Tea Party

Republicans To Big Business: Guess What? We Don’t Care What You Want (October 14, 2013)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

monopoly-man

I don’t often say this in print so my detractors should enjoy the novelty. I was wrong. Granted, I have been in error at several intervals when I believed that Tea Party Republicans, no matter how fervent and misguided their messages, were ultimately Americans first. There’s no way they’d take us close to the brink during the 2011 debt ceiling crisis, causing our nation’s credit rating to be downgraded for the  first time since those stats were recorded, right?

Once Obama roundly won re-election in November 2012 and after Obamacare became the law of the land, they’d come to accept this as reality and move onto another target? Anyone? Anyone?

But most assuredly I had been led to believe that no matter what intransigent, batty opposition this faction of the G.O.P. had to all things POTUS supported, there was still one group’s authority that brooked no opposition. I speak of course of Big Business, that bastion of free market, deregulated “freedom” that these Tea Party patriots seem to value above all things, starting with the fabric of the social safety net.

It isn’t very often that the views and interests of compassionate liberals and sterile, bottom-line driven business leaders intertwine, but these my friends, are unusual times. Thus we encounter headlines such as Business Groups See Loss of Sway Over House G.O.P. in last week’s New York Times. The piece, from writers Eric Lipton, Nicholas Confessore and Nelson D. Schwartz, opens with the following:

“As the government shutdown grinds toward a potential debt default, some of the country’s most influential business executives have come to a conclusion all but unthinkable a few years ago: Their voices are carrying little weight with the House majority that their millions of dollars in campaign contributions helped build and sustain.”

Realizing that they are part and parcel of the tools used to build the 21st Century edition of Frankenstein’s Monster, the story goes on to observe:

“Their frustration has grown so intense in recent days that several trade association officials warned in interviews on Wednesday that they were considering helping wage primary campaigns against Republican lawmakers who had worked to engineer the political standoff in Washington. ”

Well that is certainly a seismic shift in attitude toward the years of dollar-funneling in support of political campaigns, representing the most conservative “lawmakers.” But I suppose even entities with interests that run counter to the health of the American worker see this indefensible legislative squatting for what it really is: a threat to the collective livelihood of everyone. How democratic.

The Times piece, however, was written a week ago. Since then Republican leaders have flirted with the possibility of a reasonable, balanced solution to the government shutdown/debt ceiling standoff. At the moment when a weekend compromise finally seemed possible, they then pulled the football away, Lucy-style, just as a tentative Democratic caucus (definitely the Charlie Brown of this analogy) was ready to kick it.  What was the result?

Writers Annie Lowrey and Nathaniel Popper write a fresh Timespiece, World Leaders Press the U.S. on Fiscal Crisis that widens the net of recorded business community frustration. It represents an area no smaller than, you know, the entire planet.  The article begins:

“Leaders at World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings on Sunday pleaded, warned and cajoled: the United States must raise its debt ceiling and reopen its government or risk ‘massive disruption the world over,’ as Christine Lagarde, the fund’s managing director, put it.”

Let it never be said that the IMF, former superfans of austerity, are in the pocket of liberal, Keynesian economists like Paul Krugman.

But here’s my favorite section of the Lowrey and Popper piece:

“Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, painted a bleak picture of the days ahead if there is no resolution. ‘As you get closer to it, the panic will set in and something will happen,’ Mr. Dimon said …’I don’t personally know when that problem starts.’ He added that JPMorgan had been ‘spending huge amounts of time and money and effort to be prepared.’”

People, when the pleas of the vaunted Jamie Dimon, Wall Street kingpin and “London Whale” trading loss shepherd, go unheeded, we have entered a new era.

An era when a small minority of terrorists (I care not that Democratic leaders have tried to soften their language. It’s getting them nowhere.) stand for nothing, care for no one, above and beyond getting their own way. I’m not sure people on the right know what that even means anymore. Is there anyone left who can articulate and defend the maneuvers of these crackpots?

