Original Link: http://www.counterpunch.org/green05012009.html
By DAVID MICHAEL GREEN
Poor Troy Senik.
He's a Republican, so everyone knows he’s stupid.
He used to write speeches for George Bush and Newt Gingrich, so everyone avoids him at social gatherings.
And now all his clients are getting handed their pink slips, so he’s gonna have to start earning his living the honest way for once.
But that’s not even the worst part of it.
The worst part is that just he published a piece entitled “Republicans Agonistes”, which ended with this paragraph: “The time for the Republican Party's existential crisis is coming to a close. Now is the hour for a new generation of innovative, optimistic, and principled leaders to see this moment for what it is – an opportunity to renew a proud movement and lead it towards future victories.”
Then, the very next day, Arlen Specter showed us precisely where the party’s existential crisis really is at, after all. (Hint: It’s not exactly “coming to a close”.)
Indeed, not only is this meltdown not ending now, it is only just beginning. But I will give Senik credit for one thing. He has correctly labeled this as an existential crisis. He’s right about that. This is no garden variety rough patch in the road. This could well spell the end of an institution in American politics that has been around since Lincoln, and this country’s national party structure of the same vintage.
Mockingly, Senik opens his essay with a wee taste of right-wing sarcasm: “The Republican Party is dead. Haven't you heard? Despite winning seven of the past 11 presidential elections and controlling at least one house of Congress for 13 of the past 15 years, our salad days are over. The ascendancy of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama has shipwrecked the GOP in perpetuity. Those of us who fought the good fight will now have to go back to country clubbing, Bible thumping, and war mongering in the private sector. To add insult to injury, we're the only major institution that has failed in the last year without receiving a generous taxpayer bailout.”
Heh-heh. Those regressive cats sure are good at comedy, eh? Now if only they could do it on purpose, maybe they’d be getting somewhere with their show business careers.
Senik goes from there to chronicle all the previous near-death experiences of the Party – 1964, 1974, etc. – that turned out to be greatly exaggerated reports of the GOP’s demise. The point being, of course, that this kind of thing happens all the time. He therefore argues that, “The question for Republicans, then, is not if they can come back, but rather when and how.”
That’s actually quite wrong, though. The real question for Republicans is, instead, whether they will survive as a rump regional party of maniacal Troglodytes, or not at all.
Everything is going against the Party right now, ranging from demographic shifts to leadership vacuums to loss of control of every institution of American government to the massive popularity of the new president from the other party. But these are small potatoes compared to the two real problems that are rapidly dragging the party toward the precipice of oblivion.
The first monstrous problem for the GOP is that they’re so good at winning elections. Or at least they were. They’d have been great if only they hadn’t actually governed. Had they just stayed over there in the weeds, carping incessantly about taxes, weakness abroad, taxes, homos, taxes, spending and – did I mention taxes? – they could have gone on forever getting enough votes to continue on as America’s Perpetual Pain in the Ass Party. Unfortunately, though, they made the mistake of actually winning. They got so good at sliming their opponents and stealing elections and employing fear to get votes that, the next thing you knew, they were actually in charge.
Big, big mistake. Americans have seen what Republican government looks like. It’s seriously ugly, and that’s even when it doesn’t produce a crisis. All the more so when it does produce one, and far more yet when it’s six or seven, simultaneously.
I know, I know, it’s weird. But, just the same, Americans just don’t seem to want economies plummeting, debts exploding, cities attacked by terrorists, other cities drowning, endless wars based on lies, cronyism, nepotism, looting, environmental disasters, alienated allies, wrecked national reputations, or snarling vice presidents on their television sets. Nor do they want congressional legislation, enacted by a president flying across the country to sign the bill, that tells Americans how to handle their individual family medical tragedies. Like I said, it’s weird. I guess Americans are just quirky that way.
Well, okay. Then it would seem like the logical thing for the GOP to do would be to move away from the baggage of its radical albatross and return to the days of Gerald Ford and Nelson Rockefeller, back when the right wing of the party was considered scarier than a 3-D Hollywood horror movie even by the other members of the same party. Well, it would seem. But, you see, that’s the GOP’s second gigantic problem. It cannot do the one thing that could possibly save it.
Indeed, not only can it not, but it doesn’t want to. And not only doesn’t it want to, but it doesn’t even get that it must, or even should, if wants to have any hope of surviving. It’s truly amazing. I’ve talked to, and read pieces written by, regressives who seriously argue that the GOP’s problem is that it hasn’t been conservative enough. Indeed, I saw one young lady from the Heritage Foundation make the argument that neither George W. Bush nor William F. Buckley were real conservatives. That’s pretty hysterical if you think about it (something regressives never want you to actually do). But consider the main programmatic commitments of the Bush administration: wars overseas, huge military expenditures, lopsided bias in favor of Israel, arrogant unilateralism towards the UN and all other countries, massive tax cuts, anti-gay legislation, Social Security privatization, deregulation, anti-abortion policies, blocking of stem-cell research, environmental degradation, massive expansion of the wealth gap, erosion of the separation of church and state, and so on.
Which of these, I’m curious, don’t come right out of the contemporary conservative (pardon the obscene oxymoron there) play book? Sure, you could say that regressives are upset because Bush expanded Medicare (although the more accurate way to put it would be that he expanded the profits of insurance and pharmaceutical companies through the vehicle of Medicare), and that he doubled the national debt (which is kinda inevitable if you massively increase expenditures whilst slashing tax revenues; See Reagan, Ronald W., and the Tripling of the Debt). But let’s be serious, shall we? No one can credibly argue that George W. Bush was not a conservative. No one, that is, except the certifiably insane freaks on the right, who, mercifully, are finally becoming again the laughingstocks they once were in American society, and for precisely this reason.
Nevertheless, they continue their relentless march to the Land of the Ludicrous. I mean, just how amazingly silly is it to claim that George W. Bush wasn’t a real conservative? How insane do you have to have become to argue that this is why the party is losing elections? How completely bonkers do you have to have gone to prescribe a turn further to the right in order to do better from this point forward?
The Specter purge - and make no mistake, though it was his decision, it was no more 'voluntary' than the choice to exit a burning building – would represent the leading edge of a departure trend that would rock the Republican Party, except for one small problem: There is really hardly anything left of a moderate wing of the party anymore. Specter would be leading the disaffected droves out of the party, but there are none left to speak of, at least at the national level. It is not unfair to say the Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, both senators from Maine, are the only remaining moderate Republicans in Congress today.
At least one of them is really unhappy, too. Snowe penned an article in the New York Times this week, entitled "We Didn't Have To Lose Arlen Specter", in which she vents a bit of her anger at the radical right for driving Specter and, a decade ago Jim Jeffords, out of the party. Specter's own announcement speech was even more hostile, and remarkably candid for a politician. He spoke clearly about how the Club For Growth and other orthodox elements of the radical right have made it almost impossible for center-right Republicans to survive in office. Even if they can survive the threat of a far-right challenger in the primary, or the indifference of the party base such as greeted John McCain last year until he brought on the Palin abomination, they are then too wounded to win in the general election.
Snowe takes aim at social conservatives for purifying the party right down to its unwinnable essence. But what is most remarkable is that she – an angry moderate – gets her party's crisis almost as wrong as the looney fringe. Reacting to the capture of the party by the social conservatives, she writes:
"It is for this reason that we should heed the words of President Ronald Reagan, who urged, 'We should emphasize the things that unite us and make these the only 'litmus test' of what constitutes a Republican: our belief in restraining government spending, pro-growth policies, tax reduction, sound national defense, and maximum individual liberty.' He continued, 'As to the other issues that draw on the deep springs of morality and emotion, let us decide that we can disagree among ourselves as Republicans and tolerate the disagreement.'"
Quite laughable stuff, really. It’s as if the only sin of the right has been its insistence on emphasizing abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research as key Republican issues. Imagine how far gone these people are when even their moderate champion, writing in anger about the far right, doesn't begin to address their core dilemma. Yo, Olympia, I have some really awful news to give you, to go along with the bad news you've already received. Here it is: You guys have been wrong on EVERYTHING!!
Do you really think, Senator, that if you just let up on abortion but continued to manufacture millions of unemployed homeless people out of the former middle class that you would start winning elections again? And do you really think that you would be allowed to let up on abortion by your party’s base – the same nice folks who were getting ready to purge Arlen Specter – even if you could make that deal?
Do you really think, Senator, that if your party could somehow drunkenly stumble its way into a humane and science-based position on stem cell research at home, while continuing to lie its way into disastrous wars abroad, that the American public would rally to your cause? And do you really think your base of reactionary voters would let you do it, anyhow?
Is it really your belief, Senator Snowe, that if only the GOP would let the queers have their freakin’ marriage certificates that the party could then continue to win elections on a platform of planetary destruction via environmental catastrophe? And do you think your lovely base of nice Christian conservatives would allow you to do this, anyhow?
What Olympia Snowe doesn’t get is how far gone it all is now. And what she also doesn’t get is how desperate the party is when it continues turning to Ronald Reagan to solve their problems, as if he were Jesus’s kid brother.
More and more Americans – especially the young, tolerant, left-leaning ones – don’t know Reagan from James K. Polk, and the GOP’s constant appeal to worship at the shrine of Saint Ron strikes them as exactly what it is – living in the past.
