Has Pointless Racism Driven The Republican Party Mad?

Last night, writing about the need to cope with China's role in Climate Change, Paul Krugman pointed out that "any attempt to make sense of current American politics must take into account this particular indicator of the Republican Party’s descent into madness." Krugman's analysis stands up across a dozen "issues," but it doesn't take into account the bitter and primitive racism and white outrage at the heart of the deranged and persistent drive to delegitimize the presidency of Barack Obama, a deranged drive that began the moment he was elected. The policy doesn't matter. The nominee doesn't matter. To the hardcore racist right-- primarily unreconstructed Confederates and their allies-- if Obama proposed it, it must be opposed, no matter the cost.

Thursday, Sylvia Burwell as confirmed to be Secretary of Health and Human Services 78-17, the 17 being all GOP racists, eager to disrupt the smooth functioning of government just for the sake of opposing a man they don't recognize as a legitimate president-- no matter what the voters said… and then said again. Their voters, after all did not say so. In fact, on the Burwell matter, the day before, Mitch McConnell led a filibuster to prevent a vote on her nomination at all. McConnell knew he would fail-- as he did, 67-28-- but several of his backward colleagues were happy to go on the record as opposing Obama again. Roger Wicker (R-MS), Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), for example, voted to keep the filibuster going and, when that effort failed-- having made the point that… whatever the point is-- voted for the confirmation.

So why the two clips fromRachel Maddow's Thursday evening show? Just another example of the deranged hyper-partisan nature of Republican opposition to anything and everything President Obama wants to do on behalf of the country. And it isn't just a liberal like Maddow who's remarking on this derangement syndrome. Right wing propagandist David Brooks devoted his Thursday NY Times column to it: President Obama Was Right.

Americans don’t have a common ancestry. Therefore, we have to work hard to build national solidarity. We go in for more overt displays of patriotism than in most other countries: politicians wearing flag lapel pins, everybody singing the national anthem before games, saying the Pledge of Allegiance at big meetings, revering sacred creedal statements, like the Gettysburg Address.

We need to do this because national solidarity is essential to the health of the country. This feeling of solidarity means that we do pull together and not apart in times of crisis, like after the attacks on 9/11. Despite all our polarization, we do accept the election results, even when the other party wins. People in New York do uncomplainingly send tax dollars to help people in New Mexico. We are able to assimilate waves of immigration.

National solidarity is especially important for the national defense. Men and women serve in the armed forces for a variety of reasons, but one of them is the awareness that it is an extraordinary privilege to be an American, that it is a debt that needs to be repaid with service.

Soldiers in combat not only protect their buddies, they show amazing devotion to anyone in the uniform, without asking about state or ethnicity. This is the cohesion that makes armies effective.

These commitments, so crucial, are based on deep fraternal sentiments that have to be nurtured with action. They are based on the notion that we are members of one national community. We will not abandon each other; we will protect one another; heroic measures will be taken to leave no one behind. Even if it is just a lifeless body that we are retrieving, it is important to repatriate all Americans.

The president and vice president, the only government officials elected directly by the entire nation, have a special responsibility to nurture this national solidarity. So, of course, President Obama had to take all measures necessary to secure the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. Of course, he had to do all he could do to not forsake an American citizen.

It doesn’t matter if Bergdahl had deserted his post or not. It doesn’t matter if he is a confused young man who said insulting and shameful things about his country and his Army. The debt we owe to fellow Americans is not based on individual merit. It is based on citizenship, and loyalty to the national community we all share.

Soldiers don’t risk their lives only for those Americans who deserve it; they do it for the nation as a whole.

…President Obama made the right call. If he is to be faulted, it would be first for turning the release into an Oprah-esque photo-op, a political stunt filled with inaccurate rhetoric and unworthy grandstanding. It would next be for his administration’s astonishing tone-deafness about how this swap would be received… [T]he president’s instincts were right. His sense of responsibility for a fellow countryman was correct. It’s not about one person; it’s about the principle of all-for-one-and-one-for-all, which is the basis of citizenship.

Republicans, almost entirely steeped in hatred and bigotry and brainwashed by Hate Talk Radio, no longer have that sense of responsibility for a fellow countryman-- or for anything else that benefits America or Americans. Nothing gets beyond the hatred and white rage. And there are no lies too outrageous for them to perpetrate in the service of their goals. The Republican Party has turned itself into a party of sedition and madness.

