Once again, the GOP opts for deceit as a short-term political tactic...

[babylonsister]

The Republicans' faulty foundation
Once again, the GOP opts for deceit as a short-term political tactic while praying that a cracked base doesn't crumble.

posted on April 15, 2010, at 6:40 PM
Robert Shrum


Months of death panel promoting, senior citizen deceiving, and abortion mongering have left Republicans immune to facts. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has donned his Frank Luntz mask (maybe McConnell could borrow the pollster’s toupee too), lifting wholesale Luntz’s language designed to mislead the public about financial reform. Playing dummy to Luntz’s ventriloquist, McConnell now shamelessly characterizes the bill that would avert future bailouts on Wall Street as a license for endless bailouts on Wall Street.

This latest Republican exercise in duplicity is easily explained: The GOP can’t openly advocate the policies they believe in—because those policies led to the economic collapse of 2008. Meantime, GOP leaders look at the financial industry and see sacks of campaign cash. It’s no coincidence that last week two dozen Wall Street titans met with McConnell and Republican Senate Campaign Committee Chairman John Cornyn. No one was shy about the quid pro quo, according to Fox News (which helpfully repeated the Luntz propaganda). McConnell and House GOP leader John Boehner offered a pledge that revealed the reality: They would take on, and if they could, take out the government authority to determine when banks should be left to fail. And they said yes, they’d be back—to collect money for Republican candidates.

It’s a naked manifestation of the Republicans as the party of America’s wealthiest special interests. As the process moves ahead, President Obama and the Democrats can say exactly that and hold the political high ground—as they too seldom did during the health debate. But first, and to the consternation of many in their own ranks, Democratic leaders will attempt to reach across the aisle.

This makes sense. There are Wall Street institutions ready to cooperate, to give some ground just as the pharmaceutical industry did to the tune of more than $120 billion on health-care reform. And not every Republican will follow McConnell off the cliff. Tennessee Republican Bob Corker said he hadn’t heard McConnell’s acid comments. So did his colleagues from Maine, the self-professed moderates Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe. Sen. Scott Brown, the fading hero of the tea parties, says he’s not willing to commit to filibustering financial reform, or even voting against it; he’s clearly running for re-election in Massachusetts in 2012, not for a spot on a losing Republican national ticket.

So Wall Street reform will pass—or GOP hard-liners will pass the populist baton to Obama and the Democrats.

Either way, the day of reckoning for the Party of “No” is coming. The economy is improving. Democrats, who’ve been in the valley, have inched up to a midterm lead in at least one poll, CNN’s. The Republicans who rooted for Obama’s failure—and the economy’s—will only drive themselves deeper into a political cul-de-sac by standing against Wall Street reform.

more...

http://theweek.com/bullpen/column/201998/The_Republicans_faulty_foundation

[JohnWxy]

1. recommended.

[applegrove]

2. The financial industry and the Republican party are like two peas in a pod concerning

short term thinking.

[HughMoran]

3. Yep, though it appears that Brown is not interested in getting re-elected

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4348406

fine with me :D

[mindwalker_i]

4. In the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics...

It's said that the universe splits every time there is a random event, such that a universe is created for each possibility. Since so many event are random - when an electron decays to its ground state, emitting a photon, for example - that makes for a lot of universes created each second, each instant.

Republicans adopting ideas to suit their political needs, namely that of gaining power, appears to be a type of event that occurs with a similar frequency. It can be stated thusly:

limit(t -> infinity): (republicans lying) / (random events in universe) >= 1

[quiet.american]

5. Wow. I have to get used to Bob Shrum, unleashed. Good stuff.

I remember the days when he was persona non-grata around here, and rightfully so, as far as I was concerned. But reading his stuff lately - I like it.

[rpannier]

6. As long as he's not a consultant on the campaign of any Democrat in danger of losing

I can tolerate him

As an adviser his failures are in a unique class of futility