The business community has finally gotten hip: you were pawns. Pawns with a lot of money. The Tea Party intends to bring you down along with the rest of us. Smoke ’em if you got ’em.

Apparent Tea Party Resurgence is Part of Natural Death Trajectory (May 20, 2013)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

obama-lier

The Sunday morning political talk shows are always fraught with varying degrees of danger. Every guest has something to sell, usually themselves, and all proffered arguments and positions ought to be viewed through that lens. So for every fair and balanced appearance of Newark, NJ Mayor Cory Booker, almost as critical of his Democratic allies as his Republican opponents, we get a trend-of-the-moment bandwagon jump from Arizona Senator John McCain.

My favorite vignette from yesterday’s edition of “Meet the Press” came during a segment featuring Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell. McConnell married an acute persecution complex with equal parts righteous indignation to rail against the alleged recent targeting of Tea Party groups by the Internal Revenue Service. Why, why, McConnell wondered, were American corporations and entities being denied their right (sob!) to criticize the administration? Free speech is endangered y’all (I paraphrase).

Leaving aside the creditable philosophical argument that organizations are not people and therefore not entitled to same rights, freedoms and empathy that we reserve for actual humans, “Meet the Press” host David Gregory confronted McConnell with a 25 year-old video clip. In it, the Senator cautioned his fellow Americans against – you guessed it – accepting the growing trend of political action committees seeking and abusing 501c3 status. When pressed by Gregory to explain why this phenomenon is now deemed cuddly and benign in a post-Citizens United political culture, the Senator demurred. Shocking, I know.

Folks, with so much cynicism clogging up the Capitol, it’s tough to resist the urge to grab the nearest chocolate bar before retreating to the fetal position. I want to double down on the calories when I come across headlines like this on a Monday morning: Tea party looks to take advantage of moment. According to writer Thomas Beaumont of the Associated Press, “the IRS acknowledgment that it had targeted their groups for extra scrutiny — a claim that Tea Party activists had made for years — is helping pump new energy into the coalition. And they are trying to use that development, along with the ongoing controversy over the Benghazi, Libya, terrorist attacks and the Justice Department’s secret seizure of journalists’ phone records, to recruit new activists incensed about government overreach.”

It’s natural to feel concern, annoyance, fear and disgust at the possibility of a resurgent Tea Party Movement gaining disingenuous strength from the leverage of non-scandals. But let’s keep the moment in perspective.

Scientists Glaser and Strauss first described the concept of death trajectories in pioneering qualitative research conducted in the 1960’s. In the course of caring for and supporting a terminally ill friend or loved one, many are victimized by a pernicious anomaly that can occur at the end of the death trajectory, or the process by which the body gives up its temporal struggles. Referred to informally as the “glow before you go” phenomenon, a patient can exhibit a brief but intense “recovery” prior to final expiration. What is so nefarious about this is the false hope it can instill in a patient’s support network, just prior to bereavement.

In this freak of the death trajectory, comatose invalids have been known to suddenly sit up and hold a conversation. A variation of this curiosity, I would argue, is at play in the Tea Party evolution.

Beaumont’s article arrives at nearly the same conclusion. He writes, “It’s unclear whether a movement made up of disparate grassroots groups with no central body can take advantage of the moment and leverage it to grow stronger after a subpar showing in last fall’s election had called into question the movement’s lasting impact. Republicans and Democrats alike say the Tea Party runs the risk of going too far in its criticism, which could once again open the door to Democratic efforts to paint it as an extreme arm of the GOP.”

I say let the tinfoil hat wearers (Bachman, Cruz, Rubio and yes, McConnell) enjoy this current chatty moment in the sun. It will be their last. “The President is a foreign Muslim!” “Death panels!” “They want to take our guns!” You can only cry wolf so many times before everyone stops listening. They are in the death throes. Hear the squawking for the mask it is.