And it’s a mythological past, anyhow. Reagan raised taxes after he slashed them. He had a huge recession. He tripled the national debt. He signed a very liberal abortion bill in California. He sold missiles to Iran. He shredded the Constitution. He didn’t defeat the Soviets and end the Cold War, though I must admit, he did kick ass on Grenada (right after the hundreds of Marines he had stuck in Lebanon for no reason got wiped out, of course).
What Reagan did best, if you’re of the sort who falls for this kind of crap, is to talk happy talk about how good and right and powerful and moral we all are. But he didn’t live that life himself, he didn’t improve the country or the world with his policies, and nobody gives a shit anymore, anyhow. The degree to which the party faithful keep trotting this guy out like some deity is a perfect measurement of how little they actually have to offer. It’s pathetic beyond belief, and it’s no wonder those pesky elections keep going into the ‘L’ column, one after another, with no end in sight whatsoever.
Of course, there is a silver-lining to having ‘irrelevented’ yourself to such an extent that you now not only don’t control any institution of government, but you are about to not even be able to muster the bare minority you need in the Senate to filibuster a bill and block its consideration. That’s a pretty impressive trick, and the GOP is hardly done, I would say. To wit, they just lost a by-election in upstate New York where a Democratic candidate coming from outside the district, which leans heavily Republican, and having little help from either the president or the Democratic Party, nevertheless managed to beat the well-known Republican candidate who was fully backed by the national GOP and its clown chairman, Michael Steele. At this rate, my guess is that 2010 is going to be another blood-letting for the GOP, just like the last two.
But the silver-lining to these very stormy clouds is this: If actually winning elections and having to govern is the kiss of death for your party, then the GOP has at least been rendered to a place where it can sit on the sidelines and not continue destroying itself by actually making policy decisions.
Or, at least, not destroy itself quite so much. Its new job is little more than to criticize the other guys now in government. Whatever else you can say about Obama and the Democrats, they seem to be trying a bit to clean up the mess they’ve inherited, and they seem to be doing it rather gracefully, if half-heartedly, all things considered.
So what has the loyal opposition been saying? The president uses Teleprompters! He gave the Queen an iPod! He bowed to the Saudi king! He accepted a book from Hugo Chavez! Worse, still, he smiled when he shook the guy’s hand!
Not so impressive, eh? These goons can’t even do carping well.
They have no leaders, no constructive contribution to the debate other than shouting “No!”, and now so little power that they can’t even filibuster from the minority in the Senate.
This party is over.
And, surveying the wreckage of a once great country, not a minute too soon.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
The Right goes insane
Original Link: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/05/01/notes050109.DTL
By By Mark Morford
This much we know: Hand evil a big, sticky gob of power, and it quickly becomes a feral monster, dangerous and cruel and willing to sell its own shriveled heart and the heart of its very remorseful mother for a shot at everlasting infamy, even more power and maybe some fresh, raw kitten blood, intravenously, just for the hell of it.
Oh, but take that same vile leviathan and suddenly strip away all its power and influence and capacity for wickedness, and watch it deflate like a wheezing circus tent, quickly turning into a trembling caricature of its former self, a tiny, elfin thing small enough to fit into a shoebox of panic and pathos and residual Godspit.
Behold, this delightful rule in full effect with the once portentous, now pitiable Republican party. Watch in wonder as gaffe follows gaffe, astonishing pronouncement follows childish meltdown, ludicrous statement leads into pure comedy of errors followed by moderate 40-year veterans of the party splitting for bluer, less abusive pastures. What a scene.
There is much good news to be found in the ongoing GOP implosion; their obsession with 'wedge issues' like abortion and gay marriage, along with hilarious claims of socialism and fascism are proving to be the absolute best news for the nation as a whole. Because as the GOP wallows in juvenile spectacle, Obama and the Dems are leaping headlong into one of the most ambitious, invigorating, nation-altering agendas in American history.
Of course, it ain't all flowers and candy. This much unfettered movement for any party, left or right, can also be just insanely dangerous, could theoretically result in a blowback for the Dems exactly as destructive and apocalyptic as the horrendous Bush Era proved to be for the once-temperate Repubs.
Is it already heading that way? Will it happen? Not a chance.
But before we see why, let us enjoy a bit of the comedy. Because really, who could've guessed that, for example, former drug addict and all around bulbous, cigar-chomping radio jackal Rush Limbaugh would turn into the most influential conservative in the country, more powerful than, say, the GOP's own chairman, Michael Steele, who was recently found kneeling to kiss Rush's fat, sweaty ring?
Ah, but even Rush can't match the genuine lump of crazy that is the latest bearded lady to step onstage at the Fox News freakshow, Glenn Beck, a truly insane hunk of weirdness who's fun to watch not for any attempt at genuine insight or O'Reilly-esque pseudo-intelligence, but because of how he endears himself to viewers by acting exactly like your crazy uncle Ernie, the one who eats Miracle Whip straight from the jar and hears voices in his armpits and stares just a bit too long at any 10-year-old within range. Weep on, Glenn!
But weep not for Miss California, who's happy as a Prozac clam to take on the title as the new face of Republican hetero marriage. Isn't she lovely? A skinny, fake-breasted blonde mouthful of air who does exactly as she's told and never questions her scary Bible and doesn't really like sex and you want to stick that thing where? Ewww! She's perfect.
What, too trifling? I understand.
Let's get serious. Let's talk about the economy. Let's take a look at the Republican's counter-proposal to Obama's stunning, comprehensive $3.5 trillion budget.
Did you see it? Their little blue pamphlet, all 18 pages of it, which contained not a single dollar figure and was filled with bizarre little diagrams and wacky clip art circa 1988, and looked like it was photocopied at a 24-hour Kinko's by a very stoned senator's aide, because it was? When the "Republican Road to Recovery" was passed around, reporters actually laughed out loud, thought it must be some sort of gag written by the guys over at The Onion. It wasn't.
Speaking of serious, what of those 17 Republican congressmen who seriously proposed a resolution to rename the Democratic Party the "Democratic Socialist Party?" So cute! Of course, the name they really wanted, "The Boogerbrained Party of Doodylicking Stupidheads," was nixed after they all rode their skateboards to John Boehner's' house and played Resident Evil V until their eyes bled and Boehner's mom made them some sugar cookies and they totally forgot.
But for sheer freakshow fun, nothing tops Fox News furiously masturbating itself raw over the biggest imitation news story it could possibly invent this year: the Great Tea Bag Uproar of 2009, featuring a few thousand very confused taxpayers protesting... well, they weren't exactly sure what, waving tea bags in the air and threatening to secede and then talking hotly about "teabagging" the president, as Jon Stewart nearly fell out of his chair, laughing. Delightful.
The list, as they say, goes on. Witness every utterance of Michele Bachmann, see the new GOP promotional video featuring a burning Pentagon and Obama touching Hugo Chavez, or tremble in fear at a special Fox News report on how the SuperDevil is currently terrorizing Christian children with adulterous marmalade. I am so not kidding.
Ah, but we must acknowledge the potential downside. Because it wasn't that long ago that the Dems were much like the Repubs are now, the meek, humiliated party of desperation and pathos, begging for scraps from the freakishly empowered GOP of 1998. Remember?
Of course, you might (rightly) understate that the current Obamafied agenda is just slightly different than the toxic plan the GOP vomited up under Bush back then, which was perhaps the most abusive, insular, self-serving hunk of political devastation in our short history, and therefore the GOP fully deserved to go from all-consuming, unstoppable force to adorable punch line in the blink of a Kansas creationist's eye.
But that's not really the key difference. No, this time the Dems just so happen to be blessed beyond human comprehension with something very unique indeed, a true golden ticket, a magic death-ray force field of intellectual virtuosity even they don't seem to fully comprehend or know how to keep up with. They have Barack Obama himself.
Truly, the man outpaces and outshines even his own party. At nearly every turn, Obama often seems to be merely tolerating the whole two-party system, the whole D.C. dance he's forced to waltz, all of it merely a distraction to getting things done. It's as though he's an entirely new political mechanism, and the Dems just happen to be lucky enough to be the party that's most aligned with it. Meanwhile, it's all apparently driving the opposition party -- quite literally -- insane.
And really, isn't that just that the most delightful thing to watch?
By By Mark Morford
This much we know: Hand evil a big, sticky gob of power, and it quickly becomes a feral monster, dangerous and cruel and willing to sell its own shriveled heart and the heart of its very remorseful mother for a shot at everlasting infamy, even more power and maybe some fresh, raw kitten blood, intravenously, just for the hell of it.
Oh, but take that same vile leviathan and suddenly strip away all its power and influence and capacity for wickedness, and watch it deflate like a wheezing circus tent, quickly turning into a trembling caricature of its former self, a tiny, elfin thing small enough to fit into a shoebox of panic and pathos and residual Godspit.
Behold, this delightful rule in full effect with the once portentous, now pitiable Republican party. Watch in wonder as gaffe follows gaffe, astonishing pronouncement follows childish meltdown, ludicrous statement leads into pure comedy of errors followed by moderate 40-year veterans of the party splitting for bluer, less abusive pastures. What a scene.
