nate Silver Says Marco Rubio is as Unelectable as Mitt Romney Was (February 19, 2013)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

rubio-romney

The name of rock star statistician Nate Silver will be forever linked with the results of the 2012 Presidential election. You may recall that against the tide of Republican strategic hubris, and despite rampant voter suppression efforts taking place in communities representing large populations of poor and ethnic constituents, Silver warned the GOP talking heads that Obama was on his way to a sweeping victory. And he was right. In President Obama’s historic conquest over Mitt Romney, Silver correctly predicted the winner of all 50 states plus the District of Columbia. Let’s take a moment to savor once more the epic meltdown of Karl Rove on Fox News as it finally sank in that there was zero chance of a Romney presidency.

It never gets old does it?

In 2010, Silver’s blog, FiveThirtyEight: Nate Silver’s Political Calculus, was presciently licensed for publication by the New York Times. The blog is making news this week with an intriguing post entitled, “Marco Rubio: The Electable Conservative?”

As we know, Rubio is being championed by the beleaguered, delusional and hopelessly out of step Republican Party as the key to returning to mainstream acceptability. Rubio, a Cuban American native of Miami, Florida who rose to prominence after the humblest of beginnings, is seen as the key to making inroads with the nation’s Latino voters. Once a dependable GOP demographic, Latinos have fled the party in droves given its hard-line stance against immigration reform.

Looking to shake the Etch-a-Sketch Romney-style, the GOP has recently attempted to reverse course, proposing to get behind the Dream Act, a plan that would provide a pathway to citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants. Though many of the partys’  recommended measures are tied to border security improvements, the changes mark a critical pivot for Republicans – and Rubio is offered by the right as the face of that change.

Tasked with delivering the rebuttal to the President’s well-received State of the Union address last week, we know that Rubio stumbled: awkward, sweaty and apparently very thirsty. Rubio’s performance stirred reminisces of the 1960 televised debate between Kennedy and Nixon that many have theorized cost Nixon the election. But really, it was one of Rubio’s first appearances on the national stage. Is it any surprise his rehashed talking points would fail to excite, set in relief against the President’s smooth and energized delivery? The question remains: given more time to develop, could Rubio pose an electable challenge to Democrats in 2016?

Though Nate Silver presents a wealth of data in his piece (naturally) that points to Rubio’s strengths in a Republican primary, he hedges when discussing the senator’s general appeal against more moderate candidates. Silver writes, “This is not to say that Mr. Rubio is extraordinarily popular. Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey has favorability ratings that are much stronger than Mr. Rubio’s, for example.”

Silver goes on to say, “What makes matters tricky for Mr. Rubio is that, at the same time he is hoping to persuade Republican party insiders that he deserves their support, he will also need to maintain a reasonably good image with the broader electorate lest his electability argument be undermined. This may lead to some strange positions, such as when Mr. Rubio recently critiqued President Obama’s immigration proposal despite its many similarities to his own.”

In other words, a Republican candidate of any color may still have to adopt the 2012 losing strategy of Mitt Romney. Go hard right fringe during primary season to secure the nomination, then try to fox trot your way back to the center so you can appeal to the mainstream.

A full three and a half years before the next Presidential election, Rubio is already being setup to fail as John McCain and Mitt Romney did before him. To return to President Obama’s “lipstick on a pig analogy,” the ethnic makeup of a candidate cannot possibly surmount a losing game plan. Americans wised up to Mitt Romney’s say-anything-to-win strategy and the result was a fantastic drubbing.

The silver lining of the continuing pain of the Great Recession is a more engaged voting public with a distaste for overt manipulation. Until the GOP initiates a grassroots revamp of the outdated platform upon which it stands, it is unlikely to place a candidate in the White House. As Silver concludes, “If Mr. Rubio holds a fairly ordinary (and conservative) set of Republican positions, chances are his popularity ratings will wind up being ordinary as well.”

Republicans Don’t Want You to Know That Obamacare Is Working (February 13, 2013)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

barack-obama-thumbs-up

There’s a subtle story going around this week that you definitely won’t see covered on Fox News. You won’t hear Speaker John Boehner or Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell discussing these results in their usual rote talking points about Obamacare and the socialist takeover of the country by the President’s policies. Between all the baying about the deficit, the budget and the huge negative impacts of the upcoming sequestration plan that will be implemented in the absence of fiscal resolution, if you blinked, you could almost miss the headline:

Slower Growth of Health Costs Eases U.S. Deficit

The New York Times ran this piece on Monday morning, and to be fair, it might have been difficult for anyone to focus what with Benedict XVI’s stunning announcement that he would be the first Pope in six centuries to resign his post. There’s also the President’s first State of the Union Address since winning re-election in 2012. It has undoubtedly been a busy news cycle and that will likely continue as we move through the week.

But come on! This is a big deal!According to the piece by writer Annie Lowrey, “A sharp and surprisingly persistent slowdown in the growth of health care costs is helping to narrow the federal deficit, leaving budget experts trying to figure out whether the trend will last and how much the slower growth could help alleviate the country’s long-term fiscal problems.”

Excuse me for asking this obvious, but isn’t this precisely what both political parties claim to be after? Going back to the 2008 Presidential campaign, then candidates John McCain and Barack Obama devoted near equal time to lamenting the spiraling costs of healthcare and its affect on deficit spending. Both men vowed to do something if elected. It seemed to be an issue that most Americans and politicos could get behind.

Then low and behold, early into his first term, Obama and the Democrats actually got something accomplished – with the GOP fighting them every step of the way. It wasn’t pretty. It was embarrassing and painful for almost everybody, and the end result was a far cry from the single payer system that many liberals badly desired. But in the end the Patient Protection and the Affordable Care Act was a huge pivot away from a throughly broken system that seemed to exist for the benefit of health insurance companies, rather than the sick and injured they were created to serve.

Republicans wasted no time decrying the Act as the largest increase in government bureaucracy since ___ (fill in the blank), a measure that would drive medical costs and the Federal deficit up rather than down. Through it all, Obama held steady, confident that history would have the final say.

It didn’t even take a leap year. Lowrey goes on to write, “In figures released last week, the Congressional Budget Office said it had erased hundreds of billions of dollars in projected spending on Medicare and Medicaid. The budget office now projects that spending on those two programs in 2020 will be about $200 billion, or 15 percent, less than it projected three years ago.”

President Obama is way too gracious a person to perform the “I told you so dance” on Capitol Hill to which he is richly entitled. So I will do it for him. BOOM!!! How’s that for change you can believe?

Here’s hoping the President and his team use this data to their advantage, to head naysayers and sycophants off at the pass who stand to gain much by protecting the status quo. As the POTUS seeks to take on a host of issues this calendar year that seem to draw crazies out of the woodwork (I’m thinking gun control and immigration), let this early data from the effects of health care reform empower him to keep doing what is right.