Immigration Meets DOMA-- No Big Deal, Says Senile Chuck Grassley

Every time some spoiled multimillionaire piece of garbage announces he's leaving the U.S. because taxes are too high, right-wing sites and fringe lunatics like Satanist Bryan Fischer go wild on twitter. Fischer's latest hysteria was brought on when over-the-hill Filipino boxer Manny Pacquiao said he won't fight in America any more because the tax bite is too high. Awwwwwww. Don't let the door hit you on the way out... and, please, don't come back. Yesterday, though, the NY Times featured the story of two young men the country should be genuinely sad to see leave, Brandon Perlberg and Benn Storey. They're living in London now instead of New York. Our loss.

Perlberg, an American who is gay, now lives in London. Early last year he reluctantly left his law firm, rented out his apartment and said goodbye to friends. After nearly seven years in the United States on legal but temporary visas, his partner had not been able to obtain a visa as a permanent resident. The two were facing the possibility of permanent separation.

Americans with a foreign-born spouse of the opposite sex are able to get them resident visas, or green cards, with relative ease. But federal law does not allow Americans to petition for green cards for same-sex spouses or partners. Eventually, they face a choice of remaining in the country with the immigrant here illegally or leaving the United States.

“Ultimately, we resolved that staying together was the most important thing for us,” Mr. Perlberg said. “And the only way to guarantee that we got to stay together was by making this move.”

Mr. Perlberg is part of a diaspora of gay Americans who have found they had to uproot and leave the country to continue to live with foreign partners. And this year, binational gay couples like his are a new-- and controversial-- focus of the debate in Washington on an ambitious overhaul of immigration laws. In a blueprint that President Obama presented last month, he pledged to give citizens, and also immigrants who are legal residents, the ability to petition for a green card for a same-sex foreign partner, if they can show they have “a permanent relationship.”

The Supreme Court will also take up same-sex issues this year, with hearings in March on two cases that challenge the definition of marriage as being a union between only a man and a woman. One case deals directly with a 1996 statute, the Defense of Marriage Act, that prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage and governs the exclusion of gay couples from visas and other immigration benefits.

The politics of same-sex marriage are rapidly shifting, with polls showing Americans viewing it increasingly favorably but still divided. Many Republican voters strongly oppose it. Leading Republican lawmakers have questioned whether Congress should include such a hotly disputed issue in the debate when it will also wrangle with giving legal status to 11 million illegal immigrants.

“There are so many other, bigger issues the Congress has to resolve in immigration reform before we would even get to a point where we would be discussing a change to a longstanding policy like this,” said Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the highest-ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is working to prepare immigration legislation.

The restrictions in the marriage act, known as DOMA, have a direct impact on Americans with foreign-born spouses or partners who want to live in the United States.

“A straight couple living in the U.S. can apply for a green card based on their spousal relationship,” said Rachel B. Tiven, the executive director of Immigration Equality, a legal advocacy group focusing on gays and lesbians. “Gay couples simply can’t do that.”

For the first time, in Mr. Obama’s blueprint, same-sex couples have been included in a comprehensive framework for immigration legislation.

The president “has long believed that Americans with same-sex partners from other countries should not be faced with the painful choice between staying with the person they love or staying in the country they love,” the White House spokesman, Jay Carney, said when Mr. Obama announced his plan in Las Vegas on Jan. 29.

The president’s proposal was echoed in a bill introduced last week in the Senate by Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, a Democrat who is the Judiciary Committee chairman, and Susan Collins of Maine, a Republican. A similar bill was introduced in the House of Representatives earlier this month.

Mr. Perlberg, 34, has been following the debate in Washington from the apartment in London where he landed with his partner, Benn Robert Storey, 31. In a telephone interview, they recalled that Mr. Storey had never felt like an exile during the years they lived together in New York. A graphic designer, Mr. Storey already had a job and a work visa lined up when he moved to the United States.

“I did not feel like a British person in New York, I felt like a New Yorker,” Mr. Storey said. “And during that time, my relationship with Brandon grew stronger and stronger.”

But the end of Mr. Storey’s temporary visas was approaching. Because he does not have an advanced degree in a technical profession, lawyers advised them that Mr. Storey’s chances of gaining a green card based on his employment were very slim.

The uncertainty of Mr. Storey’s immigration future became “a dark cloud that hung over our relationship,” Mr. Perlberg said. In July 2011, same-sex marriage became legal in New York State. But under the federal marriage law, Mr. Storey still would not have been eligible for a green card as a spouse.

Unlike Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh, I wasn't a draft dodger. My lottery number was high enough to exempt me from the draft. But I decided I didn't want to live in the U.S. while any taxes I paid could, at least in theory, go towards buying the bombs and napalm being rained down on the heads of the Vietnamese people whose cause I supported, at least emotionally, with every fiber of my being. So I lived in Amsterdam. The Dutch government made it very easy for Americans to live there. I even had a government job. The issue may not be important to Chuck Grassley-- who is, after all 79 and basically senile more often than he's lucid-- but it is the most important issue in the world to hundreds of thousands of people whose lives are impacted by a law that should never have been passed to begin with and is on its last legs in any case.