There is much good news to be found in the ongoing GOP implosion; their obsession with 'wedge issues' like abortion and gay marriage, along with hilarious claims of socialism and fascism are proving to be the absolute best news for the nation as a whole. Because as the GOP wallows in juvenile spectacle, Obama and the Dems are leaping headlong into one of the most ambitious, invigorating, nation-altering agendas in American history.
Of course, it ain't all flowers and candy. This much unfettered movement for any party, left or right, can also be just insanely dangerous, could theoretically result in a blowback for the Dems exactly as destructive and apocalyptic as the horrendous Bush Era proved to be for the once-temperate Repubs.
Is it already heading that way? Will it happen? Not a chance.
But before we see why, let us enjoy a bit of the comedy. Because really, who could've guessed that, for example, former drug addict and all around bulbous, cigar-chomping radio jackal Rush Limbaugh would turn into the most influential conservative in the country, more powerful than, say, the GOP's own chairman, Michael Steele, who was recently found kneeling to kiss Rush's fat, sweaty ring?
Ah, but even Rush can't match the genuine lump of crazy that is the latest bearded lady to step onstage at the Fox News freakshow, Glenn Beck, a truly insane hunk of weirdness who's fun to watch not for any attempt at genuine insight or O'Reilly-esque pseudo-intelligence, but because of how he endears himself to viewers by acting exactly like your crazy uncle Ernie, the one who eats Miracle Whip straight from the jar and hears voices in his armpits and stares just a bit too long at any 10-year-old within range. Weep on, Glenn!
But weep not for Miss California, who's happy as a Prozac clam to take on the title as the new face of Republican hetero marriage. Isn't she lovely? A skinny, fake-breasted blonde mouthful of air who does exactly as she's told and never questions her scary Bible and doesn't really like sex and you want to stick that thing where? Ewww! She's perfect.
What, too trifling? I understand.
Let's get serious. Let's talk about the economy. Let's take a look at the Republican's counter-proposal to Obama's stunning, comprehensive $3.5 trillion budget.
Did you see it? Their little blue pamphlet, all 18 pages of it, which contained not a single dollar figure and was filled with bizarre little diagrams and wacky clip art circa 1988, and looked like it was photocopied at a 24-hour Kinko's by a very stoned senator's aide, because it was? When the "Republican Road to Recovery" was passed around, reporters actually laughed out loud, thought it must be some sort of gag written by the guys over at The Onion. It wasn't.
Speaking of serious, what of those 17 Republican congressmen who seriously proposed a resolution to rename the Democratic Party the "Democratic Socialist Party?" So cute! Of course, the name they really wanted, "The Boogerbrained Party of Doodylicking Stupidheads," was nixed after they all rode their skateboards to John Boehner's' house and played Resident Evil V until their eyes bled and Boehner's mom made them some sugar cookies and they totally forgot.
But for sheer freakshow fun, nothing tops Fox News furiously masturbating itself raw over the biggest imitation news story it could possibly invent this year: the Great Tea Bag Uproar of 2009, featuring a few thousand very confused taxpayers protesting... well, they weren't exactly sure what, waving tea bags in the air and threatening to secede and then talking hotly about "teabagging" the president, as Jon Stewart nearly fell out of his chair, laughing. Delightful.
The list, as they say, goes on. Witness every utterance of Michele Bachmann, see the new GOP promotional video featuring a burning Pentagon and Obama touching Hugo Chavez, or tremble in fear at a special Fox News report on how the SuperDevil is currently terrorizing Christian children with adulterous marmalade. I am so not kidding.
Ah, but we must acknowledge the potential downside. Because it wasn't that long ago that the Dems were much like the Repubs are now, the meek, humiliated party of desperation and pathos, begging for scraps from the freakishly empowered GOP of 1998. Remember?
Of course, you might (rightly) understate that the current Obamafied agenda is just slightly different than the toxic plan the GOP vomited up under Bush back then, which was perhaps the most abusive, insular, self-serving hunk of political devastation in our short history, and therefore the GOP fully deserved to go from all-consuming, unstoppable force to adorable punch line in the blink of a Kansas creationist's eye.
But that's not really the key difference. No, this time the Dems just so happen to be blessed beyond human comprehension with something very unique indeed, a true golden ticket, a magic death-ray force field of intellectual virtuosity even they don't seem to fully comprehend or know how to keep up with. They have Barack Obama himself.
Truly, the man outpaces and outshines even his own party. At nearly every turn, Obama often seems to be merely tolerating the whole two-party system, the whole D.C. dance he's forced to waltz, all of it merely a distraction to getting things done. It's as though he's an entirely new political mechanism, and the Dems just happen to be lucky enough to be the party that's most aligned with it. Meanwhile, it's all apparently driving the opposition party -- quite literally -- insane.
And really, isn't that just that the most delightful thing to watch?
Ronald Reagan: vengeful, score-settling, Hard Left ideologue
Original Link: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/05/01/shifts/index.html
By Glenn Greenwald
This is a perfect illustration of how severely our political spectrum has shifted in the last two decades and how depraved and extremist our political and media classes have become:
Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, today: "When to Torture":
Torture is an impermissible evil. Except under two circumstances. The first is the ticking time bomb. . . . The second exception to the no-torture rule is the extraction of information from a high-value enemy in possession of high-value information likely to save lives. . . .
Some people, however, believe you never torture. Ever. They are akin to conscientious objectors who will never fight in any war under any circumstances, and for whom we correctly show respect by exempting them from war duty. But we would never make one of them Centcom commander. Private principles are fine, but you don't entrust such a person with the military decisions upon which hinges the safety of the nation. It is similarly imprudent to have a person who would abjure torture in all circumstances making national security decisions upon which depends the protection of 300 million countrymen.
Ronald Reagan, May 20, 1988, transmitting the Convention Against Torture to the Senate for ratification:
The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention. It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.
The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called "universal jurisdiction." Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution.
Convention Against Torture, signed and championed by Ronald Reagan, Article II/IV:
No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture. . . Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law.
Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, April 29, 2009:
More than half of people who attend services at least once a week -- 54 percent -- said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is "often" or "sometimes" justified.
The views that Ronald Reagan not only advocated, but signed a treaty compelling the U.S. to adhere to, are ones that are now -- in the view of our dominant media narrative -- the hallmarks of The Hard Left: torture is never justified; there are "no exceptional circumstances" justifying it; it must be declared to be a serious criminal offense ; and -- most of all -- the U.S., as Ronald Regan put it, "is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution." Reagan's explicit view that the concept of "universal jurisdiction" permits signatory nations (such as Spain) to prosecute torturers from other countries (such as the U.S.) is now considered so fringe that it's almost impossible to find someone in mainstream American debates willing to advocate it.
If you now believe about torture and prosecutions exactly what Ronald Reagan advocated in 1988 -- or what Israel today advocates -- then, according to our establishment narrative, you are, by definition, a member of the Hard Left. And nobody who believes what Reagan advocated could possibly, in Krauthammer's words today, be entrusted with national security decisions. We've gone from Reagan's "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever . . . may be invoked as a justification of torture" and "Each State Party is required [] to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory" to the moral depravity of the Charles Krauthammers' explicit endorsement of torture and the virtually unanimous view of political and media elites that advocating criminal prosecutions for those who torture is confined to the vengeful, leftist masses.
It's certainly true, of course, that Ronald Reagan was very pre-9/11, but the concept of uniquely scary Islamic Terrorists was hardly unknown. Our client-tyrant in Iran was overthrown by them in 1979; we funded and supported them in Afghanistan in the early 1980s; U.S. Marines occupying Lebanon were attacked by them in 1982; Jewish community centers in Argentina were exploded by them in 1984; and Reagan himself invoked their Grave Threat in order to justify the American bombing of Libya in 1986 and the killing of the adopted infant daughter of its leader. We were bombing, occupying, interfering in and trying to control Muslim countries way back then, too. Yet even with all those Islamic Terrorists running around, Reagan insisted that torture could never be justified under any circumstances and that those who do it must be criminally prosecuted.
It's certainly true that Reagan, like most leaders, regularly violated the principles he espoused and sought to impose on others, but still, there is an important difference between (a) affirming core principles of the civilized world but then violating them and (b) explicitly rejecting those principles. Doing (a) makes you a hypocrite; doing (b) makes you a morally depraved barbarian. We're now a country where the leading "intellectuals" of the conservative movement expressly advocate torture on the pages of The Washington Post, and where most of the political and media class mocks as Far Leftism what Ronald Reagan explicitly advocated and bound the U.S. by treaty to do: namely, "prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution."
It's literally true that if you say today verbatim what Ronald Reagan said in 1988 about torture and the need to prosecute those who do it, then you are immediately and by definition a rabid score-settler from the Hard Left who is unfit to be trusted with national security decisions. Conversely, the views that Reagan vehemently rejected by words and by treaty -- that torture can be justified in some circumstances; that torturers should be shielded from prosecution; that other countries have no right to prosecute the torturers from other countries under "universal jurisdiction" -- are now not merely acceptable, but are required views in order to be not only a conservative, but to be a centrist. That's how severely the political spectrum and our elite consensus on these questions have shifted -- descended -- even from the time of the right-wing Reagan era when American exceptionalism and military aggression thrived.
