Trump: Rising From The GOP's Ashes

Donkey Hotey

Guest Blog Post by Tina Dupuy

There’s no shortage of publicity maestro, name-emblazer Donald Trump think pieces on the Internet these days. Most will attribute his straight talk to his more-than-likely-fleeting frontrunner status. Others point to some anger or racism the Trump Brand Name has tapped into. The rest? Apologists or denouncers. But all seem to agree that Trump is bad for the Republican Party; he’s sucking all the air out of the nominee process. That some other alleged Serious Candidates won’t get the attention they need because Trump is, well, trumping them.

But they’ve all missed it. Trump is not the cause of the GOP’s problems—he’s the symptom.

I turn to the classic work by Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter in their 1956 tome “When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World.” This was the seminal work where the phrase “cognitive dissonance” was coined. The researchers followed a doomsday cult, the Seekers, after their date of The End came and went.

What we’d assume is, after there was concrete, indisputable, undeniable evidence the prophecy was wrong, there would be mass disillusionment. Followers would turn on their leader and realize how silly they’d been. But that wasn’t the case. Instead, the authors observed a doubling down effect. The true believers found disconfirmation to be a reason to believe more truly. And then, firmly committed to their beliefs, they tried to find ways to justify the outcome. In the case of the Seekers, it was that they’d prayed and that stopped the flood which was to wipe out humanity.

When George W. Bush was sworn in with a Republican majority in the House and Senate, compassionate conservatism was going to be veto-less. Tax cuts were going to save the world and supply-side economics would make us all rich! In fact the Heritage Foundation assessed the Bush Tax Cuts would “1) Effectively pay off the federal debt; 2) Reduce the federal surplus by $1.4 trillion; 3) Substantially increase family income; 4) Save the entire Social Security surplus; 5) Increase personal savings; 6) Create more job opportunities.” Being in charge, Republicans cut taxes and THEN put a preemptive war on a credit card. Actually it was two major wars in two massive countries. We were promised we’d be greeted as liberators.

The prophesy conservatives believed—propagated—hoped was true, was that de-regulating business, cutting taxes and dropping a trillion dollars for an embassy in Iraq would “restore honor and dignity to the White House.”

What happened? Well, prophesy failed. Compassionate conservatism failed. The Bush Administration failed. Where’s the GOP now? Well if we go by cognitive dissonance theory, some devotees left the party. This is evident by all those “independent” (wink-wink) voters. The rest, the true believers, doubled down and that’s the best explanation for the tea party. And then the angry conservatives who made up this uprising claimed the economy buckling was Obama’s fault. Anyone’s fault! Too much government, they said. Too many taxes, they claimed. It was anything and everything else save failed prophesy from the Bush Years. Anything other than lies with broken promises built on faulty assumptions based on cherry-picked garbage.

In the wake of this revolt—this visceral, angry, point-to-anything mobile vulgus catapulted Sarah Palin into national prominence. And if you’ve ever wondered what a doubling down on Dubya looks like—it looks like Sarah palling-around-with-secessionists Palin’.

And the male version of this shiny totally unqualified and utterly ridiculous, money-grubbing, vacuous 2008 GOP It Girl is 2015’s Donald Trump. Palin’s signature move was to start media flame wars forcing us all to read endless piles of copy about her pettiness all while making the RNC hilariously lament their long dead intelligentsia. And that pretty much sums up The Donald. So far he’s been fired by NBC, dropped by Macy’s and collectively booed by everyone who sees Mexicans as anything other than rapists. He’s become a walking—err escalator-riding—media flame war.

And so of course Trump is now polling higher than any of the other 634 Republican candidates for president in this cycle. If we’re going by cognitive dissonance theory (and for this column, we are), Trump is the true believers doubling down on their resolve and grasping at straws to justify why Republican policies, when put into practice, utterly fail in every imaginable way.

Trump will not ruin the party. Trump is rising from the party’s ruins.

Originally posted at Tina Dupuy's website.

Scared Shitless Into Pragmatism: Ready For Hillary -- The Far Lesser Evil

"We're too great a nation to allow the evil-doers to affect our soul and our spirit."  -- G.W. Bush

Progressives (myself included) invariably bemoan the lack of a legitimate presidential candidate that mirrors our values.  We pine for an Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders but when the primary smoke clears, we are generally left with the Establishment Candidate.  We are then confronted with the unpalatable choice of abstaining altogether, throwing our vote away on a principled but purely symbolic third-party candidate or voting for the Democratic nominee as the lesser of two evils.  With the exception of my first presidential election in 1980, when I voted for John Anderson instead of Jimmy Carter, I have invariably gone with the third option -- voting for the decidedly lesser evil.  In 2016, this will be the only option. 

