What Does The GOP Have To Do To Ever Let The Democrats Win In Florida Again?

 

If ever there should be a state party that is dead in the water, it should be the Florida Republican Party which has just presided over a horrific and on-going pandemic catastrophe from a pro-COVID Republican governor and a pro-COVID Republican state legislature. DeSantis and his pet legislature invited COVID to settle in in Florida. And it has. Yesterday the state reported 5,838 more cases of COVID, bringing the state total to 858,012. Tomorrow, Florida will surpass on ominous mark: 40,000 cases per million inhabitants. Over 17,300 Floridians have died, needlessly. And yet, Republicans did quite well in Florida, winning the state's 29 electoral votes for Trump and holding onto all their state legislative seats. Now they have to get ready to defend DeSantis and Marco Rubio in 2022.

Conventional wisdom is that Rubio will have a big, fat target on his back in 2022 when he runs for reelection. But to think about that more seriously take into account that

• Florida Democrats have a defective party that can't win races
• Florida Democrats have lost ground to Republicans among Hispanic voters
• The Democratic bench is so weak and enfeebled that they don't have even one viable candidate waiting in the wings.

Obama won Florida both times he ran. But in 2016, Trump beat the Democratic Party establishment candidate there, 4,617,886 (48.60%) to 4,504,975 (47.41%). Although votes are still being counted, with 99% reported, Trump beat Biden 5,667,474 (51.2%) to 5,294, 767 (47.8%). Both party bases were highly motivated and turned out in force, exceeding their 2016 turn-outs significantly. Trump had 1,049,588 more voters this year than in 2016 and Biden had 789,792 more voters than Hillary did.

Rubio is already working on positioning himself. Alayna Treene, writing for Axios yesterday, reported that Rubio, who is also looking towards a 2024 presidential run, told her that Republicans need to rebrand their party as the champions of working-class voters and steer away from its traditional embrace of big business. He's attempting to navigate how the to acknowledge Trump's successes while not allowing himself to be painted as a Trumpist. "The future of the party," he told her, "is based on a multiethnic, multiracial working class coalition."

Rubio said Republicans have long believed in and supported the free market, "but the free market exists to serve our people. Our people don't exist to serve the free market."

He added that working class Americans are now largely against big businesses “that only care about how their shares are performing, even if it's based on moving production overseas for cheaper labor. "They're very suspicious, quite frankly, dismissive of elites at every level. And obviously that's a powerful sentiment."

..."We still have a very strong base in the party of donors and think tanks and intelligentsia from the right who are market fundamentalists, who accuse anyone who's not a market fundamentalist of being a socialist to some degree," Rubio said.

"If the takeaway from all of them is now is the time to go back to sort of the traditional party of of unfettered free trade, I think we're gonna lose the [Trump] base as quickly as we got it... We can't just go back to being that," he added.

She also reported that when Andrew Yang was interviewed on CNN last week, he had a similar perspective, noting that when he introduced himself as a Democrat to working class voters, they would flinch. "There is something deeply wrong when working class Americans have that response to a major party that theoretically is supposed to be fighting for them. In their minds, the Democratic Party unfortunately has taken on this role of the coastal urban elites who are more concerned about policing various cultural issues than improving their way of life... This to me is a fundamental problem for the party."

Damn kids! They want a party that stands for something!

How Badly Will Trump's Stroll Through The Garden Of Racism Hurt GOP Candidates In 2018?

Yesterday we noted that Randy Bryce is calling on Paul Ryan to lead the House in censuring Trump for his pro-Nazi, pro-KKK remarks. Up top is the video and yesterday 3 of Congress' most serious progressives, Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ) and Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) announced a resolution of censure in the House against Señor Trumpanzee for his remarks at Trumpanzee Tower Tuesday re-asserting earlier comments that "both sides" were to blame for the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia and excusing the behavior of participants in the 'Unite the Right' rally. Pramila, in announcing the resolution, noted that "not even a week has passed since the tragedy in Charlottesville. But on Tuesday, the president poured salt on the nation’s wounds by defending those who marched with white supremacists. In an unscripted press conference, we saw the real and unfiltered Donald Trump-- the logical endpoint for a man who has consistently trafficked in racism throughout his career. The American people expect their leaders to condemn white supremacy in unambiguous terms. President Trump not only failed at condemning white supremacists and neo-Nazis, he stood up for them-- for that he must be censured. The president’s conduct is un-American and it must stop." The resolution censuring and condemning Trump is set to be introduced on Friday, August 18, when the House is next in pro forma session. This is it:

RESOLUTION
Censuring and condemning President Donald Trump.

Whereas on August 11, 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia, a gathering of white supremacists, including neo-Nazis, Klu Klux Klan (KKK) members, and other alt-Right, white nationalist groups, marched through the streets with torches as part of a coordinated ‘Unite the Right’ rally spewing racism, anti-Semitism, bigotry and hatred;

Whereas on August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia, a car driven by James Alex Fields, Jr. rammed into a crowd of counter-protestors, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 20 others;

Whereas President Donald Trump’s immediate public comments rebuked “many sides” for the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, and failed to specifically condemn the ‘Unite the Right’ rally or cite the white supremacist, neo-Nazi gathering as responsible for actions of domestic terrorism;

Whereas on August 15, 2017 President Donald Trump held a press conference at Trump Tower where he re-asserted that “both sides” were to blame for the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, and attempted to create a moral equivalency between white supremacist, KKK, neo-Nazi groups and those counter-protesting the ‘Unite the Right’ rally;

Whereas President Donald Trump has surrounded himself with, and cultivated the influence of, senior advisors and spokespeople who have long histories of promoting white nationalist, alt-Right, racist and anti-Semitic principles and policies within the country;

Whereas President Donald Trump has provided tacit encouragement and little to no denunciation of white supremacist groups and individuals who promote their bigoted, nationalist ideology and policies;

Whereas President Donald Trump has failed to provide adequate condemnation and assure the American people of his resolve to opposing domestic terrorism: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives--

(1)   does hereby censure and condemn President Donald Trump for his inadequate response to the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12, 2017, his failure to immediately and specifically name and condemn the white supremacist groups responsible for actions of domestic terrorism, for re-asserting that “both sides” were to blame and excusing the violent behavior of participants in the ‘Unite the Right’ rally, and for employing people with ties to white supremacist movements in the White House, such as Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka; and

(2)   does hereby urge President Donald Trump to fire any and all White House advisors who have urged him to cater to the alt-Right movement in the United States.