* * * * *
Why do they hate us? For Our Freedoms:
UPDATE: As for Krauthammer's pro-torture justifications, Dan Froomkin says most of what needs to be said about those.
UPDATE II: On an unrelated topic: I have numerous emails asking me to comment on the decision of the Obama DOJ to drop its prosecution of two former AIPAC officials for alleged violations of the Espionage Act. I have no time to write about this today, but despite being as vigorous a critic of AIPAC as can be, I absolutely believe the Obama DOJ did the right thing. From the start, the Bush DOJ's prosecution of these non-government-employees (as opposed to its prosecution of DOD employee Larry Franklin) was abusive, dangerous and wrong -- clearly an attempt by the Bush administration to criminalize the core activity of investigative reporting. I wrote about my reasons for finding that prosecution so pernicious back in 2006 (here), and I largely agree with what AIPAC critic Spencer Ackerman wrote today about this matter (here). No matter how harmful one might believe AIPAC to be, the end of this prosecution is something everyone who cares about press freedoms and even free speech should cheer.
By Glenn Greenwald
This is a perfect illustration of how severely our political spectrum has shifted in the last two decades and how depraved and extremist our political and media classes have become:
Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, today: "When to Torture":
Torture is an impermissible evil. Except under two circumstances. The first is the ticking time bomb. . . . The second exception to the no-torture rule is the extraction of information from a high-value enemy in possession of high-value information likely to save lives. . . .
Some people, however, believe you never torture. Ever. They are akin to conscientious objectors who will never fight in any war under any circumstances, and for whom we correctly show respect by exempting them from war duty. But we would never make one of them Centcom commander. Private principles are fine, but you don't entrust such a person with the military decisions upon which hinges the safety of the nation. It is similarly imprudent to have a person who would abjure torture in all circumstances making national security decisions upon which depends the protection of 300 million countrymen.
Ronald Reagan, May 20, 1988, transmitting the Convention Against Torture to the Senate for ratification:
The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention. It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.
The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called "universal jurisdiction." Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution.
Convention Against Torture, signed and championed by Ronald Reagan, Article II/IV:
No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture. . . Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law.
Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, April 29, 2009:
More than half of people who attend services at least once a week -- 54 percent -- said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is "often" or "sometimes" justified.
The views that Ronald Reagan not only advocated, but signed a treaty compelling the U.S. to adhere to, are ones that are now -- in the view of our dominant media narrative -- the hallmarks of The Hard Left: torture is never justified; there are "no exceptional circumstances" justifying it; it must be declared to be a serious criminal offense ; and -- most of all -- the U.S., as Ronald Regan put it, "is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution." Reagan's explicit view that the concept of "universal jurisdiction" permits signatory nations (such as Spain) to prosecute torturers from other countries (such as the U.S.) is now considered so fringe that it's almost impossible to find someone in mainstream American debates willing to advocate it.
If you now believe about torture and prosecutions exactly what Ronald Reagan advocated in 1988 -- or what Israel today advocates -- then, according to our establishment narrative, you are, by definition, a member of the Hard Left. And nobody who believes what Reagan advocated could possibly, in Krauthammer's words today, be entrusted with national security decisions. We've gone from Reagan's "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever . . . may be invoked as a justification of torture" and "Each State Party is required [] to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory" to the moral depravity of the Charles Krauthammers' explicit endorsement of torture and the virtually unanimous view of political and media elites that advocating criminal prosecutions for those who torture is confined to the vengeful, leftist masses.
It's certainly true, of course, that Ronald Reagan was very pre-9/11, but the concept of uniquely scary Islamic Terrorists was hardly unknown. Our client-tyrant in Iran was overthrown by them in 1979; we funded and supported them in Afghanistan in the early 1980s; U.S. Marines occupying Lebanon were attacked by them in 1982; Jewish community centers in Argentina were exploded by them in 1984; and Reagan himself invoked their Grave Threat in order to justify the American bombing of Libya in 1986 and the killing of the adopted infant daughter of its leader. We were bombing, occupying, interfering in and trying to control Muslim countries way back then, too. Yet even with all those Islamic Terrorists running around, Reagan insisted that torture could never be justified under any circumstances and that those who do it must be criminally prosecuted.
It's certainly true that Reagan, like most leaders, regularly violated the principles he espoused and sought to impose on others, but still, there is an important difference between (a) affirming core principles of the civilized world but then violating them and (b) explicitly rejecting those principles. Doing (a) makes you a hypocrite; doing (b) makes you a morally depraved barbarian. We're now a country where the leading "intellectuals" of the conservative movement expressly advocate torture on the pages of The Washington Post, and where most of the political and media class mocks as Far Leftism what Ronald Reagan explicitly advocated and bound the U.S. by treaty to do: namely, "prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution."
It's literally true that if you say today verbatim what Ronald Reagan said in 1988 about torture and the need to prosecute those who do it, then you are immediately and by definition a rabid score-settler from the Hard Left who is unfit to be trusted with national security decisions. Conversely, the views that Reagan vehemently rejected by words and by treaty -- that torture can be justified in some circumstances; that torturers should be shielded from prosecution; that other countries have no right to prosecute the torturers from other countries under "universal jurisdiction" -- are now not merely acceptable, but are required views in order to be not only a conservative, but to be a centrist. That's how severely the political spectrum and our elite consensus on these questions have shifted -- descended -- even from the time of the right-wing Reagan era when American exceptionalism and military aggression thrived.
* * * * *
Why do they hate us? For Our Freedoms:
UPDATE: As for Krauthammer's pro-torture justifications, Dan Froomkin says most of what needs to be said about those.
UPDATE II: On an unrelated topic: I have numerous emails asking me to comment on the decision of the Obama DOJ to drop its prosecution of two former AIPAC officials for alleged violations of the Espionage Act. I have no time to write about this today, but despite being as vigorous a critic of AIPAC as can be, I absolutely believe the Obama DOJ did the right thing. From the start, the Bush DOJ's prosecution of these non-government-employees (as opposed to its prosecution of DOD employee Larry Franklin) was abusive, dangerous and wrong -- clearly an attempt by the Bush administration to criminalize the core activity of investigative reporting. I wrote about my reasons for finding that prosecution so pernicious back in 2006 (here), and I largely agree with what AIPAC critic Spencer Ackerman wrote today about this matter (here). No matter how harmful one might believe AIPAC to be, the end of this prosecution is something everyone who cares about press freedoms and even free speech should cheer.
Friday, May 1, 2009
The GOP's White Supremacy
Original Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-jenkins/the-gops-white-supremacy_b_153823.html
By Paul Jenkins
When a 19 year-old white supremacist recently gained a seat on the Palm Beach County Republican Executive Committee, the election created such an outcry that embarrassed local politicians used a technicality to block his seating. The entire process was buffoonish, although the views of the spawn of a grand wizard of the KKK and his supporters were not. Events such as this, or the stunning success of David Duke in Louisiana in 1990, occur every few years within the GOP, a reminder of the party's racist faction. Even more standard for Republicans, especially in the year that saw Barack Obama's election, are the off-key comments about uppitiness, Senators whistling Dixie, and, most recently, a funny little party-endorsed mailer called "Barack the Magic Negro."
All of this stupidity, and hatred, is a symptom of the larger problem for the Republican Party: it is utterly unrepresentative of America in the 21st century. Its Congressional representation is nearly uniformly white, and overwhelmingly male. So much so, in fact, that there is not one single African-American GOP member of Congress (out of 219 or 220); nor, for that matter, are there any black GOP Governors (out of 22). There are just four Republican Latinos in Congress, all Florida Cuban-Americans; one of them, Senator Mel Martinez, has announced his retirement. He is the only non-white or Hispanic GOP Senator.
The current Republican party is so absurdly out of touch demographically (and, of course, politically) that the election of just one Asian-American Congressman in a fluke special election in New Orleans had the leadership gushing for days that the "future is Cao," a creepy play on the name of the new member of Congress. Left unsaid was that Ahn Cao's success came after the Democratic incumbent's corruption-related problems became too much for even this overwhelmingly Democratic district, and that the Republican is unlikely to survive electorally in a 2010 general election. Also left unsaid by the happily bewildered GOP leadership was the complete lack of support given to Cao by the national and state Republican parties. Cao, in fact, was one of the numerous sacrificial candidates, often women or people of color, whom the Republican party puts up in races that are impossible to win. It just happens that in this case the Asian guy won, and so "the future is Cao."
Of course, we know this is not the case. John McCain lost by a margin of 90% among African-Americans, and 2 to 1 among other ethnic and racial minority groups, and young people. The future hardly belongs to a party who is falling further and further behind among the fastest-growing demographic groups, and among those who will be voting for decades to come. Republicans' problems go well beyond their dreadful record of the past decade and their wrong-footed policies, although neither helps. As it shrinks, the GOP is becoming ever-whiter, more male, more Southern, more Christian-centric, and increasingly unable to appeal to voters, or potential candidates who do not fit its narrow mold. Besides the Cao novelty, the party's hopes seem to be resting on Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, and on Sarah Palin, which says a lot about the GOP's difficulty in recruiting diverse talent, partly because of the party's stringent litmus tests on social issues. Toeing the line, Jindal and Palin are both religious extremists, one of whom veils his social views under the guise of business-like competence, the other behind her down-home manner. Both achieved a measure of success by being elected Governor, but neither is exactly presidential material: there is little more to say about Palin's inarticulate ignorance, but as for Jindal, his first order of the day in Louisiana was to go on an oil-money-fueled spending binge that has come back to haunt him after just a few months. So much for McKinsey-an efficiency and competence.
