Tea Party Doomed

An important thing to remember as we begin the first day of a House GOP shutdown of the federal government is that the Tea Party ideology that is driving all this is a distinctly minority point of view. Mitt Romney, Republican standard bearer who campaigned on a repeal of Obamacare in last year's presidential election, lost by 5 million votes. Republicans maintained control of the House of Representatives but lost eight seats in the process and Democrats candidates ended up winning 1.4 million votes nationwide. Gerrymandering has helped the GOP maintain its majority in the House. In the Senate, Republicans were widely predicted to regain control. But thanks to some extremely incendiary comments by Tea Party candidates, Democrats, in an amazing turnabout that was the highlight of the election season, actually picked up two seats.

The Tea Party is a revanchist movement that wants to return to a past which is a fantasy. It is a splinter movement that has been blown up into flame by plutocrats who were frightened to discover following Obama's 2008 election that a strong, multicultural Progressive majority exists in the United States.

We first saw the Tea Party on display during the orchestrated demonstrations against national health care legislation at Congressional town halls the summer of 2009. The paranoid types have always been with us. Go to any public forum -- any meeting of your city council or school board -- and they'll be there. But what was different this time around is that the kooks had some deep-pocketed backers who were willing to provide an organizational infrastructure.

It is this moneyed assistance that is important to keep in mind when noting that Speaker of the House John Boehner, a man who if nothing else is a dedicated servant of concentrated wealth, could end the government shutdown promptly by allowing the clean Senate continuing resolution a vote on the House floor. This is from Joe Nocera's column this morning, "Those Banana Republicans":

The House speaker, John Boehner, won’t bring “a clean C.R.” — that is, a continuing resolution without any of the anti-Obamacare language — not because it won’t pass, but because it probably would, which would infuriate the Tea Party wing of his party and jeopardize his leadership post. Indeed, as Boehner well knows, many House Republicans do not want the government to shut down and would probably vote for the Senate’s clean bill if given half a chance. Their unwillingness to speak out against the extreme faction in their party is shameful. And it’s tragic that, at a time when the House desperately needs a strong speaker, it has John Boehner instead. 

What was clear on Monday was that if the government does shut down, the Republicans are going to be blamed. All day long, we watched the Democrats, starting with President Obama, make the case that Republican demands were unreasonable, and, indeed, dangerous, given what was at stake. Republicans spent the day on the defensive. Senator Elizabeth Warren, the liberal Democrat from Massachusetts, described Republican tactics to me as “hostage taking.” Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, told reporters that if “we can’t pass this” — meaning a clean C.R. — “we’re only truly entering a banana republican mind-set.”

Wall Street is on board the government shutdown because it couldn't take place without assistance from Boehner. Boehner is not a man who is going to buck the boss.

So what's going on?

I think what's going on is that the plutocrats who whipped a political movement into being have lost the degree of control that they come to expect. Active Tea Party opposition to bombing Syria no doubt upset the Wall Street types who don't like to see any loss of imperial prerogatives even if a black man is the commander-in-chief. And what really must dismay the plutocrats is the possibility of a government default in a couple of weeks if the House Republicans refuse to raise the debt ceiling, a default that would send shock waves through the global capitalist system.

The longer the government stays shut down the more the Tea Party caucus will splinter. In another week or two, assuming the government remains shuttered, the Tea Party will be thoroughly discredited, the public ire coming its way immense. It will be broken and in no position to engineer a default on sovereign debt.

There is a war on within the GOP. This very well could be the battle where the Karl Rove-led Wall Streeters route the Tea Party Birchers.

Terror Bombing of Turkish Border Town + IRS Audits Tea Party 501(c)(4)'s

Last week began with Israel's bombing of a Syrian military installation outside Damascus; it ended with a terror bombing in the Turkish town of Reyhanli on Saturday. Forty-six people were killed and over 100 were injured. Kareem Fahim and Sebnem Arsu report today in "Arrests and Calls for Calm in Turkey" that the Turkish government arrested nine people who are part of a Marxist group with links to Syrian intelligence. Syria denied any involvement. Turkey is currently in peace negotiations with the Kurdistan Workers Party. It is unclear who is really to blame. But what is clear is that chaos in Syria is destabilizing the Middle East. Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Turkey -- all were in the news last week in relation to the Syrian civil war. The refugee crisis will only grow worse as the savage fighting continues; hopefully, meaningful U.S.-Russian brokered peace talks will begin soon.

Another story that developed over the weekend is the revelation that the Internal Revenue Service targeted Tea Party groups applying for 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status. Jonathan Weisman and Matthew Wald have an informative story, "I.R.S. Focus on Conservatives Gives G.O.P. an Issue to Seize On," this morning. And while it is unfortunate that this will surely lead to a lot of column inches and television time being blotted out by conservatives doing what they love so much to do -- feigning outrage and playing the victim -- I don't think it aids the GOP in the long run. Reading the blog that Thomas Edsall writes for the New York Times, one knows that there is a serious struggle underway within Republican Party. It's the Establishment, embodied by Karl Rove, versus the Tea Party. Recently Rove has had momentum going his way; a group he is linked with secured the contract to manage the GOP voter list. But now the Tea Party will enjoy a boost. And the battle for the Republican Party will rage on. The problem for liberals is that they have nothing -- other than Obama, and his political force is rapidly evaporating. There is a progressive majority in this country that has no party.