I don't expect many-- if any-- Republicans to go along with this. I bet that not one musters the political courage to vote for it. In fact, it's hard it imagine Ryan and McCarthy even allowing it to come to the floor for a vote. Ryan's own statement, for the sake of concerned Wisconsin voters, who have been catching on to him as an enabler of Trump, was that "We must be clear. White supremacy is repulsive. This bigotry is counter to all this country stands for. There can be no moral ambiguity." And he unambiguously refused to name Trump or his regime.

Ryan appointed Steve Stivers (R-OH) to chair the NRCC whose task is to minimize the GOP's 2018 midterm losses. Trump's stroll into the court of public opinion holding hands with the Nazis and KKK probably won't help that effort and Stivers, clearly frustrated, blurted out "I don't understand what's so hard about this. White supremacists and Neo-Nazis are evil and shouldn't be defended." He forgot to mention Trump.

Texas Republican Will Hurd is one of the most vulnerable Republicans in Congress. Hillary won his south Texas 71% Hispanic district last year 49.8% to 46.4%. Unless the DCCC screws it up by nominating another Blue Dog who residents have already shown they do not want, Hurd will lose next year. He urged someone unnamed to "Apologize. Racism, bigotry, anti-Semitism, of any form is unacceptable. And the leader of the free world should be unambiguous about that." Well... "leader of the free world" might be a clue-- could be Angela Merkel-- but many-- too many-- Trump supporters don't have the bandwidth to put something that abstract together.

There's been a lot of chatter that Ohio Governor John Kasich is planning a primary challenge to Trump in 2020 if he hasn't been removed from office by then. He made a nice meme for his Twitter followers:

Little Marco (R-FL) is also eager to figure out how he can worm out from under his pledge to not run for president again until after serving a full 6 year Senate term. He's starting to get antsy about running against Trump too. He found himself in a tweet storm yesterday, which I can't get a screen shot of because he blocked me: "The organizers of events which inspired & led to #charlottesvilleterroristattack are 100% to blame for a number of reasons. They are adherents of an evil ideology which argues certain people are inferior because of race, ethnicity or nation of origin. … These groups today use SAME symbols & same arguments of #Nazi & #KKK, groups responsible for some of worst crimes against humanity ever. Mr. President, you can't allow #WhiteSupremacists to share only part of blame. They support idea which cost nation & world so much pain. The #WhiteSupremacy groups will see being assigned only 50% of blame as a win. We cannot allow this old evil to be resurrected." Little Marco has certainly gone further than most of the Republicans in the Senate.

But as Politico’s Kyle Cheney and Rachael Bade reported, the House Judiciary Committee, which oversees the Department of Justice’s handling of domestic terrorism, has no immediate plans to schedule an investigation into the domestic terrorism in Charlottesville, despite calls from Democrats that just such an investigation is essential. And Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has no interest in a Charlottesville hearing either. Maybe another one on Hillary's e-mails? "GOP sources suggested it might be too early to tell whether Congress should get involved. And some question what tangible action Congress could take to help the situation, aside from calling public attention to the issue through hearings."

Barbara Lee (D-CA) had some ideas on that Wednesday morning: "We cannot address the dangerous spread of white supremacy in America without first assessing its influence on our nation's highest office," she explained to her constituents in Oakland and Berkley. "Yesterday afternoon, Donald Trump defended the white supremacists who descended upon Charlottesville this past weekend while insisting there was blame 'on both sides.' As disturbing as his comments are, they should come as no surprise. As long as Trump has senior advisors with ties to white nationalist groups, he will never fully condemn racism and bigotry. That's why I wrote a letter to Trump yesterday calling for the removal of three prominent White House aides who are involved with the alt-right: Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and Sebastian Gorka. It's time to root out white nationalism at the White House... By placing these three men in his administration, Trump has elevated hate and discrimination to the highest levels of our government. He has signaled to white supremacists that they are no longer a fringe group-- they now have advocates advising the president with their agenda in mind. We have already seen a manifestation of that agenda, from the Muslim ban and a ban on transgender Americans in the military, to raids on immigrant communities and attempts to perpetuate the era of mass incarceration and roll back voting rights. These policies are a result of the far-right extremist ideology held by Trump's top advisors."

John Harwood summed up the predicament the country finds itself in with an essay he penned for CNBC, Trump has a very clear attitude about morality: He doesn't believe in it. "Trump," he wrote, "combines indifference to conventional notions of morality or propriety with disbelief that others would be motivated by them" and noted that the more Trumpanzee "reveals his character, the more he isolates himself from the American mainstream." He was contemptuous of the business leaders who stormed for the exits of his corporate advisory committees and wound up shutting down both committees when it was clear no one would be left except for an embarrassed handful of Nazi and KKK sympathizers.

As president, Trump has emphasized power over morality. Seeking passage of health-care legislation-- which violated his explicit campaign promises-- Trump chided a reluctant GOP senator with a veiled threat.

...When Pope Francis called emphasizing walls over bridge-building "not Christian," Trump ascribed it to political manipulation. The pope, he said, was a "pawn" of Mexico.

Trump touted duplicity in business as a leadership credential, boasting that he once took advantage of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in a real estate deal. "I screwed him," he said. "That's what we should be doing."

Though Trump cast that talent as an asset for the nation, a Fortune magazine review of his business career found this first principle: "He always comes first."

The president's fellow Republicans learned that to their chagrin in 2016, and reached common conclusions about his character.

"A con man," said. Sen. Marco Rubio. "Utterly amoral," said Sen. Ted Cruz.

"Dishonesty is Trump's hallmark," declared Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee. "He's playing the American people for suckers."

Increasing numbers of Americans have reached that conclusion. In a Quinnipiac University poll this month, 62 percent called the president not honest, up from 52 percent last November.

Moreover, 63 percent said Trump does not share their values. That undercuts his ability to lead average Americans, lawmakers, business executives or foreign leaders toward common goals.

"In a president, character is everything," Republican commentator Peggy Noonan has written. "You can't buy courage and decency. You can't rent a strong moral sense. A president must bring those things with him."

Paul Ryan too. I hope CNN will pay attention to NARAL's message above. No one wants a CNN infomercial from Paul Ryan. Everyone wants a real, honest-to-goodness debate between him and Randy Bryce. Ryan has ducked accountability long enough and hidden behind the Speakers chair. CNN shouldn't be an enabler. He may not be as crude and senile as Trump, but he's the same kind of putrid, unspeakable garbage that needs to be driven out of this country's political sphere-- and soon. And that starts by exposing him as an empty suit, something Randy Bryce should get an opportunity to do on national television. It's up to CNN.