The Ralph Nader Debacle of 2000, that ushered in George W. Bush, should have buried once and for all the cynical, self-defeating argument that there is no substantive difference between the two parties.  Think about what the world would be like if Nader had declined to run in battleground states or his supporters woke up to reality and held their noses while voting for Al Gore.  No hanging chads.  Perhaps no 9/11.  Certainly no Iraq War, no Guantanamo and no torture.  An efficient and humane response to Katrina.  A liberal majority on the Supreme Court with no Chief Justice Roberts or Justice Alioto. Dick Cheney as a mere footnote to history.  I could go on and on.  But even if this inconvenient truth has not shamed us into having a more pragmatic view of presidential politics, we only need to look at the current crop of increasingly unhinged GOP candidates to realize that the lesser evil doesn't look so bad when the greater evil becomes ever more evil. 

Nevertheless, with the ascension of Hillary Clinton as the presumptive Democratic nominee -- and the candidate who has by far the best chance of defeating any Republican candidate -- there is already a premature disengagement by some progressives who say they are disinclined to support her -- who will no longer resign themselves to voting for the lesser of evils.  This is madness.

Now, I've never been a fan of Hillary Clinton.  As a Senator she not only voted for one of the worst foreign policy decisions in our nation's history she repeatedly went in front of the cameras to cheerlead in the run up to it.  23 Senators voted against the Iraq Resolution.  Clinton was not one of them, and her belated apology was lame.  Her coziness with Wall Street, and Goldman Sachs in particular, is deeply troubling and does not augur well for an aggressive approach to rein in the financial industry.  The Clinton Foundation appears rampant with conflicts of interest.  The incessant scandals -- self-inflicted and manufactured -- are exhausting.  And, finally, her husband, is not the man I would choose to have the ear of the next president.  When I think of the Clinton Presidency (speaking of the lesser of two evils), I am reminded of his war on drugs, so-called habeas reform, so-called welfare reform, DOMA, and deregulation of the financial industry that helped spur the 2008 economic meltdown.  With the singular exception of DOMA, I have never heard Hillary disavow any of these disastrous policies. 

On the other hand, one only has to do another brief thought experiment.  Just hypothesize what the world would look like if the next president is any one of the dim characters that comprises the Republican clown car and you should be scared shitless into becoming an avid Hillary supporter. 

Start with the United States Supreme Court.  Given the advanced ages of the justices (Ginsburg is 82, Scalia is 79, Kennedy is 78 and Breyer is 76), the next president will most likely have the opportunity to appoint more than one new justice, thereby impacting the balance of the Court for at least another generation.  The difference between Obama's appointees ( Kagan and Sotomayor) and Bush's (Roberts and Alioto) couldn't be more stark.  Another Republican appointee would create a rock solid conservative majority that would surely overturn Roe v. Wade, further dismantle Voting Rights, revisit and overturn the Affordable Care Act, dismantle federal regulations on everything from the environment to Wall Street, further limit available remedies for individuals against corporations, allow for greater intrusion of religion into the public sphere, and roll back advances in civil rights and criminal justice.

That alone should be enough to frighten any sentient being into supporting the Democratic nominee.  But there is so much more to be afraid of. 

Even if some Republicans have finally admitted that climate change really exists, not one of them believes that the government should do anything about it.  Imagine four years spent reversing the modest efforts of the Obama Administration in reducing greenhouse gases combined with the dismantling of the EPA, reversal of environmental regulations and encouraging unfettered fossil fuel development. 

As for economic priorities, while House and Senate Republicans can't seem to reach immediate consensus over their respective budget plans, their only area of dispute is over how to overcome caps on military spending.  There seems to be ready agreement among virtually all Republicans with regard to further tax cuts favoring the wealthy, repeal of the Affordable Care Act, deregulating Wall Street, gutting environmental regulations, making drastic cuts to food stamps, Medicaid and other essential aspects of the safety net.  Not even Pell Grants are safe.  Republicans' unstated but irrefutable goal, as Paul Krugman summarized, consists of "huge transfers of income from the poor and the working class, who would see severe benefit cuts, to the rich, who would see big tax cuts."

Foreign policy for Republicans has not evolved since Bush-Cheney invaded Iraq.  Relying on the same blinkered and unrepentant advisors, it seems to consist mostly of jingoistic saber-rattling, disdain for diplomacy, and the belief that putting "boots on the ground" is the sure-fire solution to defeating terrorism. It is worth pointing out that three potential candidates signed the infamous open letter to Iran in an effort to derail nuclear arms talk, and no other Republican candidate has criticized this irresponsible, if not treasonous, lapse of judgment and protocol. 