Here is a reader, RQH of Wheat Ridge, Colorado, commenting on the Weisman and Wald story (I think it's on the mark):

The Tea Party is depicted by its followers as a spontaneous gathering of like-minded citizens who want to reduce the size of the federal government and drastically cut taxes for all, especially the super-wealthy. At the Tea Party core are the Koch brothers whose father organized the John Birch Society. Knowing that, , it should be evident why the IRS would question the validity of their tax-exemption claim. Remember the recommendation of the Watergate source: "Follow the money!"

Massive System Failure

The political system in this country is failing. The GOP is fracturing along a Tea Party Bircher versus Rovian establishment fault. At the end of last month longtime political commentator Thomas Edsall, wrote a story, "The Republican Autopsy Report," that appeared on the New York Times "Opinionator" blog. In it he discusses a 97-page post-2012 election assessment commissioned by RNC chairman Reince Preibus:

The G.O.P. report is an extraordinary public acknowledgment of internal discord and vulnerability, which has intensified the battle between the deeply committed conservative wing and the more pragmatic, pro-business wing for control of the Republican Party. With just a few exceptions, it does not mince words. 

At the federal level, it says, the party is “marginalizing itself,” and, in the absence of major change, “it will be increasingly difficult for Republicans to win a presidential election in the near future.” Young voters are “rolling their eyes at what the party represents.” Voters’ belief that “the G.O.P. does not care about them is doing great harm.” Formerly loyal voters gathered in focus groups describe Republicans as “ ‘scary,’ ‘narrow-minded’ and ‘out of touch’ and that we were a party of ‘stuffy old men.’ ”

What's going on is the GOP establishment, which made a Faustian bargain with the Tea Party to combat the Obama tidal wave following the 2008 election, is now, with Karl Rove still the #1 strategist, attempting to eradicate the Bircher jihadists:

More broadly, the alliance between Rove and the R.N.C. does substantiate the view that establishment forces are driving the reform movement within the Republican Party, an establishment that includes much of corporate America, including the Chamber of Commerce, the Bush family and its allies, and the more moderate, traditionalist donor community. 

Conservative analysts like Timothy P. Carney of the Washington Examiner and Ramesh Ponnuru of the National Review quickly spotted the establishment tilt in the Priebus report. Carney wrote:

Republican elites tend to favor mass immigration and be ambivalent or supportive of legal abortion and gay marriage. So, shouldn’t we take it with a grain of salt when the Republican leadership puts out a document saying that the G.O.P. should change only its rhetoric on economic issues, but change its substance on social issues?

Similarly, Ponnuru wrote that the recommendations “come naturally to Republican elites” who “are more likely to favor same-sex marriage and comprehensive immigration reform on principle.” The report reflects “elite conventional wisdom perfectly, just perfectly.” 

In January, I pointed out that “If the conservative movement continues on its downward trajectory, the American business community, which has the most to lose from Republican failure, will be the key force arguing for moderation.” 

That moment has come. The Priebus report and Rove’s Conservative Victory Project together mark a significant escalation in the battle between the center and the right over the soul of the Republican Party. What has yet to be determined is whether they are fighting over a patient who can be quickly resuscitated or a patient with a chronic but not fatal illness — or a corpse. 

The very bluntness of the Growth and Opportunity report reflects the seriousness of the moment the Republican Party faces: increasing difficulty holding on to its House majority; weakening prospects of regaining control of the Senate; and the threat of unending Democratic control of the White House.

For the Democrats it appears that it is TINA ("There Is No Alternative") to Obamaism, which after much hope and longing on the part of a progressive majority in this country seems to be nothing more than Clintonism. Obama's failure to get a gun control measure out of the Senate along with his proposal to chop Social Security benefits presage an impotence -- a mere six months after his landslide reelection -- that can only grow more pronounced. The AFL-CIO is rapidly shrinking and looking to overhaul its organizing model. How many times have we heard that before? So there is no hope there. Occupy Wall Street, barring another economic meltdown, is unlikely to recapture its former glory.

I was looking to Cyprus to show us a way forward by voluntarily rejecting the euro. We need courage, experimentation. But in the last couple of weeks there is no indication that this will happen. So for now it appears that our best bet is Beppe Grillo's Five Star Movement. Rachel Donadio has an excellent story, "President of Italy Nominates Center-Left Official as Premier," in today's paper about the latest political developments in Italy. Luigi Bersani resigned the leadership of the Democratic Party after two months of unsuccessfully attempting to form a government and getting his presidential candidates to succeed President Giorgio Napolitano. With no resolution on the horizon, the 87-year-old Napolitano agreed to serve another term and was reelected. Now, as Donadio reports,

After months of political paralysis capped by a week of turmoil, President Giorgio Napolitano on Wednesday named Enrico Letta, a high-ranking official in the center-left Democratic Party, to form a broad coalition government to try to steer Italy out of political chaos and its worst recession since World War II. 