White Power

Who's Revolting?-- The Koch Deal With Rubio

The Koch brothers (and their dark money network) is part of the "anybody but Herr Trumpf" wing of the GOP-- with the money to fund an effort to destroy Trumpf's candidacy. But they'd rather not spend that money, not if they can watch him fall apart on his own, the way he did in Iowa Monday night. Last weekend, one donor who attended the Koch network’s winter retreat in Coachella told The Hill that the Koch brothers themselves are always very hesitant to get involved in a primary, but "if they were going to do it, this would be the time because they just hate the guy."

Both officials and donors within Charles and David Koch's powerful group hope the real estate tycoon's White House bid dies a natural death so the group can avoid spending a penny of its $889 million 2016 cycle budget against him. But the Koch network's conversations over the weekend concerning what to do about Trump were more detailed than previously revealed.

On the eve of the Iowa causes, Koch network officials referred in a private meeting with donors  to focus group research that included a range of questions including some that identify Trump’s vulnerabilities.

And some influential figures in the group-- which held its largest gathering ever, with 500 donors attending the weekend gathering-- believe that action against Trump would be needed if he emerges dominant out of the Feb. 9 primary in New Hampshire, where he holds a commanding lead in polls.

During a private planning session on Sunday morning, a senior Koch official ran through every presidential candidate, analyzing each one's strengths and weaknesses, said a source who attended the session.

When the official got to Trump, the tone shifted. Trump, the official said, has been on the opposite side of nearly every issue the Koch group cares about, such as taxes, trade and corporate welfare.

Little Lord Rubio

“There's also a constitutional piece,” the same donor added. “The president's job isn't to go up there and be a Caesar-like figure.”

The Koch official shared for the first time focus group research showing that Trump’s popularity falls when voters are shown how working people have suffered as a result of his bankruptcies and business dealings in Atlantic City, N.J. Stories of Trump's efforts to enrich himself by hurting ordinary people proved most effective at generating negative views of Trump, donors were told.

...“You have to judge Trump on his past statements, and while it's clear he's been on two sides of nearly every issue, the one side he's never been on is our side,” said the donor who attended the session but asked not to be named. The conversations were held in a setting that was closed to the small number of press allowed into the resort, which the Koch network rented out in its entirety and stocked with heavy security to prevent infiltration.

Six news outlets, including The Hill, agreed to ground rules in order to cover the event, including not naming donors unless without their permission.

Trump's support for ethanol subsidies is a particular sore point. A Koch official said that Trump filled out a network policy form saying he opposed ethanol subsidies but has since told audiences in Iowa that he thinks the Environmental Protection Agency should work to increase the amount of ethanol blended into the nation’s gasoline supply. In Iowa, the federal policy boosting ethanol production is politically sacred.

Trump's campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

And given the Koch group's libertarian philosophy, many donors are appalled by what they see as Trump's vision of himself as a king-like figure who believes that he alone can rescue America.

Summing up the general mood was Republican Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, who was applauded when he said in a dinner speech, “The way to make America great again is not by abandoning the Constitutional limits and saying to some guy, ‘Would you be our king?’”

“We can’t give Trump a pass when we don’t know what he stands for.”

Yet the dangers of attacking Trump are keenly understood-- he is famously retaliatory-- and a number of sources within the Koch network stressed that if an attack against Trump can be avoided, it will be.

This is not the first time the Kochs and Trump have been at odds.

The Kochs declined to invite Trump as one of the presidential candidates to attend a donor gathering last summer. The attendees were Rubio, Bush, Cruz, and Fiorina.

In response, Trump unloaded on Twitter. "I wish good luck to all of the Republican candidates that traveled to California to beg for money etc. from the Koch Brothers. Puppets?" the billionaire wrote.

Donors and officials worry that a large-scale assault against Trump could encourage him to run as a third-party candidate, which could result in Hillary Clinton winning the White House in a way similar to how her husband did in 1992. That year, another populist billionaire, Ross Perot, ran as an independent and peeled a large number of voters away from the Republican incumbent George H.W. Bush.

There is also a concern that spending a large amount of money against Trump could help him sell his narrative of being a populist lined up against the establishment and special interests.

Conversations over the weekend suggested that there are a small number Koch figures who remain hopeful that even if Trump does become the nominee, he can be persuaded to adopt more free market policies.

Luke Hilgemann, the CEO of Americans For Prosperity, the main activist group of the Koch network, told The Hill, “If Donald Trump becomes the nominee he’s going to need a lot of help with establishing what his platform is and I think we have that platform."

“You’re going to see the nominee and the party come on board with the fact that our network is the one that’s setting the agenda for the American people, because we have actually talked to them and asked them what their priorities are.”

Koch donor Doug Deason told The Hill that while he doesn't support Trump he thinks the billionaire could ultimately stand up for "free enterprise."

“I like him OK," said Deason, a Texas businessman who supported his state's former Gov. Rick Perry’s failed presidential bid but says he is now on the verge of donating to Cruz.

"He’s a successful man."

The Kochs have encouraged Rubio to take on Trumpf and I'm hearing that they're making support for his campaign contingent on him doing that. They want Jeb, Christie and Kasich to drop out and let Rubio be the "not Trump/not Cruz" candidate of the Republican establishment, but they want him to prove he's not the woos he's so far shown himself to be. Rubio is supposedly ready to after Trumpf on a very personal level, which could be a big problem for Rubio since Trumpf won't hesitate to talk about Rubio's own personal foibles with women lobbyist sex exploits both in Tallahassee and in DC and with his Tallahassee and Miami cocaine adventures and his Tallahassee bribery problems, not to mention his relationship with his disgraced closest political confidant, David Rivera. A big problem, of course, is Jeb-- and his huge warchest-- since he detests Rubio almost as much as he hates Herr Trumpf and possibly more than he hates Cruz.

So that brings us to the PBS Newshour show in the video up top, based on David Frum's The Great Republican Revolt in The Atlantic, about the Republicano mini-civil war and how Frum has come around to thinking that the Republican Party must now preach respect for the work and institutions of government instead of painting it as the enemy. "The government has to be made to work. The government is, I think all Republicans agree, too expensive. But that doesn’t mean that we’d be better off without one, or that you want to destroy the traditional agreements and understandings that make the American government work." Easier said than done, of course:

DAVID FRUM: The Republican Party had planned a dynastic succession for 2016. One Bush would follow smoothly after another Bush. Everything was positioned for this Jeb Bush succession. And, instead, the Republican Party got a class war.

BILL KRISTOL: When you look back at 2012, it’s pretty amazing that the Republican Party nominated a very wealthy Republican who had, in Massachusetts, done a version of Obamacare, as their nominee, in a party that hated Obamacare, that was unhappy about Republican elites, as well as Democratic elites.

DAVID FRUM: They believed Mitt Romney was going to win. And he didn’t. That was a big shock and surprise. The Republican elite, the donors, the members of Congress, had collectively done an analysis of what they believed had gone wrong in 2012.