Also over the weekend, Marco Rubio, desperate to somehow make his party's far right base think his own immigration reform is not about what right-wing loons call "amnesty," attacked President Obama's plan and called it "dead on arrival." Kentucky crackpot Rand Paul did the "Me Too" Dance.

Congressional Republicans on Sunday criticized a White House plan on immigration reform that allows illegal immigrants to become legal, permanent residents within eight years-- saying Congress will never pass such a proposal and questioning President Obama’s intent.

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul said the plan is untenable and so outside of what the country wants that it suggests Obama is not sincere about passing immigration reform.

“The president is torpedoing his own plan,” Paul told Fox News Sunday. “It shows me he is really not serious. … The bill won’t pass.”

The draft immigration bill being circulated by the White House also includes plans for a new visa for illegal immigrants living in the United States, as first reported by USA Today.

Obama's bill would create a "Lawful Prospective Immigrant" visa for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants living in the country. The bill includes more security funding and requires business owners to adopt a system for verifying the immigration status of new hires within four years, the newspaper said.

On Saturday, Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio called the White House proposal "half-baked and seriously flawed."

Rubio-- part of an eight-member, bipartisan Senate panel working on an immigration reform bill--- also said the proposal was disappointing to those “working on serious solutions” and repeats failures of past legislation.

He said the White House also erred in not seeking input from Republican lawmakers.

"If actually proposed, the president's bill would be dead on arrival in Congress, leaving us with unsecured borders and a broken legal immigration system for years to come," Rubio said in a statement.

...USA Today also reported that the bill would require that immigrants pass a criminal background check, submit biometric information and pay fees to qualify for the new visa.

Immigrants who served more than a year in prison for a criminal conviction or were convicted of three or more crimes and were sentenced to a total of 90 days in jail would not be eligible. Crimes committed in other countries that would bar immigrants from legally entering the country would also be ineligible.

...Clark Stevens, a White House spokesman, said Saturday that Obama still supports a bipartisan effort to craft a comprehensive immigration bill. "While the president has made clear he will move forward if Congress fails to act, progress continues to be made and the administration has not prepared a final bill to submit," he said in a statement.

Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, described the draft bill as a "very moderate" proposal. While the path to citizenship was welcomed by Noorani, he said not enough attention was being paid to future immigration.

"Commonsense immigration reform must include a functioning immigration system for the future," Noorani said in a statement. "Reform does not begin and end with citizenship and enforcement alone."

In contrast, Republican icon Newt Gingrich was on ABC-TV's This Week Sunday and he told viewers that basically Republicans just hate Obama, don't recognize him as the legitimate president of the country and will oppose anything and everything he proposes... just because he proposes it. Watch:

Republicans Have An Even More Serious Problem Than Everyone Thought

Can the GOP make a come back... ever?

CNN has a serious new poll out-- one that confirms other post-election surveys. It indicates that a healthy majority of Americans are delighted to have the GOP out of government, replaced, at every level, by Democrats. No one fell for the McCain/Limbaugh scare tactic: one party rule will end democracy.

In the CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Tuesday, 59 percent of those questioned said Democratic control of both the executive and legislative branches will be good for the country, compared with 38 percent saying such one-party control will be bad.

"That much good will from the public opens a window of opportunity for the Democrats," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "But the public expects results, and may not listen to excuses for very long if a Democratic Congress and a Democratic White House can't get their act together in time."

The poll also indicates that the public has a positive view of the Democratic Party, with 62 percent saying they have a favorable opinion and 31 percent an unfavorable opinion of the party. For the Republicans, a majority, 54 percent, said they have an unfavorable view of the GOP while 38 percent hold a positive view.

"The public has a positive view of the Democratic Party while the GOP 'brand' is hurting," Holland said. "Overall views of the Democratic Party have gone from 53 percent favorable in October to 62 percent favorable now; the GOP overall has seen a 5-point drop in its favorable rating."

Something tells me that fascistic rantings of extremists from the KKK wing of the GOP or threats to filibuster Obama's reforms by the Republican's #2 in the Senate, or the threats to impeach Obama-- before he's even sworn in-- by deranged GOP media shills, are not going to help the Republican favorability ratings.

In this morning's Washington Post Eugene Robinson argues, convincingly, that virtually the whole Republican Party is on a Bridge to Nowhere.