And former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the great survivor of Italian politics, emerged as a kingmaker by default, having outlasted most of his adversaries. 

“It’s undeniable that this is a victory for Berlusconi,” said Giovanni Orsina, the deputy director of the School of Government at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome. “He got what he asked for, from Napolitano’s re-election to a political government with broad, bipartisan support.”

Like the current Greek government, a three-party coalition in which historical enemies on the left and right have joined together out of fear of extinction and a lack of viable alternatives, Mr. Letta is potentially the last gasp of a political cycle that in Italy began in the early 1990s with the collapse of the postwar political order and the rise of Mr. Berlusconi.

The party system is collapsing. Television is said to have led to the erosion of political organization in the United States. Now TV is being replaced by the Internet. Life is migrating online. Is this good or bad? Judging from the stasis of the status quo one can only conclude that so far it's not good. We might be at the point where there is so much information available that we are paralyzed -- the "dream machine" that Jean-Francois Lyotard predicted in his seminal La Condition postmoderne: Rapport sur le savoir (The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge) (1979).

SEC Considering Disclosure Requirement

A good indication of just how moribund our democracy is will be whether the Securities and Exchange Commission issues a new rule requiring publicly traded corporations to disclose their political donations. The story, "S.E.C. Gets Plea: Force Companies to Disclose Donations," by Nicholas Confessore can be found today on the frontpage of the New York Times.

A petition to the S.E.C. asking it to issue the rule has already garnered close to half a million comments, far more than any petition or rule in the agency’s history, with the vast majority in favor of it. While relatively few petitions result in action by the S.E.C., the commission staff filed a notice late last year indicating that it was considering recommending a rule.

In response to the growing pressure, House Republicans introduced legislation last Thursday that would make it illegal for the commission to issue any political disclosure regulations applying to companies under its jurisdiction. Earlier this month, the leaders of three of Washington’s most powerful trade associations — the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the Business Roundtable — issued a rare joint letter to the chief executives of Fortune 200 companies, encouraging them to stand against proxy resolutions and other proposals from shareholder activists demanding more disclosure of political spending. 

Tax-exempt groups and trade associations spent hundreds of millions of dollars on political advertising during 2012 elections, but they are not required to disclose their donors. Evidence has mounted that a significant portion of the money came from companies seeking to intervene in campaigns without fear of offending their customers, their shareholders — or the lawmakers they target for defeat.

In 2010 the Citizens United ruling lifted independent expenditure restrictions in political campaigns, but it did require disclosure. In order to avoid disclosure a system of secret campaign spending has sprung up in the form of 501(c)(4) issue advocacy groups like Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS that favor Republicans. That's why Republicans are trying to block the S.E.C. disclosure rule. Confessore summarizes the main argument against the new rule as follows:

Opponents argue that the agency does not have the authority or expertise to issue regulations about political spending, and that a disclosure rule would infringe on companies’ free speech rights — and damage shareholder value — by exposing them to criticism and attack from political opponents. 

“The Chamber believes that the funds expended by publicly traded companies for political and trade association engagement are immaterial to the company’s bottom line,” said Blair Holmes, a spokeswoman for the business group, who added that the advocates’ “apparent goal is to silence the business community by creating an atmosphere of intimidation under the cover of investor protection.”

For the Chamber to argue against disclosure because of a fear of intimidation is absurd. In disclosure law there is an exemption for minor parties, such as socialists or communists, who can prove that retaliation or harassment would result from revealing donor information. So it seems that the threshold should be the same for publicly traded corporations. If they can prove harassment or retaliation -- not the vague "intimidation" -- fine; give them an exemption. Otherwise, they should disclose their political donations.

Interestingly, Citizens United provided disclosure as a justification for lifting restrictions on independent expenditure campaigns. As Confessore points out:

In seeking greater disclosure to shareholders, many of the advocates are citing an unlikely source: the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. In clearing the way for unlimited corporate expenditures in campaigns, Justice Kennedy suggested that “shareholder objections raised through the procedures of corporate democracy” could provide accountability for the new political powers. 

“I think the S.E.C. staff is very sympathetic to the petition itself, and a lot of the comments have referenced Justice Kennedy’s opinion in Citizens United,” said Karl J. Sandstrom, counsel to the Center for Political Accountability, which advocates transparency in corporate political spending. “But they have so much on their plate, they have to decide what’s going to come first,” he added.

But don't count on the Securities and Exchange Commission doing the right thing. The system is captured.

A video of Confessore discussing his article can be found here.