The only thing the party had done wrong was, it had not been open enough on immigration. Fix that, and everything would fall into place.

EZRA KLEIN: That was the theory. That was a plan. And that’s why you begin by having, right after the 2012 election, a very serious effort, including many top Republicans, like Marco Rubio, John McCain, to push immigration reform.

Of course, that dies in the House, because rank-and-file Republicans and conservatives on talk radio actually didn’t want immigration reform.

...DAVID FRUM: Donald Trump is one of America’s great marketing geniuses. And Trump has, as great marketers do, an intuitive understanding of what the customer wants.

So, he saw this opportunity. In the spring of 2015, if you asked Republicans, you gave them a straight binary choice, what do you want to do with illegal immigrants, do you want to somehow legalize them, or do you want to deport them, you made the choice that stark, what you saw was a majority, more Republicans said deport than legalize.

So, the great marketer came along and said, I see a niche. I see a niche. And it’s the bigger niche. And I can have it all to myself.

...EZRA KLEIN: Trump, unlike a lot of Republicans, says he’s going to protect Medicare, protect Social Security, that he believes in the government. He’s not here to cut your government programs. What he’s here to do is make sure the government is helping you, the downscale, economically struggling white voter.

And this money’s not going to be going to immigrants who are flooding across a border to take advantage of our generosity. And that, for a particular part of the party, is very appealing. And for other parts of the party, it’s really noxious.

DAVID FRUM: Even now, about two-thirds of Republicans find Trump unacceptable. He is unpopular with the more affluent, the more educated and the more religious within the Republican Party. And those are the people who usually do tend to prevail in Republican contests.

BILL KRISTOL: A lot of the conventional view is-- just lumps Cruz and Trump together. But I think Cruz and Trump are very different. And it’s not an accident that they’re now fighting a big war.

Cruz, people can like him, dislike him. At the end of the day, Cruz clerked for the chief justice of the United States. Cruz has argued many cases in the Supreme Court. Cruz wants a very conservative form of limited government, constitutionalism and so forth. And that’s really what his-- the agenda he’s believed in for 20 years is all about.

It’s very different from Trump.

...ERIC CANTOR: When you hear people say, hey, you aren’t trying hard enough, you didn’t shut the government down, you didn’t allow the government to go into default, I mean, these are all things that, to me, so counterintuitive. I mean, nobody understands what that would really mean if you went into default, and all the people that could potentially get hurt.

People will say, yes, things are that bad, go ahead, and just blow it all up, so we can reconstitute it.

EZRA KLEIN: This is part of the problem for the Republican Party, and particularly for the Republican base. They will run elections based on these promises of deep confrontation and tremendous results.

And then, once in office, they can’t deliver on that much, because the American system of government requires a lot of compromise and a lot of consensus for anything to get done. That leads to a cycle of disillusionment within the Republican base, because they feel they voted for these politicians. These politicians made clear promises. They didn’t deliver on the promises.

But one thing that has become, I think, really toxic is the way the base tends to interpret that disappointment, is that the real issue is that the politicians went and got bought by Washington.

2016-- And The GOP Is Still Playing Their Voters For Fools Over Obamacare And Planned Parenthood

Rubio has been boasting on the campaign trail and on Hate Talk Radio that he killed Obamacare. Since it isn't dead, he must be lying. Although he is trying. What he's trying to do is to lead an effort to deny requests to reimburse big insurers some $2.5 billion for unexpected losses suffered in 2014, which falls under a key Affordable Care Act provision known as risk corridors, included to help insurance companies that suffer higher-than-expected losses. Rubio with a cynical ploy persuaded Republicans to insist on "budget neutrality" and has engineered a $2.5 billion loss to insurers (like Blue Cross, Humana and Coventry. His objective is to drive up insurance rates so as to deny coverage to low income workers and their families. Half the state health cooperatives have closed as a result, which will also drive up costs, this time for consumers and diminish competition. And this snide little asshole is running for president, bragging to neanderthal audiences that he killed Obamacare.

Oddly enough, when ideologues suddenly become executives responsible for real people's lives-- Christie, Bush and Kasich love pointing out how Rubio has never actually done anything in his life except suck up to rich donors and pontificate-- things change. Kentucky's new far right governor, Matt Bevin campaigned on killing Obamacare in his state. Yeah, Tea Party avatar Matt Bevin understands that poor families need health care too. Kentucky will continue with Medicaid expansion (just like Kasich's neighboring Ohio and Christie's New Jersey).

After taking a beating from the far right before Christmas for not shutting down the government, Paul Ryan is trying to save face with another Death To Obamacare bill which he knows the president will veto. If the president wasn't a Democrat, however, we're back in the Republican land of no more coverage for preexisting conditions with a big donut hole sucking up money and at least 16 million currently insured people with no insurance. Paul Ryan can hand out as many Ayn Rand books as he wants, he's not going to get around those facts.

Today Ryan had his zombie Rules Committee teeing up a bill to make-believe defund Planned Parenthood and make-believe kill Obamacare, which he plans to have the House do another show vote tomorrow or the next day. Trumpf was making fun of Ryan in his standup routine in Massachusetts last night. All the little GOP robots will vote for it but it will be interesting to see, which Republicans do a different kind of calculus and decide not to. And it will also be interesting to see which Blue Dogs and New Dems go along with the Republicans. How many Hillary endorsers in Congress will cross the aisle and vote with the GOP to end health insurance for millions of families and to deny healthcare to women? Maybe none... maybe she's had a good influence on them. We'll soon see, won't we?

It's a shame that the childish Tea Party politics of the GOP prevent a mature look at the Affordable Care Act to actually fix some of the flaws. A study by Professors Tim Jost and Harold Pollack for the Century Foundation points out 6 ways to improve Obamacare. They start off by pointing out that "the ACA has largely succeeded in its principal task-- enrolling tens of millions of people in health insurance coverage. Indeed the period from 2010 to 2015 may be the most successful five years in the modern history of health policy" while achieving a great deal in the way of significant accomplishments. Three of many examples:

• Even with 20 Republican states refusing Medicaid expansion, the ACA has reduced the ranks of the uninsured by 17.6 million since 2010.

• Hospital expenditures for uncompensated care have plummeted by $7.4 billion, with the decline particularly great in states that embrace the ACA’s Medicaid expansion.

• Public health care expenditure growth has markedly slowed, which suggests the change extends beyond transient economic patterns associated with the Great Recession. The ACA is now projected to reduce budget deficits far more than was projected at the bill’s passage.