The essential problem is that changing course will require turning around and marching, if not sprinting, in the opposite direction. At least initially, this doesn't look like something enough Republicans are willing to do.

You think? I thought they were just kidding about all that "center right nation" hogwash they've been puking up since last Tuesday... kind of trying to make themselves feel a little better about losing elected officials who had been pegged as the GOP's future, like John Sununu (NH), Steve Pearce (NM), Tim Walberg (MI), Thelma Drake (VA), Marilyn Musgrave (CO), Bill Sali (ID), Jon Porter (NV), et al. The argument that the GOP wasn't right-wing enough should be put to rest when you look at some of the losers from last week-- far right incumbents and, even more disastrously, far right would-be replacements for mainstream conservatives. New Mexico voters were no more willing to accept a kook like Darren White for Heather Wilson than Virginia voters were going to elect James Gillmore to replace John Warner.

FL-08 (Orlando and well-healed suburbs like Winter Park and Windermere gave Bush a 10 point margin in 2004 and re-elected conservative Congressman Ric Keller with a 7 point margin in 2006. This year not only did they fail to re-elect Keller (6 point spread), they elected one of the most progressive candidates running for office anywhere, Alan Grayson, someone who talked openly about impeaching Bush, jailing war profiteers and making the economic system work for average American working families, not just multimillionaires. Yes... in the middle of Florida!

Sure, plenty of far right-wing Republicans were defeated by worthless conservative Democrats, from Michael McMahon (NY) and admitted Blue Dog Frank Kratovil (MD) to Alabama anti-choice nuts like Bobby Bright and Parker Griffith. But the real future of the Democratic Party-- and of the country-- is in the hands of forward-thinking, innovative progressives like Jeff Merkley (OR), Tom Udall (NM), Jim Himes (CT), Mark Schauer (MI), Gary Peters (MI), Martin Heinrich (NM), Larry Kissell (NC), and Tom Perriello (VA).

Robinson tackled the false postulation of "center right nation." He says that John McCain, who lost states Democrats haven't had a shot at in many years, was essentially a center right politician who was forced further and further right by the GOP's deranged and imbecilic base.

To win the Republican nomination, he had to swerve so far to the right that there was no way he could make his way back within shouting distance of the center. Not that he tried very hard: By the end of the campaign, he was suggesting that progressive taxation-- a concept that most Americans accept, having been convinced of its wisdom by Republican icon Teddy Roosevelt-- represents some sort of creeping socialism.

My guess, in any event, is that this country oscillates pretty freely in the range between center-right and center-left, and that it's clearly taking a leftward swing. My guess is that in stimulating the economy, re-regulating the financial system, making "green" technology a reality and ending the war in Iraq, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Obama will feel more public pressure to speed up than slow down.

Big-spending, pork-loving Republicans in Congress who suddenly recall that they're actually budget hawks-- at a time when massive spending may be needed to keep a sharp recession from turning into an outright depression-- will find themselves steamrollered by history, I'm afraid.

And then there's the question of trying to knit together the Republican Party's warring factions. Many "movement" conservatives still believe they have found a champion in Sarah Palin. A lot of pragmatists believe Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal represents the future of the party. Jeb Bush may be the party's most skillful and well-rounded politician, but there's the problem of that unfortunate last name.

Most Republicans don't want Jeb Bush or Bobby Jindal or Huckabee or the Mormon or Ron Paul as their 2012 standard bearer. They want Sarah Palin and that, in short, is what's wrong with the Republican Party and why it's going to get a lot worse for them before it gets better. By the end of the campaign 60% of voters felt she was unqualified for the vice-presidency. The majority of newspapers that backed Bush in 2004 and switched to Obama in 2008 mentioned McCain's lack of judgment in picking Palin as a major reason for endorsing Obama. And yet... most Republicans want her to run in 2012. Most Democrats do too-- though for vastly different reasons.

In the national Election Day exit poll, fully 60% of voters said they did not consider her qualified to serve as president if necessary, while only 38% thought she would be ready to step in. Those figures were daunting enough, but new calculations from the exit poll provided by the NBC News political unit show that outside of the Republican base skepticism about Palin’s credentials reached even more imposing heights. While 74% of Republicans thought Palin was qualified, just 35% of independents and 9% of Democrats agreed... [W]hile quite popular among the party base, she faces deep resistance from voters outside of it, including many of the groups (independents, college graduates, residents of the coasts) who turned most sharply away from the GOP in last week’s rout.

Palin, Michael Reagan, Paul Broun, Ted Stevens, that plumber guy, Michele Bachmann, Jon Kyl... that's what's left of the Republican Party-- and they're damn proud of it.