Bye Bye, Bayh. And Take Your "Bipartisanship" With You. (Updated below)

"Bipartisanship" are virtually worshiped by the mainstream corporate press whenever even a hint of a "threat" of liberal reform is in the air. Always when there's a Democrat in the White House, it's the warmest and fuzziest of warm-and-fuzzy notions, something toward which all Democratic politicians should strive and of which only a madman wouldn't recognize the merits.

It's also a concept that has, in and of itself, absolutely no value. Embraced as a virtue, it's actively pernicious. Cooperation and compromise between competing political factions are a necessary feature of a functioning liberal democracy. They're what one is willing to do in the name of a larger good in order to get things done. In a two-party state that's already virtually a one-party state though, "bipartisanship" in the way it's meant by those who are forever pimping it is something very different: even less choice for a public that is already denied any real choice at the ballot box.

Scott Erb, his World in Motion, used the circumstance of Sen. Even Bayh's decision to retire from congress to write some thoughts about "bipartisanship." He defines it differently from most of the "bipartisanship" pimps; to him, it's typical democratic diplomacy. In his ultimate conclusion though, he's doubtful:

"At base bi-partisanship does not mean anti-partisan. It literally means two partisan groups figuring out how to come to some agreement on how to solve problems, recognizing neither side will be completely happy with the action. It means that even as laws are passed, the debate and discussion continue--no one ever truly wins, no compromise is ever final. It also means that each side recognizes that they do not hold a monopoly on truth, both sides operate on good faith. It means rejecting the kind of personal attacks and venom that too often percolate within the political discourse. It’s only possible when political disagreement is not a cause for personal dislike or disgust. Bayh’s departure indicates that he does not think the politicians in Washington are capable of that kind of productive partisan cooperation. He may be right."

I'd certainly cross out that "may be." I don't think there's any "may be" to it. The "may be" came off of it years ago. Ye humble editor has been warning of the pernicious effects of the sort of "can't-we-all-just-get-along"-ism embraced by the Obama administration since before there was an Obama administration. It's probably the single subject about which I've written more than any other since the birth of this blog. It isn't just that the notion, as it is popularly understood, is bad and limits choice; it's that it isn't even possible in the current political climate, because the Republican party is in the stranglehold of cretins, crackpots and conspiracists who will allow for no compromise, no cooperation with a majority opposition they consider a fundamentally anti-American alien cancer.

The Obama's first year was a frustrating tragedy because he so completely failed to understand this. He prefaced his every major proposal with massive concessions to Republicans, to no avail, except to drive the ultimate policies even further to the right, just as this writer warned would happen, and to help alienate his base. Republicans have been in lock-step opposition, filibustering almost everything--an abuse of the filibuster that has no historical precedent.

Not that these Republicans are actually against all of these things, mind you. Rather, Republicans have made a conscious decision to oppose anything of any significance supported by the Obama.

Examples demonstrating this are legion.

The Obama himself recently noted the fate of the PAYGO bill, which would have required new programs be paid for by cutting existing ones; as soon as the Obama announced his support for it, seven Republican Senators who had co-written the bill (four of whom had voted in favor of identical legislation four years earlier) flip-flopped and came out against it.

The same thing happened with the proposed debt commission: five Republican co-authors of the legislation jumped ship the moment the Obama announced his support for it.

When the Obama proposed a freeze on non-military spending, the same thing happened. Even John McCain, who had made such a freeze a part of his presidential platform, flip-flopped.

In an effort to draw Republican votes, the Obama larded up his "stimulus" bill with the wasteful, less stimulative tax cuts favored by Republicans. All but two Republicans in the Senate voted against it. The rest made a grand show of ranting against the "socialist" bill in outlets like Fox News, and going on about how it wouldn't work but, as liberal MSNBC host Rachel Maddow documented last week, 29 of those same Republicans who voted against and denounced the bill then went to their home states and took credit for the projects it was helping fund and praised its effectiveness. [see Update below]

When the Obama was given the opportunity to nominate a new Supreme Court Justice--a very important nomination that would have allowed him to begin to redress the insane rightward imbalance of the court--he chose, instead, another damn conservative. Republicans denounced her as a racist and 31 of the 40 Repub Senators voted against her.

The Obama began the health care debate by throwing over the side the liberal option (single payer). Wouldn't want to be called a "socialist" by the conservatives, right? He chose, instead, to push for a proposal that mimicked, in every significant particular, health care plans offered by Republicans for decades. The Obama initially added a "public option" that would have amounted to some little bit of real reform but when faced with criticism from the right, he quickly chucked it over the side too. And, of course, Republicans have spent months portraying the industry-friendly, market-based Republican plan adopted by the Obama as a "socialist" government takeover and the newest line making the rounds on the right is that Obama and the Democrats have steadfastly refused to even consider Republican health care ideas.