Then they get into what Republicans and Democrats should be working on together to improve for the people who pithier handsome salaries, at least their legal handsome salaries. But playing partisan games that lead nowhere is much easier and more satisfying for them. They propose 19 steps to strengthen the ACA and make it more effective on every level, improving the access and affordability, creating more robust provider networks, enhancing competition among insurers, improving the consumer experience, and strengthening Medicaid, none of which, alas, interests Ryan or most of his conference.

Despite these accomplishments, our health care system continues to face serious challenges, some traceable to flaws and weaknesses in the ACA. The ACA undertook from the beginning an ambitious reform agenda, but some of its approaches have turned out to be ineffective, poorly targeted, or not ambitious enough to address deeply rooted problems.

Many of the remaining challenges in health care reform reflect the inherent complexities and path-dependency of the American system and were beyond the reach of any politically feasible reform. Perhaps the most serious problem-- which this report will address repeatedly-- is the inadequacy of the ACA’s subsidies and regulatory structures to address the problems of low-income Americans, for whom merely meeting the costs of day-to-day essentials is a continuing challenge, and for whom even modest monthly insurance premiums and cost-sharing are often serious barriers to health coverage and care.

Last night, the L.A. Times explained 5 of the most important of the 19 suggestions:

1- Fix the Family Glitch. Jost and Pollack properly call this "the most glaring defect" in the ACA's subsidy structure. Under the ACA, a worker is ineligible for ACA subsidies if he or she is offered affordable health coverage by an employer. Whether because of a drafting error or inattentive rulemaking by the IRS, that ineligibility extends to all members of the worker's family even if affordable family coverage isn't obtainable from the employer.

The Rand Corp. has estimated that the change would add as many as 4.7 million Americans to the rolls of the subsidized insured at a cost of up to $8.9 billion, or about two-tenths of one percent of the federal budget.

2- Improve subsidies and otherwise reduce the burden of cost-sharing. Sticker shock in the individual health insurance market has shifted from premiums to deductibles, co-pays and out-of-pocket limit. These still leave too many working-class families with heavy medical bills, and discourage some from signing up for insurance at all, even given the existing subsidies. That's especially true of families earning over the eligibility ceiling for tax subsidies, which is 400% of the federal poverty line ($97,000 for a family of four).

Jost and Pollack endorse increasing subsidies for families below 400% of the FPL, and providing those over that line with subsidies that would bring down coverage costs to a given percentage of household income -- say 8.5%. One option is to give those families the option of fixed-dollar tax credits that would improve insurance affordability while still leaving them responsible for most of the costs.

3- On Medicaid, give states an option they can't refuse. The Supreme Court in 2012 saved Obamacare generally but threw a monkey wrench into a key provision mandating that states expand Medicaid to cover the poorest households. The court made Medicaid expansion voluntary, and 20 states, all with GOP control of the legislature or governorship or both, are still holding out.

One common rationale of the holdouts is that the federal share of the expansion, which is 100% through this year, will gradually ratchet down to a permanent 90% through 2020. Jost and Pollack call this "one of the most generous federal-state financing arrangements in the history of health policy," and observe that expansion has been a boon to state governments and economies that have accepted the change.

But in some states it remains at least an ostensible argument against expansion, which has left more than 3 million Americans uncovered in the holdout states. So they propose making permanent a federal share at 100%. This will cost about $5.2 billion in 2020, when 11.9 million adults would be covered.

4- Eliminate estate recoveries from the new Medicaid patients. The ACA drafters overlooked that traditional Medicaid rules allow states to recover the cost of care from the estates of patients who received expensive care on the public's dime despite owning homes or other assets that could be sold to repay the program.

That provision remained in place for patients gaining coverage from Medicaid expansion, even though they're a discrete population and uniquely charged for coverage among ACA beneficiaries. (The tax subsidies enjoyed by wealthier insurance enrollees don't have to be paid back.) Several states say they may try to recover Medicaid expenditures from enrollees over 55; others such as California say they won't do so, but have the right to change their minds.

The provision is unfair at best and counterproductive at worst, since it may discourage some households eligible for Medicaid from signing up, fearing that their meager assets eventually will be seized. The rule is a recordkeeping nightmare and the return is insignificant. Jost and Pollack rightly say that Congress should kill it.

5- Restore the "public option" by offering Medicare to the 60+ population. The original public option, which resembled Medicare for all, was killed during the ACA's legislative phase by opposition from the drug industry, hospitals and physician groups, and medical device makers who feared having to negotiate prices with Medicare.

Jost and Pollack propose a demonstration program offering Medicare to Americans in the near-retirement cohort-- say ages 60 to 65, after which they're eligible for Medicare anyway. This group tends to have high medical needs, pay the highest insurance rates under the ACA's limited age-based cost ratings and often earn too much to be eligible for subsidies. But they might benefit the most from early admission to Medicare.

Does The Idea Of Rich People Buying Presidential Candidates Turn You Off?

At a rally in Amherst, Massachusetts yesterday, attended by between 3 and 4,000 people, Bernie addressed the structure of campaign finance: "You are not looking at democracy, you are looking at oligarchy and together we are going to put an end to it." After the rally he tweeted, "We're proud to have raised more than $33 million this quarter, with an average contribution of $27." Actually, Bernie did slightly better than that-- $33,281,952, none of it through SuperPACs, bringing his total to $73 million. He has $28.4 million cash on hand to Hillary's $38 million, one million more than she raised in the 4th quarter. The only Republicans who have announced their 4th quarter totals so far are Dr. Ben ($23 million) and Cruz ($20 million). Neither Clinton nor Cruz has announced how much dark money their various SuperPACs have brought it and in Cruz's case, likely far more than his own campaign has managed to bring in. Before this quarter, Cruz's shady SuperPACs had taken in $38,655,257 (to $26,567,298 for the campaign). Jeb, Rubio, Christie and Huckabee all bring in SuperPAC money in excess of money from normal contributors. The 2,513,665 individual donations so far to Bernie's campaign broke the all-time record, 2,209,636 donations, set by Obama in 2011. The average donation to Bernie this last quarter was $27.16.

The key here-- and what makes it significant-- is that Bernie has refused to take part in a campaign finance system that stinks of corruption and because of the advances in social media can appeal directly to voters. This is discomforting to the oligarchs backing Cruz, Jeb, Hillary, Rubio and the rest of their corporate candidates/captives. Peter Nicholas wrote for that Wall Street Journal yesterday that "More than one million people donated to the Sanders campaign, giving an average of about $27, the campaign said. Of these donors, a fraction gave the maximum contribution of $2,700, meaning Mr. Sanders can go back to virtually all of his supporters and ask for more money as the primary season plays out."