Even non-white members of George W. Bush's cabinet appear to have turned on the party: people like Colin Powell, who heartily endorsed Obama, or Condoleezza Rice, who seemed at her very happiest the day after Obama's victory. The last African-American GOP member of Congress, J.C. Watts, who retired in 2002, is equally as disillusioned, not to say anything of potential candidates such as Charles Barkley, a one-time Republican with aspirations to Alabama's governorship, who says the Republicans "lost their mind." And so the GOP trots out the same sad losers, Michael Steele of Maryland, and Ken Blackwell of Ohio, who have achieved little more than secondary elected office in their respective states, both losing in landslides when they sought a bigger job.
Conservatives have for years hidden behind a disdain for quotas, political correctness and diversity gone wild to explain away the everlasting supremacy of white men in the Republican Party. The subtext, of course, is that selection, and election, is based on competence, not gender, race or ethnicity. And that the most competent simply happen to be white men. Always. Unless they are Sarah Palin or Clarence Thomas, whose nomination would have been a joke were its consequences not so long-lasting (his latest achievement, besides a bitter, angry, hate-filled book was to refer to his colleagues at the Supreme Court a frivolous case about Obama's citizenship.)
Let's be thankful for one thing about Bush's presidency: the white male leadership of the Republican Party showed the world once and for all that its cronyism, corruption and discrimination completely outweighed any shred of competence. And that it can no longer count on white votes to carry its divisive, prejudiced agenda, both because there are proportionately fewer white voters, and because outside of the Deep South and Appalachia, white voters are increasingly disgusted by the Republican Party. GOP leaders, not all stupid, have seen this coming for some time now, as one predominantly white suburb after another has fallen to the Democrats. And so for years they have been hanging their hopes on the perceived social conservatism of African-American and, especially, Latino voters. The 2008 elections put the final nail in that coffin, as even with the specter of same-sex marriage, supposedly conservative non-white voters stayed away from the GOP in numbers larger than ever before despite the stock Republican gay-baiting. For those of them who did want to take a stand, in California, Florida and Arizona, for instance, they voted against same-sex marriage rights and for Democrats. This presents a challenge for progressive Democrats, certainly, but one that pales in comparison to what the fast-shrinking GOP faces. Another fiasco by Republicans this year was their latest attempt at swaying Jewish voters away from the Democratic party, especially in Florida, this time with accusations that Obama, among others, is weak on Israel, and hints that he was a Muslim. The result: just 1 in 5 Jewish voters picked McCain. Perhaps the fact that there are only three Republican Jews in Congress (versus 42 Democrats) should have been a hint that there was far more work to do there than simply brandishing the specter of Islam in the White House. And that the party's rush to out-Christian itself is probably unlikely to appeal to people who are, well, not Christian, including Jews, Muslims, and agnostics, to name a few.
To compound the problem, the Republican Party is threatened by a bubbling religious war pitting younger evangelicals and Catholics against their more socially stringent elders. If the GOP cannot hold on to the most religious of Americans because they are more concerned with social equality than with, say, sexuality, it is doomed. Young people in general turned on the Republican Party's candidate with repulsion this year, and he hardly represents the party's most socially conservative wing. McCain received just 32% of the vote among 18-29 year-olds. Considering that about one in two young people consider religion "very important," that leaves a big chunk of very religious young people who did not vote for the Republican candidate. And if they don't, who will?
It was all supposed to end very differently: the Republican Party's Southern strategy, which seemed to many so cynically brilliant as recently as the turn of this century, has backfired so badly that even parts of the South, such as Virginia and North Carolina, are now dominated by Democrats, and not the old-school segregation-era Democrats. These new Southern Democrats come in all colors and both genders and they range from the most socially progressive to others who would have felt quite at home in the more moderate Republican party of old. The failure of the GOP's Southern strategy is also in evidence in one often overlooked respect: the election of candidates by electorates of a different race or ethnicity. Obama is, of course, the most extremely visible example of this phenomenon, but there are others, including in the South. In Georgia, for instance, the 2nd district's Representative, Sanford Bishop, who is African-American, has been comfortably reelected several times despite redistricting that has given his constituency a slender white majority. The same goes for Mel Watt, one of the most progressive members of Congress, an African-American elected in a narrowly white majority district in North Carolina. Conversely, the Memphis area Congressman is white and represents a district that is nearly two-thirds black. In total, there are over two-dozen seats nationally that are represented by members who are in a racial or ethnic minority in their own constituency; half of these are African-Americans, many of them in the Midwest (Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Kansas City) and in California. This represents a sea change from just a decade ago, when it was considered far-fetched to believe that a black candidate could be elected from a district that was anything less than 60% African-American.
The 1992 redistricting piled up non-white voters into congressional districts dubbed "minority-majority," to increase non-white representation in Congress. Republicans eagerly embraced the new take on voting rights, as they felt it would make dozens of white-majority districts less competitive for Democrats. There was also much hand-wringing among Democrats for the same reason, and some even argued that there was no point in increasing non-white representation in Congress if it meant that the party would never again regain power. Obviously, things have turned out quite differently for the Democrats, whose Congressional majority is now as strong as it has been in decades, thanks in part to its robust diversity, and to a growing indifference to race and ethnicity.
It is no coincidence that at the same time, the GOP has shriveled into a more uniform party than at most times since the 1960s. Like a restricted country club that would rather die than change, the Republican Party is marginalizing itself for the sake of the white men who run it. "Barack The Magic Negro" and Palm Beach aryanists are just the more bizarre manifestations of a party that has wallowed for so long in the privileges of its white male supremacy that it does not even realize that everyone has left the plantation, and they are not coming back.
By Paul Jenkins
When a 19 year-old white supremacist recently gained a seat on the Palm Beach County Republican Executive Committee, the election created such an outcry that embarrassed local politicians used a technicality to block his seating. The entire process was buffoonish, although the views of the spawn of a grand wizard of the KKK and his supporters were not. Events such as this, or the stunning success of David Duke in Louisiana in 1990, occur every few years within the GOP, a reminder of the party's racist faction. Even more standard for Republicans, especially in the year that saw Barack Obama's election, are the off-key comments about uppitiness, Senators whistling Dixie, and, most recently, a funny little party-endorsed mailer called "Barack the Magic Negro."
All of this stupidity, and hatred, is a symptom of the larger problem for the Republican Party: it is utterly unrepresentative of America in the 21st century. Its Congressional representation is nearly uniformly white, and overwhelmingly male. So much so, in fact, that there is not one single African-American GOP member of Congress (out of 219 or 220); nor, for that matter, are there any black GOP Governors (out of 22). There are just four Republican Latinos in Congress, all Florida Cuban-Americans; one of them, Senator Mel Martinez, has announced his retirement. He is the only non-white or Hispanic GOP Senator.
The current Republican party is so absurdly out of touch demographically (and, of course, politically) that the election of just one Asian-American Congressman in a fluke special election in New Orleans had the leadership gushing for days that the "future is Cao," a creepy play on the name of the new member of Congress. Left unsaid was that Ahn Cao's success came after the Democratic incumbent's corruption-related problems became too much for even this overwhelmingly Democratic district, and that the Republican is unlikely to survive electorally in a 2010 general election. Also left unsaid by the happily bewildered GOP leadership was the complete lack of support given to Cao by the national and state Republican parties. Cao, in fact, was one of the numerous sacrificial candidates, often women or people of color, whom the Republican party puts up in races that are impossible to win. It just happens that in this case the Asian guy won, and so "the future is Cao."
Of course, we know this is not the case. John McCain lost by a margin of 90% among African-Americans, and 2 to 1 among other ethnic and racial minority groups, and young people. The future hardly belongs to a party who is falling further and further behind among the fastest-growing demographic groups, and among those who will be voting for decades to come. Republicans' problems go well beyond their dreadful record of the past decade and their wrong-footed policies, although neither helps. As it shrinks, the GOP is becoming ever-whiter, more male, more Southern, more Christian-centric, and increasingly unable to appeal to voters, or potential candidates who do not fit its narrow mold. Besides the Cao novelty, the party's hopes seem to be resting on Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, and on Sarah Palin, which says a lot about the GOP's difficulty in recruiting diverse talent, partly because of the party's stringent litmus tests on social issues. Toeing the line, Jindal and Palin are both religious extremists, one of whom veils his social views under the guise of business-like competence, the other behind her down-home manner. Both achieved a measure of success by being elected Governor, but neither is exactly presidential material: there is little more to say about Palin's inarticulate ignorance, but as for Jindal, his first order of the day in Louisiana was to go on an oil-money-fueled spending binge that has come back to haunt him after just a few months. So much for McKinsey-an efficiency and competence.