Terrified yet?

Progressives don't have to sell out.  They can stay pure at the local level.  They can -- and should -- work to elect more liberal candidates in Congress which, more than anything else, will help push a moderate president leftward.  But when it comes to the presidency, there is no alternative but to rally around the Democratic candidate -- whoever she or he is.  It is no longer about choosing the lesser of evils as much as it is defeating the evil-doers. 

Ten Things To Know About CISPA

DonkeyHotey

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, known as CISPA passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 248-168 vote, and now goes to the Senate.  The ostensible goal of the legislation is "to help companies beef up their defenses against hackers who steal business secrets, rob customers' financial information and wreak havoc on computer systems."  It does this by making it easier for the government and private industry to share information about cyber threats.

But it raises legitimate civil liberty concerns. The ACLU warns that the bill is "dangerously overbroad."   Reporters Without Borders notes that "the bill would negate existing privacy laws and allow companies to share user data with the government without a court order."

ThinkProgress tells us what we need to know:

CISPA’s broad language will likely give the government access to anyone’s personal information with few privacy protections: CISPA allows the government access to any “information pertaining directly to a vulnerability of, or threat to, a system or network of a government or private entity.” There is little indication of what this information could include, and what it means to be ‘pertinent’ to cyber security. Without boundaries, any internet user’s personal, private information would likely be fair game for the government.
  
It supersedes all other provisions of the law protecting privacy: As the bill is currently written, CISPA would apply “notwithstanding any other provision of law.” In other words, privacy restrictions currently in place would not apply to CISPA. As a result, companies could disclose more personal information about users than necessary. Ars Technica writes, “if a company decides that your private emails, your browsing history, your health care records, or any other information would be helpful in dealing with a ‘cyber threat,’ the company can ignore laws that would otherwise limit its disclosure.” 

The bill completely exempts itself from the Freedom of Information Act: Citizens and journalists have access to most things the government does via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a key tool for increasing transparency. However, CISPA completely exempts itself from FOIA requests. The Sunlight Foundation blasted CISPA for “entirely” dismissing FOIA’s “fundamental safeguard for public oversight of government’s activities.” 

CISPA gives companies blanket immunity from future lawsuits: One of the most egregious aspects of CISPA is that it gives blanket legal immunity to any company that shares its customers’ private information. In other words, if Microsoft were to share your browsing history with the government despite your posing no security threat, you would be barred from filing a lawsuit against them. Without any legal recourse for citizens to take against corporate bad behavior, companies will be far more inclined to share private information. 

Recent revisions don’t go nearly far enough: In an attempt to specify how the government can use the information they collect, the House passed an amendment saying the data can only be used for: “1) cybersecurity; 2) investigation and prosecution of cybersecurity crimes; 3) protection of individuals from the danger of death or physical injury; 4) protection of minors from physical or psychological harm; and 5) protection of the national security of the United States.” This new version still “suffers from most of the same problems that plagued the original version,” writes Timothy Lee. Because terms like “cybersecurity” are so vague, the bill’s language could encompass almost anything. 

No Frothy Mix To Kick Around Anymore

“It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog.”

DonkeyHotey

Rick Santorum has suspended his campaign for the Republican nomination.  Hallelujah.

The common wisdom has been that the longer Santorum remained in the race, the better for Obama because Team Romney would have to protect its right flank with money, advertising and messaging that would otherwise be used to go after the President on his left.  But even without Santorum, Romney still needs to talk the right-wing crazy talk so as not to alienate his right-wing crazy party as he pivots to general election mode.  And, in any event, in terms of what is best for the country and what remains of rational political discourse, we are far better off not having to listen to Santorum's nonsense anymore.   

As I've said before, if his bid was successful, Santorum would have been the creepiest GOP candidate since at least 2008.  (A nice compilation of Santorum's greatest hits can be found here.)

It is rather shocking that a potential nominee with Santorum's extreme views about women, about the role of religion in the public sphere, and about  human-jelly fish hybrids made it this far.  What does it say about a major political party in which Rick Santorum is the preferred candidate for more than 25% of their voters.  (Not to mention that Newt Gingrich is the favorite of another 11%.)

Perhaps, more importantly, what does it say about Mitt Romney (with still only 40% support from his party) that it has taken him this long to vanquish such a weak opponent?