Let's use Huckabee as an example of how that works. His campaign raised $3,246,200 (less than Kasich, less than O'Malley, less than Christie) but he was able to persuade a tiny handful of very rich pals to get around the rules by donating to a SuperPAC which he controls-but-denies-controling, Pursuing America's Greatness. (He slipped up on Fox News Sunday that he tells them what to do, which is completely illegal.) Anyway, Pursuing America's Greatness SuperPAC has taken in $3,604,987. Of that, though, almost all of it came from 2 donors: Ronald Cameron, a rich chicken processor from Little Rock who inherited the company his grandfather started in 1914, Mountaire Corp, and who gave $3,000,000; and then Sharon Herschend of Herschend Family Entertainment which runs, among other things, Dollywood, Ride the Ducks and Stone Mountain (the Confederate Mount Rushmore and a birthplace of the KKK) and forked over $500,000. And then 2 other oligarchs, Cary Maguire of Maguire Oil in Dallas and Jon Gibson, a real estate investor in McCook, Nebraska gave $50,000 each and Huckabee has a SuperPAC. Maguire has covered a lot of bases, having given Scott Walker's SuperPAC $50,000 and the Jebster's SuperPAC $100,000. Looks like he really doesn't like his home-state senator much and has only written him two checks, $1,000 each one in 2011 and one in 2012.

In the past we've talked about how just 3-- technically 4 although two are brothers-- reactionary billionaires are funding Cruz's SuperPACs. Long Island hedge fund crook Robert Mercer committed $11 million and has now upped it to $30 million. The two crackpot Wilks brothers gave $15 million and Toby Neugebauer, a crooked energy manipulator and son of far right Congressman Randy Neugebauer, got the ball rolling for Cruz with $10 million in seed money. Yesterday, The Hill did a rundown of some of the lesser known billionaires betting on the corrupt politicians greedily taking their money and Farris Wilks was included:

If Texas Sen. Ted Cruz wins the Republican presidential nomination he will owe a major debt of gratitude to the billionaire pastor Farris Wilks and his family, which made their fortune from fracking.

Until 2015, Wilks, who leads the Assembly of Yahweh, 7th Day, in Cisco, Texas, and his brother Daniel had made zero impression in the world of big money politics. FEC records show that Daniel had donated not a penny to any federal candidate, and Farris had only given $61,620.

But in 2015 these brothers, reportedly inspired by their social conservative values [they are obsessed with homosexuality and think Cruz will end it or something], made donations to Cruz’s super-PAC, which immediately announced them as two of the highest-capacity check writers in conservative politics. Between Farris, Daniel and their two wives, they have so far been reported giving $15 million to Keep the Promise III.

While Cruz’s super-PACs have spent very little to date, their unexpectedly large bank accounts gave other establishment donors early confidence that Cruz was a serious candidate who could raise money both from grassroots donors into his campaign and from large donors into his super-PACs.

Cruz’s combination of high and low-end donors is unique in the current Republican field-- and positions him to compete right through the nominating season.

Actually, a couple of these other billionaires are a hoot too. Here in California everyone in right-wing politics knows who nutty billionaire John Jordan is. The maker of extremely mediocre wines at the Sonoma winery he inherited from his parents, his true vocation is picking right-wing political losers and wasting enormous sums of money on them. People in California say he is the poster child for much higher estate taxes. This time around he's glommed onto Marco Rubio or Rubio's glommed on to him and started his own SuperPAC for the effort, Baby Got PAC. Jordan likes making his own dramatic, usually nasty, manipulative videos, like this one he did for Rubio:



So far he's reported spending $237,230 on Rubio's behalf. The Hill also mentions Mel Heifetz, Pennsylvania's biggest Obama donor who gave a million dollars last year but wasn't enthusiastic about anyone this year... but now grudgingly says he'll support Hillary. We all know who the notorious neo-Nazi Koch brothers are, Charles and David, but there's a third one from the litter who isn't close with the other two monsters, Bill. He is a right wing Republican of course and this month he's opening his Palm Beach mansion for a high dollar Rubio fundraiser. Although he's given to Rubio in the past, he expresses his conservatism, at least financially, by giving Chuck Schumer huge sums of money for the DSCC ($83,000).

Today's gas-bag shows gave free media exposure to:

• Bernie- ABC's This Week and CNN's State of the Union
• Trumpf- CBS' Face the Nation (pre-taped)
• Rand Paul- NBC's Meet the Press
• John Kasich- NBC's Meet the Press
• Dr. Ben- ABC's This Week
• The poor Jebster- Fox News Sunday
• Christie- Fox News Sunday
• Fiorina- CNN's State of the Union

If you'd like to see someone in the White House who will really work to get billionaire bucks out of our political system, there is just one person committed to that for real: this guy (yes, the one in the video below).

If Cruz Beats Herr Trumpf In Iowa, It's Back To Reality TV And Shoddy Real Estate Deals For The Donald

Cruz has replaced Herr Trumpf as the Iowa front runner now. He's ahead of Trumpf among likely GOP caucus goers 40 to 31%, with Rubio way down at 12% for third place and no one else even close. Dr. Ben (6%) has got to be wondering when he drops out and poor Jeb is tied at 2% with Huckabee and Rand Paul.

So.... guess what happened on yesterday's gasbag shows. Actually, Jake Tapper had a worthwhile discussion on CNN's State of the Union with Rand Paul. Paul passed on an opportunity to attack Hillary but went right after Herr Trumpf, comparing "inaccurate" polling with American Idol polling and reiterating that Trumpf would "get wiped out in a general election" and questioning if he believes in any conservative values. He also reminded viewers that "during the debate absolutely Donald Trump no clue to what the nuclear triad is... so now that's he's discovered what it is, he's eager to use it... This is what is very worrisome about not only Trump but Christie and others on the stage who are really eager to have war, really eager to show how 'strong' they are and that gets away from the tradition we have of trying to limit power... and it also gets to temperament. That's why it very much worries me to have someone like Donald Trump or a Chris Christie to be in charge of our nuclear arsenal."