Even non-white members of George W. Bush's cabinet appear to have turned on the party: people like Colin Powell, who heartily endorsed Obama, or Condoleezza Rice, who seemed at her very happiest the day after Obama's victory. The last African-American GOP member of Congress, J.C. Watts, who retired in 2002, is equally as disillusioned, not to say anything of potential candidates such as Charles Barkley, a one-time Republican with aspirations to Alabama's governorship, who says the Republicans "lost their mind." And so the GOP trots out the same sad losers, Michael Steele of Maryland, and Ken Blackwell of Ohio, who have achieved little more than secondary elected office in their respective states, both losing in landslides when they sought a bigger job.
Conservatives have for years hidden behind a disdain for quotas, political correctness and diversity gone wild to explain away the everlasting supremacy of white men in the Republican Party. The subtext, of course, is that selection, and election, is based on competence, not gender, race or ethnicity. And that the most competent simply happen to be white men. Always. Unless they are Sarah Palin or Clarence Thomas, whose nomination would have been a joke were its consequences not so long-lasting (his latest achievement, besides a bitter, angry, hate-filled book was to refer to his colleagues at the Supreme Court a frivolous case about Obama's citizenship.)
Let's be thankful for one thing about Bush's presidency: the white male leadership of the Republican Party showed the world once and for all that its cronyism, corruption and discrimination completely outweighed any shred of competence. And that it can no longer count on white votes to carry its divisive, prejudiced agenda, both because there are proportionately fewer white voters, and because outside of the Deep South and Appalachia, white voters are increasingly disgusted by the Republican Party. GOP leaders, not all stupid, have seen this coming for some time now, as one predominantly white suburb after another has fallen to the Democrats. And so for years they have been hanging their hopes on the perceived social conservatism of African-American and, especially, Latino voters. The 2008 elections put the final nail in that coffin, as even with the specter of same-sex marriage, supposedly conservative non-white voters stayed away from the GOP in numbers larger than ever before despite the stock Republican gay-baiting. For those of them who did want to take a stand, in California, Florida and Arizona, for instance, they voted against same-sex marriage rights and for Democrats. This presents a challenge for progressive Democrats, certainly, but one that pales in comparison to what the fast-shrinking GOP faces. Another fiasco by Republicans this year was their latest attempt at swaying Jewish voters away from the Democratic party, especially in Florida, this time with accusations that Obama, among others, is weak on Israel, and hints that he was a Muslim. The result: just 1 in 5 Jewish voters picked McCain. Perhaps the fact that there are only three Republican Jews in Congress (versus 42 Democrats) should have been a hint that there was far more work to do there than simply brandishing the specter of Islam in the White House. And that the party's rush to out-Christian itself is probably unlikely to appeal to people who are, well, not Christian, including Jews, Muslims, and agnostics, to name a few.
To compound the problem, the Republican Party is threatened by a bubbling religious war pitting younger evangelicals and Catholics against their more socially stringent elders. If the GOP cannot hold on to the most religious of Americans because they are more concerned with social equality than with, say, sexuality, it is doomed. Young people in general turned on the Republican Party's candidate with repulsion this year, and he hardly represents the party's most socially conservative wing. McCain received just 32% of the vote among 18-29 year-olds. Considering that about one in two young people consider religion "very important," that leaves a big chunk of very religious young people who did not vote for the Republican candidate. And if they don't, who will?
It was all supposed to end very differently: the Republican Party's Southern strategy, which seemed to many so cynically brilliant as recently as the turn of this century, has backfired so badly that even parts of the South, such as Virginia and North Carolina, are now dominated by Democrats, and not the old-school segregation-era Democrats. These new Southern Democrats come in all colors and both genders and they range from the most socially progressive to others who would have felt quite at home in the more moderate Republican party of old. The failure of the GOP's Southern strategy is also in evidence in one often overlooked respect: the election of candidates by electorates of a different race or ethnicity. Obama is, of course, the most extremely visible example of this phenomenon, but there are others, including in the South. In Georgia, for instance, the 2nd district's Representative, Sanford Bishop, who is African-American, has been comfortably reelected several times despite redistricting that has given his constituency a slender white majority. The same goes for Mel Watt, one of the most progressive members of Congress, an African-American elected in a narrowly white majority district in North Carolina. Conversely, the Memphis area Congressman is white and represents a district that is nearly two-thirds black. In total, there are over two-dozen seats nationally that are represented by members who are in a racial or ethnic minority in their own constituency; half of these are African-Americans, many of them in the Midwest (Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Kansas City) and in California. This represents a sea change from just a decade ago, when it was considered far-fetched to believe that a black candidate could be elected from a district that was anything less than 60% African-American.
The 1992 redistricting piled up non-white voters into congressional districts dubbed "minority-majority," to increase non-white representation in Congress. Republicans eagerly embraced the new take on voting rights, as they felt it would make dozens of white-majority districts less competitive for Democrats. There was also much hand-wringing among Democrats for the same reason, and some even argued that there was no point in increasing non-white representation in Congress if it meant that the party would never again regain power. Obviously, things have turned out quite differently for the Democrats, whose Congressional majority is now as strong as it has been in decades, thanks in part to its robust diversity, and to a growing indifference to race and ethnicity.
It is no coincidence that at the same time, the GOP has shriveled into a more uniform party than at most times since the 1960s. Like a restricted country club that would rather die than change, the Republican Party is marginalizing itself for the sake of the white men who run it. "Barack The Magic Negro" and Palm Beach aryanists are just the more bizarre manifestations of a party that has wallowed for so long in the privileges of its white male supremacy that it does not even realize that everyone has left the plantation, and they are not coming back.
Buchanan Made The GOP a Heavily White Party
Original Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-hutchinson/buchanan-made-the-gop-a-h_b_193110.html
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
GOP hatchet man and media pundit Pat Buchanan recently quipped that the GOP is a "heavily white party." It's not a heavily white party, it's virtually an exclusively white party; Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele notwithstanding. And Buchanan did much to make sure that the GOP got that way and stays that way. The checklist of Buchanan's blunt speak racially charged barbs, insults and inflammatory pitches to unreconstruted bigots during the past two decades can fill up a book. In fact it fills up two books, the State of Emergency and Death of the West.
Buchanan damned multiculturalism, railed against affirmative action as blatant discrimination against whites, lambasted Republicans for pandering to the NAACP, applauded those who called Martin Luther King, Jr. a "fraud" and a "demogouge" and in 1969 he opposed the federal holiday for King. Three decades later he hadn't softened his take on King one bit. He's called him a "divisive" figure.
Buchanan waded into the fight to keep the Confederate flag flying high on state capitols in the South. To him the flag is an honorable symbol of the South's noble fight in the Civil War for self determination, states rights, and to protect cultural differences (Slavery=cultural differences?) Buchanan also has no qualms about appearing on the aptly named The Political Cesspool radio talk show, a show less charitably described as an on air forum to fan and spew white supremacist views.
This is the kooky Buchanan stuff and it can easily be shrugged off as the rants of a fringe political hack and media bloviator to stoke controversy to peddle his books and inflate his on screen presence. But Buchanan and company played a big and insidious part in crafting, tweaking, and honing the GOP's Southern Strategy. The GOP used this to rule national politics for four decades. The strategy was simple; say and do as little as possible about civil rights, talk God, country and patriotism, use racially tinged code words and furiously court white males. The goal was to win elections by openly and subtly pandering to Southern white fears of black political domination. Buchanan even warned that tainting the strategy by pitching the GOP to minority voters would amount to political sepaku.
The race tinged strategy was the magic gateway to the White House for Republican Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Reagan and Bush Sr. and Bush. The key as every Republican president since Nixon has known and in some cases unabashedly said, was to maintain near-solid backing from white Southern males. They have been the staunchest Republican loyalists. Bush grabbed more than 60 percent of the white male vote nationally in 2004. In the South, he got more than 70 percent of their vote. Without the South's unyielding backing in 2000, Democratic Presidential contender Al Gore would have easily won the White House, and the Florida vote debacle would have been a meaningless sideshow. In 2004, Bush swept Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in every one of the states of the Old Confederacy and three out of four of the Border States. This insured another Bush White House.
The strategy didn't work in 2008, but not because it's totally outdated. Despite the heavy chains of Bush domestic and foreign policy bungling and incompetence, the deep voter disgust with the lies, corruption, and negativity of the GOP, a failed, flawed, financial and human cost draining war, and an economy sinking faster than a lead balloon, Republican GOP presidential candidate John McCain was still competitive with President Obama for much of the 2008 presidential campaign. The only thing that prevented the election from being a total rout of McCain was the solid majority backing he got from white males in the Deep South, farm belt, and the heartland states. Nationally, McCain won a clear majority of the white vote.
The widespread popularity and voter approval of Obama in the months since the election hasn't totally changed that. A recent NYT Times/CBS Poll showed that blacks still are overwhelmingly Obama's strongest backers. The defection of Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter to the Democrats, the continued shooting themselves in the foot, and deconstruction of the GOP and the phenomenal success of Obama have only sharpened the political lines.
Buchanan knows that. His heavy white party quip drew the headlines, but he was careful not to knock the party for being a white man's party. Buchanan and the Southern Strategy adherents still pine away that the party can regain its fighting form of the past, and it can't do that by pandering to minorities. That's hopeless anyway given the iron grip that Obama and the Democrats have on black and minority voters. But as long as the GOP has its grip on the millions that made and kept the GOP a heavily white party, it's far from dead as a party.