The Supreme Court Trauma Center

By DonkeyHotey

Mr. Etch-A-Sketch

DonkeyHotey

Candidate Romney has taken outrageously extreme positions on contraception, immigration, the environment, and a host of other issues in order to appeal to the Republican base, described so vividly by Hendrick Hertzberg as "an excitable, overlapping assortment of Fox News friends, Limbaugh dittoheads, Tea Party animals, war whoopers, nativists, Christianist fundamentalists, à la carte Catholics (anti-abortion, yes; anti-torture, no), anti-Rooseveltians (Franklin and Theodore), global-warming denialists, post-Confederate white Southrons, creationists, birthers, market idolaters, Europe demonizers, and gun fetishists."  But what will he do after securing the nomination when he must attract a saner, more moderate electorate?

That's easy.  He will just stand on his head, shake, and try something new.  Don't believe me?  Here's what Eric Fehrnstrom, his campaign spokesperson said in response to a question on whether there was concern that Santorum and Gingrich might force Romney to tack too far to the right:

"Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again." 

Jed Lewison at Daily Kos notes that the only thing remarkable about this statement is that "Mitt Romney's campaign is admitting ahead of time what we already knew: that Romney doesn't have any real core principles and will say whatever he thinks it will take to win the election."

Steve Benen describes the earlier incarnations of Mr. Etch-A-Sketch:

Romney 1.0 was an independent who distanced himself from Reagan; Romney 2.0 was a moderate Republican with self-described "progressive" views on social issues and health care; Romney 3.0 was a social conservative who cared deeply about the culture war; and Romney 4.0 is a far-right businessman who represents the GOP establishment and the top 1%.

What will the post-primary Romney look like?  We'll have to see how it shakes out.

The Difference Between Private And Public Morality

By Robert Reich, cross-posted from his website

DonkeyHotey

Republicans have morality upside down. Santorum, Gingrich, and even Romney are barnstorming across the land condemning gay marriage, abortion, out-of-wedlock births, access to contraception, and the wall separating church and state.

But America’s problem isn’t a breakdown in private morality. It’s a breakdown in public morality. What Americans do in their bedrooms is their own business. What corporate executives and Wall Street financiers do in boardrooms and executive suites affects all of us.

There is moral rot in America but it’s not found in the private behavior of ordinary people. It’s located in the public behavior of people who control our economy and are turning our democracy into a financial slush pump. It’s found in Wall Street fraud, exorbitant pay of top executives, financial conflicts of interest, insider trading, and the outright bribery of public officials through unlimited campaign “donations.”

Political scientist James Q. Wilson, who died last week, noted that a broken window left unattended signals that no one cares if windows are broken. It becomes an ongoing invitation to throw more stones at more windows, ultimately undermining moral standards of the entire community.

The windows Wall Street broke in the years leading up to the crash of 2008 remain broken. Despite financial fraud on a scale not seen in this country for more than eighty years, not a single executive of a major Wall Street bank has been charged with a crime.

Since 2009, the Securities and Exchange Commission has filed 25 cases against mortgage originators and securities firms. A few are still being litigated but most have been settled. They’ve generated almost $2 billion in penalties and other forms of monetary relief, according to the Commission. But almost none of this money has come out of the pockets of CEOs or other company officials; it has come out of the companies — or, more accurately, their shareholders. Federal prosecutors are now signaling they won’t even bring charges in the brazen case of MF Global, which lost billions of dollars that were supposed to be kept safe.

Nor have any of the lawyers, accountants, auditors, or top executives of credit-rating agencies who aided and abetted Wall Street financiers been charged with doing anything wrong.

And the new Dodd-Frank law that was supposed to prevent this from happening again is now so riddled with loopholes, courtesy of Wall Street lobbyists, that it’s almost a sham. The Street prevented the Glass-Steagall Act from being resurrected, and successfully fought against limits on the size of the largest banks.

Windows started breaking years ago. Enron’s court-appointed trustee reported that bankers from Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase didn’t merely look the other way; they dreamed up and sold Enron financial schemes specifically designed to allow Enron to commit fraud. Arthur Andersen, Enron’s auditor, was convicted of obstructing justice by shredding Enron documents, yet most of the Andersen partners who aided and abetted Enron were never punished.

Americans are entitled to their own religious views about gay marriage, contraception, out-of-wedlock births, abortion, and God. We can be truly free only if we’re confident we can go about our private lives without being monitored or intruded upon by government, and can practice whatever faith (or lack of faith) we wish regardless of the religious beliefs of others. A society where one set of religious views is imposed on a large number of citizens who disagree with them is not a democracy.

It’s a theocracy.

But abuses of public trust such as we’ve witnessed for years on the Street and in the executive suites of our largest corporations are not matters of private morality. They’re violations of public morality. They undermine the integrity of our economy and democracy. They’ve led millions of Americans to conclude the game is rigged.

White House Court

By DonkeyHotey

[Related post: Targeted Killings and the Death of Due Process]