And then Paul went into Cruz's opportunism and flip-flopping. When Tapper asked flat out if he sees Cruz as "a craven politician... a craven opportunist," Paul hesitated a moment before reeling off some examples (immigration, TPP, domestic spying) showing that Cruz isn't someone whose word means anything. "I think on a number of issues, he wants to have it both ways, depending on which audience he's talking to." Certainly Rubio would embrace those sentiments whole heartedly. Yesterday on Face the Nation, Rubio's theme was "Ted Cruz- flip flopper," which may be true but is certainly a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Poking the new Iowa front-runner over immigration, a more important issue for Iowa wing nuts than for wing nuts in other parts of the country, Rubio said "I think Ted wanted to not talk about legalization during the primary and leave himself the option of being for it in a general election. I don’t think that’s fair to the electorate." He also went after Cruz on TPP in a way that is likely to go over the heads of most GOP primary voters. "There are multiple issues on which he’s tried to do these sorts of things. For example, when the free trade agreement was up he wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, he wrote it with Paul Ryan. And just three days later he flipped on it. I don’t know why. He got some pressure on the fast-track authority." Something that won't go over the heads of Iowa voters, though, are Rubio's accusations that Cruz flip-flopped when he voted against $3 billion in cuts to a crop insurance program, something he orginally voted for. Rubio: "He’s done it on votes on farm issues. In fact changed his vote on the floor of the Senate. If you’re going to attack someone on a policy issue, you need to be clear about where you stand on the issue and where you stood in the past. When you spend your whole time telling people that you’re a clear talker and you say what you mean and everyone else is a sellout but you’re the only purist, I think it’s fair to say, 'Well hold on a second, here’s where you’ve been on the past on some issues and here’s where you are now.'"

Why anyone would care what she thinks is beyond me but yesterday Fox News Sunday must have been hard up for a credible guest so they invited Fiorina on instead. The spectacularly failed former business executive-- currently polling 1% nationally among likely Republican primary voters-- asserted that "Trump can’t beat Hillary Clinton" and that if GOP voters nominate him they'll be giving Hillary "a big Christmas gift wrapped up under the tree." But despair not, Fiorina has a way out for Republicans: "I," she insisted, "am the lump of coal in Mrs. Clinton stocking, and she desperately hopes that she does not run against me."

Actually, Fiorina, a compulsive liar, who voters have grown to detest since first meeting her earlier this year, would be a dream candidate for any Democrat. Unless Cruz actually makes her his running mate, she has no political role going forward. The most recent poll of Iowa Republicans show her with just 2%. She trails Trumpf, Cruz, Rubio, Christie, Kasich, Jeb, Dr. Ben and Rand Paul among New Hampshire Republicans with just 4% for 9th place, and in South Carolina she's tied with Christie, Lindsey Graham, Huckabee and "no preference" with 1%.

Another candidate no one really wants to hear from-- except as comic relief-- is Lindsey Graham, who finally bowed out of the campaign this morning. In fact, some might say that Graham, whose national polling numbers have almost never-- and absolutely never since June-- strayed above zero percent, would have been insane to continue running for president, if that's what he was doing. He is the one who started babbling about The Princess Bride and seemed to be calling Ted Cruz Princess Buttercup. Let's hope he doesn't see himself as Wesley. And who's Prince Humperdinck, Herr Trumpf?

Lindsey, who is now at 1% among his home state Republicans, has raised $3,038,701 for his campaign and another $4,762,211 for his SuperPACs (primarily Security is Strength SuperPAC). So he has outraised Rick Santorum, Pataki, Herr Trumpf, and Kasich and is about tied with religionist nut Mike Huckabee. His biggest source of funds have been the Russian Mafia's Len Blavatnik  ($500,000), Bob McNair, owner of the Houston Texans ($500,000), Ronald Perelman, owner of holding company MacAndrews & Forbes ($500,000), Jonathon Jacobson, CEO of Boston hedge fund Highfields Capital Management ($250,000) and Scott Ford, CEO of Little Rock commodity traders Westrock Capital Partners ($250,000).

Graham, like Rubio and Hillary, is an unapologetic neocon. (Now Hillary is even blaming the whopper she told about Trumpf/ISIS recruitment at the delate Saturday on an alcohol-fueled Graham fantasy.) On most other fronts, he tends to be relatively mainstream, especially compared to the other Republicans vying for attention. But campaigning in New Hampshire yesterday, Graham said that 6 of his GOP primary opponents range from "mildly disturbed to completely insane." OK, and obviously Graham thinks of Herr Trumpf, Cruz, Dr. Ben, Fiorina and Huckabee as "completely insane." So who's #6, the "mildly disturbed" one? Christie? Santorum? Both are pretty nuts. And if he feels 6 of his opponents are mentally unstable, would he agree none of them should be allowed to purchase firearms?

Of course, as Republican Party strategist David Frum was tweeting yesterday, his party has far more to worry about than just crackpot presidential candidates like Trumpf, Cruz and Fiorina. One day Pelosi will be gone, a competent DCCC will be in place and the GOP will start losing dozens and dozens of congressional seats.

Paul Krugman (et al.) on Marco Rubio: Today, for a Republican, "listening to climate scientists gets you excommunicated"

Antarctic ice sheet past 'point of no return'

Warning: In this clip there's every chance that you may hear from (shudder) a scientist. Just thought you should know, and take the appropriate precautions.

"Once upon a time it was possible to take climate change seriously while remaining a Republican in good standing. Today, listening to climate scientists gets you excommunicated -- hence Mr. Rubio's statement, which was effectively a partisan pledge of allegiance."

-- Paul Krugman, in his NYT column today,
Points of No Return"

"My refusal to accept the scientific research on climate change is a matter of public record. On this issue and many others my ignorance should take a back seat to no one's."

-- FL Sen. Marco Rubio, quoted by The Borowitz Report

by Ken

As Daily Kos's LaFeminista says, "Paul Krugman is in fine form today" -- "nail[ing] the modern GOP."

Institutionalized stupidity is a subject we necessarily keep coming back to in recent years, since the Rampaging Right has made the worship of ignorance the dominant feature of our political landscape. Not surprisingly it's also been on PK's mind, with unapologetically slimy, slithery pandering whores like Marco "I'm Lovely, Absolutely Lovely" Rubio and Rafael "Ted from Alberta" Cruz staking their claims to "leadership" roles as the 2016 presidential rodeo descends on us.

Just to refresh your memory of the story he's harking back to in today's NYT column, here's how The Borowitz Report covered it:

May 12, 2014
G.O.P. RIVALS QUESTION RUBIO’S IGNORANCE CREDENTIALS
Posted by ANDY BOROWITZ


WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—After claiming on Sunday that human activity does not cause climate change, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) suddenly found his ignorance credentials under attack by potential rivals for the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination.

“Now that Marco’s thinking of running for President, he doesn’t believe in climate change,” said Texas Governor Rick Perry. “To those of us with long track records of ignorance on this issue, he seems a little late to the rodeo.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) echoed Gov. Perry’s criticism, calling Rubio a “dummy-come-lately” on climate change.

“At the end of the day, I have faith that Republican voters can tell the difference between someone who’s truly uninformed and someone who’s just faking it,” he said. “These comments by Marco don’t pass the smell test.”

By Sunday evening, a defensive Sen. Rubio was pushing back against the attacks, telling reporters, “Any questions about the authenticity of my ignorance are deeply offensive to me.”