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
GOP hatchet man and media pundit Pat Buchanan recently quipped that the GOP is a "heavily white party." It's not a heavily white party, it's virtually an exclusively white party; Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele notwithstanding. And Buchanan did much to make sure that the GOP got that way and stays that way. The checklist of Buchanan's blunt speak racially charged barbs, insults and inflammatory pitches to unreconstruted bigots during the past two decades can fill up a book. In fact it fills up two books, the State of Emergency and Death of the West.
Buchanan damned multiculturalism, railed against affirmative action as blatant discrimination against whites, lambasted Republicans for pandering to the NAACP, applauded those who called Martin Luther King, Jr. a "fraud" and a "demogouge" and in 1969 he opposed the federal holiday for King. Three decades later he hadn't softened his take on King one bit. He's called him a "divisive" figure.
Buchanan waded into the fight to keep the Confederate flag flying high on state capitols in the South. To him the flag is an honorable symbol of the South's noble fight in the Civil War for self determination, states rights, and to protect cultural differences (Slavery=cultural differences?) Buchanan also has no qualms about appearing on the aptly named The Political Cesspool radio talk show, a show less charitably described as an on air forum to fan and spew white supremacist views.
This is the kooky Buchanan stuff and it can easily be shrugged off as the rants of a fringe political hack and media bloviator to stoke controversy to peddle his books and inflate his on screen presence. But Buchanan and company played a big and insidious part in crafting, tweaking, and honing the GOP's Southern Strategy. The GOP used this to rule national politics for four decades. The strategy was simple; say and do as little as possible about civil rights, talk God, country and patriotism, use racially tinged code words and furiously court white males. The goal was to win elections by openly and subtly pandering to Southern white fears of black political domination. Buchanan even warned that tainting the strategy by pitching the GOP to minority voters would amount to political sepaku.
The race tinged strategy was the magic gateway to the White House for Republican Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Reagan and Bush Sr. and Bush. The key as every Republican president since Nixon has known and in some cases unabashedly said, was to maintain near-solid backing from white Southern males. They have been the staunchest Republican loyalists. Bush grabbed more than 60 percent of the white male vote nationally in 2004. In the South, he got more than 70 percent of their vote. Without the South's unyielding backing in 2000, Democratic Presidential contender Al Gore would have easily won the White House, and the Florida vote debacle would have been a meaningless sideshow. In 2004, Bush swept Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in every one of the states of the Old Confederacy and three out of four of the Border States. This insured another Bush White House.
The strategy didn't work in 2008, but not because it's totally outdated. Despite the heavy chains of Bush domestic and foreign policy bungling and incompetence, the deep voter disgust with the lies, corruption, and negativity of the GOP, a failed, flawed, financial and human cost draining war, and an economy sinking faster than a lead balloon, Republican GOP presidential candidate John McCain was still competitive with President Obama for much of the 2008 presidential campaign. The only thing that prevented the election from being a total rout of McCain was the solid majority backing he got from white males in the Deep South, farm belt, and the heartland states. Nationally, McCain won a clear majority of the white vote.
The widespread popularity and voter approval of Obama in the months since the election hasn't totally changed that. A recent NYT Times/CBS Poll showed that blacks still are overwhelmingly Obama's strongest backers. The defection of Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter to the Democrats, the continued shooting themselves in the foot, and deconstruction of the GOP and the phenomenal success of Obama have only sharpened the political lines.
Buchanan knows that. His heavy white party quip drew the headlines, but he was careful not to knock the party for being a white man's party. Buchanan and the Southern Strategy adherents still pine away that the party can regain its fighting form of the past, and it can't do that by pandering to minorities. That's hopeless anyway given the iron grip that Obama and the Democrats have on black and minority voters. But as long as the GOP has its grip on the millions that made and kept the GOP a heavily white party, it's far from dead as a party.
Norm Coleman is a Sore Loser
Original Link: http://pvlounge.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=87&Itemid=39
By Erald
Norm Coleman continues to fight for a Senate seat that is all but gone. After thorough recounts and endless judicial decisions, Franken remains ahead, but Coleman plans to go all the way to the Supreme Court -- the United States Supreme Court, that is.
It's been quite some time since the outcome of the 2008 Minnesota Senate contest was in any doubt. A panel of three judges has now ruled that Al Franken won more votes in that election than former Senator Norm Coleman. Franken is currently ahead 312 votes, and we're done with the counting phase. Legal challenges are Coleman's only tools now. His attorneys have promised to appeal the latest judgment to the Minnesota Supreme Court next week. The Supreme Court is probably going to kill Coleman's hopes and reinforce just about every ruling up until this point: Franken won this damn election.
At this stage, we're way beyond the search for electoral integrity. Coleman and his goons in Minnesota have been taken over by the Republican national apparatchik. The Republicans are trying desperately to prevent the addition of yet ANOTHER Democratic senator to Congress. With so many important votes and so many important issues on the line, it's very plausible that a single person could mark the difference between victory and defeat. Both sides know this fact, but the Democrats have been strangely timid and diffident about pressing their case. They realize that Franken will ultimately win, in a few months at the latest, and they don't want to appear like they're sabotaging the process. The Republicans? They could care less about appearances. This fight is something like life-and-death for them. They are dragging their feet the whole way. In a fundraising email to supporters, John Cornyn, the Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, blasted the entire process:
Since Sen. Norm Coleman was first ahead by hundreds of votes at the end of election night, the Democrats have aggressively worked to change the rules of the game after it’s been played. Last night, they succeeded in convincing a three-judge panel to issue a fundamentally misguided ruling that disenfranchises over 4,000 Minnesota voters. They did so by imposing a different, and stricter, standard for votes to be counted rather than following the rules that were in place in Minnesota on Election Day. In doing so, constitutionally-valid Due Process and Equal Protection concerns have been raised.
Amazing bullshit even by Republican standards. Republicans have annoyed us for years about tort reform and excessive litigation, and here they are squeezing every last iota of opportunity from the legal system, all in the hopes of delaying the Democratic agenda by just a few more weeks and months. The current Republican Party is one of the best circus acts I've ever seen. Most people are telling Coleman to give up the fight, but Coleman is just a pawn in a larger political game. Even if Coleman wanted to leave while he could still save some dignity, national Republicans would not tolerate a withdrawal from the process. They'll fight this the whole way through. There won't be an honorable conclusion equivalent to Gore graciously bowing out back in 2000. It'll be just an ugly, nasty, and protracted legal fight. In the end, Republicans will be forced to accept what we already know now: the process was fair, accurate, and indicates that Franken won.
By Erald
Norm Coleman continues to fight for a Senate seat that is all but gone. After thorough recounts and endless judicial decisions, Franken remains ahead, but Coleman plans to go all the way to the Supreme Court -- the United States Supreme Court, that is.
It's been quite some time since the outcome of the 2008 Minnesota Senate contest was in any doubt. A panel of three judges has now ruled that Al Franken won more votes in that election than former Senator Norm Coleman. Franken is currently ahead 312 votes, and we're done with the counting phase. Legal challenges are Coleman's only tools now. His attorneys have promised to appeal the latest judgment to the Minnesota Supreme Court next week. The Supreme Court is probably going to kill Coleman's hopes and reinforce just about every ruling up until this point: Franken won this damn election.
At this stage, we're way beyond the search for electoral integrity. Coleman and his goons in Minnesota have been taken over by the Republican national apparatchik. The Republicans are trying desperately to prevent the addition of yet ANOTHER Democratic senator to Congress. With so many important votes and so many important issues on the line, it's very plausible that a single person could mark the difference between victory and defeat. Both sides know this fact, but the Democrats have been strangely timid and diffident about pressing their case. They realize that Franken will ultimately win, in a few months at the latest, and they don't want to appear like they're sabotaging the process. The Republicans? They could care less about appearances. This fight is something like life-and-death for them. They are dragging their feet the whole way. In a fundraising email to supporters, John Cornyn, the Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, blasted the entire process:
Since Sen. Norm Coleman was first ahead by hundreds of votes at the end of election night, the Democrats have aggressively worked to change the rules of the game after it’s been played. Last night, they succeeded in convincing a three-judge panel to issue a fundamentally misguided ruling that disenfranchises over 4,000 Minnesota voters. They did so by imposing a different, and stricter, standard for votes to be counted rather than following the rules that were in place in Minnesota on Election Day. In doing so, constitutionally-valid Due Process and Equal Protection concerns have been raised.
Amazing bullshit even by Republican standards. Republicans have annoyed us for years about tort reform and excessive litigation, and here they are squeezing every last iota of opportunity from the legal system, all in the hopes of delaying the Democratic agenda by just a few more weeks and months. The current Republican Party is one of the best circus acts I've ever seen. Most people are telling Coleman to give up the fight, but Coleman is just a pawn in a larger political game. Even if Coleman wanted to leave while he could still save some dignity, national Republicans would not tolerate a withdrawal from the process. They'll fight this the whole way through. There won't be an honorable conclusion equivalent to Gore graciously bowing out back in 2000. It'll be just an ugly, nasty, and protracted legal fight. In the end, Republicans will be forced to accept what we already know now: the process was fair, accurate, and indicates that Franken won.
In Minnesota, it's still November
Original Link: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20634.html
By MANU RAJU
Texas Sen. John Cornyn is threatening “World War III” if Democrats try to seat Al Franken in the Senate before Norm Coleman can pursue his case through the federal courts.
Cornyn, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, acknowledges that a federal challenge to November’s elections could take “years” to resolve. But he’s adamant that Coleman deserves that chance — even if it means Minnesota is short a senator for the duration.
A three-judge panel is expected to rule any day now on legal challenges to the November election.
Coleman attorney Joe Friedberg has predicted that Franken will be on top after the court rules, arguing that an appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court could swing the election back in Coleman’s favor.
But what if that doesn’t happen?
Nobody really knows.
As Roland Burris will recall, you can’t take a seat in the Senate without an election certificate from your state. And it’s not clear whether the candidate who’s ahead after the Minnesota Supreme Court rules could get an election certificate from Minnesota if his opponent is seeking review from the United States Supreme Court or challenging the results in a new lawsuit in federal court.
Sen. Charles Schumer, the New York Democrat in charge of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, says that Minnesota gets its second senator as soon as the state case ends.
“Whatever the state Supreme Court decides, as I understand it, the law requires it to be certified,” Schumer says.
But Cornyn believes that Minnesota can’t certify Franken the winner if Coleman seeks review from the U.S. Supreme Court or files a new federal case. And Ben Ginsberg, a Coleman attorney and a central player on the Republican side in the 2000 Florida recount, says it’s “an open question” whether a federal court challenge puts a pause on the certification process.
Minnesota has been down a senator since the beginning of the year, and Democrats — who expect Franken to prevail eventually — view themselves as down a vote they’re entitled to have. Without Franken in the Senate, the Democrats hold a 58-41 vote advantage over the GOP; getting to 59-41 sooner rather than later would make it easier to move President Barack Obama’s agenda through Congress.
Franken currently leads in the counting by 225 votes. In a radio interview this month, Friedberg — asked if he was “confident” that Coleman would lose before the three-judge panel — said: “I think that’s probably correct that Franken will still be ahead and probably by a little bit more. But our whole argument was a constitutional argument, and it’s an argument suitable for the Minnesota Supreme Court, not for the trial court. So we’ll see whether we were right or not.”
The Coleman campaign subsequently released a statement saying it was “confident” that Coleman would win before the three-judge panel.
It could takes months — or longer — to resolve a petition for review from the U.S. Supreme Court and even longer if the loser before the Minnesota Supreme Court files a new case in a U.S. District Court.
What happens in the meantime could come down to Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican who was on John McCain’s vice president shortlist and is contemplating a run for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012.
So far, Pawlenty isn’t saying what he’ll do once the court rules.
“The recent Minnesota Supreme Court decision indicated that an election certificate could be issued once the state courts process is complete,” said Brian McClung, a spokesman for the governor. “However, if one of the parties appeals to a federal court, a question will arise whether the federal court might stay the issuance of a certificate.
“We’ll see what the courts determine,” he said.
McClung was referring to a March 6 opinion in which the Minnesota Supreme Court denied Franken’s request to compel Pawlenty and Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie to sign an election certificate declaring him the winner while Coleman was appealing the results of a hand recount before the three-judge panel.
In that ruling, the Minnesota Supreme Court said that “a certificate of election cannot be issued until the state courts have finally decided an election contest.”
But can it — must it — be issued then?
“The question is, when does the state process end?” said Richard Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.
Hasen said it’s “not clear” whether the state process ends when the state Supreme Court rules or continues to run as the loser seeks review from the U.S. Supreme Court.
But, Hasen said, the state process definitely “would not wait” if the loser in the state proceeding chose to file an entirely new lawsuit in federal court — for example, to argue that his due-process rights were violated during the state court review.
Legal experts say Coleman or Franken would have a hard time making that kind of case. But Coleman refused to rule out the idea last week, saying only that “at this point” he does not anticipate that the case will end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
“I’m not ruling out anything,” Coleman said at the Capitol Tuesday. “I think Minnesotans deserve to know each and every vote was counted fairly — that there’s a uniform standard. If that can be done at a trial level, that’s great. If it takes an appellate level to do that, then, you know, we have to look at that.”
Both sides are girding for a long battle.
Eric Schultz, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, accuses Cornyn and the Republicans of holding the Minnesota seat hostage to prevent Democrats from getting a 59th vote in a chamber in which 60 are needed to move major pieces of legislation.
“Gov. Pawlenty ought to make clear that if former Sen. Coleman chooses to appeal the outcome of the contest in the state Supreme Court that this is the end of the road — and that, consistent with the law, he will certify Al Franken the winner following that state court appeal,” Schultz said.
By MANU RAJU
Texas Sen. John Cornyn is threatening “World War III” if Democrats try to seat Al Franken in the Senate before Norm Coleman can pursue his case through the federal courts.
Cornyn, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, acknowledges that a federal challenge to November’s elections could take “years” to resolve. But he’s adamant that Coleman deserves that chance — even if it means Minnesota is short a senator for the duration.
A three-judge panel is expected to rule any day now on legal challenges to the November election.
Coleman attorney Joe Friedberg has predicted that Franken will be on top after the court rules, arguing that an appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court could swing the election back in Coleman’s favor.
But what if that doesn’t happen?
Nobody really knows.
As Roland Burris will recall, you can’t take a seat in the Senate without an election certificate from your state. And it’s not clear whether the candidate who’s ahead after the Minnesota Supreme Court rules could get an election certificate from Minnesota if his opponent is seeking review from the United States Supreme Court or challenging the results in a new lawsuit in federal court.
Sen. Charles Schumer, the New York Democrat in charge of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, says that Minnesota gets its second senator as soon as the state case ends.
“Whatever the state Supreme Court decides, as I understand it, the law requires it to be certified,” Schumer says.
But Cornyn believes that Minnesota can’t certify Franken the winner if Coleman seeks review from the U.S. Supreme Court or files a new federal case. And Ben Ginsberg, a Coleman attorney and a central player on the Republican side in the 2000 Florida recount, says it’s “an open question” whether a federal court challenge puts a pause on the certification process.
Minnesota has been down a senator since the beginning of the year, and Democrats — who expect Franken to prevail eventually — view themselves as down a vote they’re entitled to have. Without Franken in the Senate, the Democrats hold a 58-41 vote advantage over the GOP; getting to 59-41 sooner rather than later would make it easier to move President Barack Obama’s agenda through Congress.
Franken currently leads in the counting by 225 votes. In a radio interview this month, Friedberg — asked if he was “confident” that Coleman would lose before the three-judge panel — said: “I think that’s probably correct that Franken will still be ahead and probably by a little bit more. But our whole argument was a constitutional argument, and it’s an argument suitable for the Minnesota Supreme Court, not for the trial court. So we’ll see whether we were right or not.”
The Coleman campaign subsequently released a statement saying it was “confident” that Coleman would win before the three-judge panel.
It could takes months — or longer — to resolve a petition for review from the U.S. Supreme Court and even longer if the loser before the Minnesota Supreme Court files a new case in a U.S. District Court.
What happens in the meantime could come down to Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican who was on John McCain’s vice president shortlist and is contemplating a run for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012.
So far, Pawlenty isn’t saying what he’ll do once the court rules.
“The recent Minnesota Supreme Court decision indicated that an election certificate could be issued once the state courts process is complete,” said Brian McClung, a spokesman for the governor. “However, if one of the parties appeals to a federal court, a question will arise whether the federal court might stay the issuance of a certificate.
“We’ll see what the courts determine,” he said.
McClung was referring to a March 6 opinion in which the Minnesota Supreme Court denied Franken’s request to compel Pawlenty and Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie to sign an election certificate declaring him the winner while Coleman was appealing the results of a hand recount before the three-judge panel.
In that ruling, the Minnesota Supreme Court said that “a certificate of election cannot be issued until the state courts have finally decided an election contest.”
But can it — must it — be issued then?
“The question is, when does the state process end?” said Richard Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.
Hasen said it’s “not clear” whether the state process ends when the state Supreme Court rules or continues to run as the loser seeks review from the U.S. Supreme Court.
But, Hasen said, the state process definitely “would not wait” if the loser in the state proceeding chose to file an entirely new lawsuit in federal court — for example, to argue that his due-process rights were violated during the state court review.
Legal experts say Coleman or Franken would have a hard time making that kind of case. But Coleman refused to rule out the idea last week, saying only that “at this point” he does not anticipate that the case will end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
“I’m not ruling out anything,” Coleman said at the Capitol Tuesday. “I think Minnesotans deserve to know each and every vote was counted fairly — that there’s a uniform standard. If that can be done at a trial level, that’s great. If it takes an appellate level to do that, then, you know, we have to look at that.”
Both sides are girding for a long battle.
Eric Schultz, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, accuses Cornyn and the Republicans of holding the Minnesota seat hostage to prevent Democrats from getting a 59th vote in a chamber in which 60 are needed to move major pieces of legislation.
“Gov. Pawlenty ought to make clear that if former Sen. Coleman chooses to appeal the outcome of the contest in the state Supreme Court that this is the end of the road — and that, consistent with the law, he will certify Al Franken the winner following that state court appeal,” Schultz said.
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