“My refusal to accept the scientific research on climate change is a matter of public record,” he said. “On this issue and many others my ignorance should take a back seat to no one’s.”

HERE'S HOW PAUL K STARTS HIS COLUMN TODAY

The column is called "Points of No Return," and begins thusly (lotsa links onsite):

Recently two research teams, working independently and using different methods, reached an alarming conclusion: The West Antarctic ice sheet is doomed. The sheet’s slide into the ocean, and the resulting sharp rise in sea levels, will probably happen slowly. But it’s irreversible. Even if we took drastic action to limit global warming right now, this particular process of environmental change has reached a point of no return.

Meanwhile, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida — much of whose state is now fated to sink beneath the waves — weighed in on climate change. Some readers may recall that in 2012 Mr. Rubio, asked how old he believed the earth to be, replied “I’m not a scientist, man.” This time, however, he confidently declared the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change false, although in a later interview he was unable to cite any sources for his skepticism.

So why would the senator make such a statement? The answer is that like that ice sheet, his party’s intellectual evolution (or maybe more accurately, its devolution) has reached a point of no return, in which allegiance to false doctrines has become a crucial badge of identity.

Drawing on his own field of economics, PK says, he's "been thinking a lot lately about the power of doctrines — how support for a false dogma can become politically mandatory, and how overwhelming contrary evidence only makes such dogmas stronger and more extreme." Apparently it's become a common operating principle in economics, "but the same story applies with even greater force to climate."

He offers as a parallel from economics "the recent history of inflation scares."

More than five years have passed since many conservatives started warning that the Federal Reserve, by taking action to contain the financial crisis and boost the economy, was setting the stage for runaway inflation. And, to be fair, that wasn’t a crazy position to take in 2009; I could have told you it was wrong (and, in fact, I did), but you could see where it was coming from.

Over time, however, as the promised inflation kept failing to arrive, there should have come a point when the inflationistas conceded their error and moved on.

In fact, however, few did. Instead, they mostly doubled down on their predictions of doom, and some moved on to conspiracy theorizing, claiming that high inflation was already happening, but was being concealed by government officials.

"Why the bad behavior?" PK asks. "Nobody likes admitting to mistakes, and all of us -- even those of us who try not to -- sometimes engage in motivated reasoning, selectively citing facts to support our preconceptions."

Bu-ut --

Hard as it is to admit one’s own errors, it’s much harder to admit that your entire political movement got it badly wrong. Inflation phobia has always been closely bound up with right-wing politics; to admit that this phobia was misguided would have meant conceding that one whole side of the political divide was fundamentally off base about how the economy works. So most of the inflationistas have responded to the failure of their prediction by becoming more, not less, extreme in their dogma, which will make it even harder for them ever to admit that they, and the political movement they serve, have been wrong all along.

Does this begin to ring a bell, folks?

The same kind of thing is clearly happening on the issue of global warming. There are, obviously, some fundamental factors underlying G.O.P. climate skepticism: The influence of powerful vested interests (including, though by no means limited to, the Koch brothers), plus the party’s hostility to any argument for government intervention. But there is clearly also some kind of cumulative process at work. As the evidence for a changing climate keeps accumulating, the Republican Party’s commitment to denial just gets stronger.

Think of it this way: Once upon a time it was possible to take climate change seriously while remaining a Republican in good standing. Today, listening to climate scientists gets you excommunicated — hence Mr. Rubio’s statement, which was effectively a partisan pledge of allegiance.

STUPIDITY IS HARDLY A NOVELTY IN AMERICAN POLITICS

We are, after all, a country that can boast in its heritage of a Know-Nothing Party. But the Know-Nothings were a fringe party. Rafael "Ted" and Marco are vying for the leadership of a putatively mainstream party. I think again of that point Dana Milbank made so well in January 2013 in connection with the return to Congress of Texas crackpot Steve Stockman -- "the same [Steve] Stockman I found so entertaining back in the '90s. What's frightening is he no longer sounds like an outlier."

Now, says, PK, "truly crazy positions are becoming the norm."

A decade ago, only the G.O.P.’s extremist fringe asserted that global warming was a hoax concocted by a vast global conspiracy of scientists (although even then that fringe included some powerful politicians). Today, such conspiracy theorizing is mainstream within the party, and rapidly becoming mandatory; witch hunts against scientists reporting evidence of warming have become standard operating procedure, and skepticism about climate science is turning into hostility toward science in general.

"Turning into hostility toward science in general," Paul? Hasn't that turn long since happened?


RUTH MARCUS TAKES NOTE

The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus sounds pretty disgusted writing from her familiar perch in Jane Eyre's attic ("Marco Rubio’s changing climate; more links onsite):

“I’m not a scientist. I’m not qualified to make that decision,” Rubio told the [Miami] Herald in December 2009 when asked whether climate change was the result of human activity. Climate change, by the way, isn’t the only issue on which Rubio punted to scientists: When GQ asked in 2012 how old the Earth is, Rubio demurred, “I’m not a scientist, man.”

Which is it, senator? You don’t know as much as these scientists or you don’t believe them?

Rubio’s shift sadly mirrors his party’s. As Paul Waldman recounted on The Post’s Plum Line blog, in 2012, the leading Republican presidential candidates had “embarrassing flirtations with climate realism.”

The 2016 crowd, by contrast, ranges from skepticism to blanket denial. “The last 15 years, there has been no recorded warming,” asserted Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. “The Earth’s 4.5 billion years old, and you’re going to say that we had four hurricanes and so that proves a theory?” offered Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.

“Climate is always evolving,” Rubio told ABC. Sadly, it’s not the only thing.

EVEN MICHAEL GERSON TAKES NOTE

The man who takes pride in pretending to bring a voice of moderation to far-right-wing extremism writes about Americans' resistance to science ("Americans’ aversion to science carries a high price"), though he spins like mad to make it seem as if the modern-day worship of ignorance comes primarily from people on the Left, rather than being the centerpiece of the 21st-century right-wing creed, so that his column winds up being a moderate-sounding orgy of lies and imbecilities.

It never seems to occur to a useless blob of protoplasm like Gerson that having spent his career coddling right-wing merchants of imbecility and evil, from which he draws every dollar that finds its way into this pocket, as his admittedly piddling payoffs from the merchants of evil and death, he has been a central enabler of the worship of ignorance. (Whores who sell out relatively cheap don't earn brownie points.)


PK'S TRADITIONAL KO PUNCH IS LYING IN WAIT

And boy, does he land it:

It’s hard to see what could reverse this growing hostility to inconvenient science. As I said, the process of intellectual devolution seems to have reached a point of no return. And that scares me more than the news about that ice sheet.

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