This is why "bipartisanship" isn't possible in the current political climate. Republicans refuse to work with Democrats on anything, even when Democrats adopt conservative Republican policies. If the Obama ever wants to accomplish anything, he's going to have to come to terms with this basic fact and stop trying to be so accommodating. He's already wasted a year.

--classicliberal2

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UPDATE (2 March, 2010) -- The day after I wrote the above, ThinkProgress released a report documenting the fact that an astonishing 110 congressional Republicans--over half of all of the Republicans in congress--are guilty of "stimulus hypocrisy." They voted to kill the bill, then returned to their home states and districts to take credit for the projects it has funded.

Good Greife! Or is it?

"Barack Obama finds himself stuck between a rock and a hard place, or should I say, between Democrats and Republicans. In an attempt to please them both he has satisfied neither."

So begins a new blog entry by Brandon Greife over at NextRight, and in a world in which most of his fellow conservatives try to portray the Obama as some sort of wild-eyed socialist radical, it seems the beginning of a more level-headed evaluation of the Obama administration. Unfortunately Greife's analysis goes off the rails in working from some popular-but-fictional premises. Seeing as how I've written about those fictions in the past, I thought I'd bang out a few words on the subject.

The most glaring is the longest-standing of the batch, this mythical narrative of the Clinton administration:

"After a disastrous first two years in office, in which Clinton was lambasted for a liberal agenda that included failed attempts at health care reform and gun control, he course corrected. His march toward the right was highlighted by bipartisan achievements such as welfare reform and a balanced budget and crowned with his famous line, 'the era of big government is over.'"

Way back when (during the 1996 presidential campaign, to be exact), this narrative had already taken shape--and taken hold--and I wrote a corrective, documenting the fact that:

"As an examination of the Clinton administration, this doesn't even reach the level of shallow analysis. Nor was it ever intended to; it is no more than a political myth manufactured by those on the right to serve their own narrow ends... Not only does the record fail to bear out this interpretation, it shows exactly the opposite; that Clinton is a conservative, ran as a conservative, and, in the words of Progressive editor Mathew Rothschild, 'has governed as a Republican.'"

Clinton was, in fact, more conservative than his Republican predecessor. It's noteworthy that Greife, in searching for examples of Clinton's "liberal agenda," doesn't have much from which to choose. He picks an old favorite in Clinton's health care effort, but, in the real world, Clinton refused to even consider the liberal option (single payer), opting instead for an industry-friendly proposal lifted, almost entirely, from a conservative Republican reform bill then in congress. Greife's second example is Clinton's "failed attempt" at "gun control." That didn't fail, though; it was a part of Clinton's crime bill in 1993. That crime bill was, in almost every particular, identical to the crime bill assembled (but not passed) by Clinton's Republican predecessor, George Bush, who, of course, didn't have a liberal bone in his body.

Greife continues, arguing that "in words as well as deeds, Clinton grasped the fundamental truth that this is a center-right nation." This is a popular myth--or, to call it what it really is, delusion--among conservatives, and Greife backs it up with--surprise, surprise--polling data on ideological self-identification. In a world in which decades of conservative demonization of the word "liberal" always leads large numbers of liberals to tell pollsters they're "moderate" and even "conservative," self-identified conservatives always significantly outnumber self-identified liberals in such polls, and the small number of self-identified liberals always ends up being used, by conservatives, as the "evidence" of the conservative bent of the public. It's something about which I've written before. Conservatives are fooling themselves on this one, big time. As I wrote in that earlier piece back in November:

"The hard, cold political reality facing the right today--the one that's still there after the poll results, and after all that back-slapping--is that the U.S. isn't a conservative nation. What's more, that conclusion isn't even particularly controversial for anyone who has examined the matter in any detail; for the most part, it isn't even close. Public opinion is more heavily polled in the U.S. than in any other country on earth. On issue after issue, Americans are not only with the liberals, but with them overwhelmingly... One is hard pressed to find a single major public policy issue on which the liberals don't hold an overwhelming advantage in public sentiment."

And I offered lots of examples.

Greife, working from his faulty premises, thinks "Barack Obama will be compelled to adopt many conservative positions, or at the very least let Republicans into the room." Obama has "let Republicans into the room" from the beginning--they are, in fact, running large parts of his administration, and his every major initiative has seen him granting massive concessions to the conservatives and Republicans before any debate even begins. He has bent over backwards to accommodate them. Bent so far, he's nearly broken his own back. Congressional Republicans simply won't work with him on anything, and for a very obvious reason: The Republican party is, collectively, mad. Not mad as in "angry" (though they're always that), but mad as in "hatters." Crazy. Made up of ill-informed half-wits and conspiracist crackpots. These aren't the fringe anymore--they are the party. A new Research 2000 poll of Republicans released earlier today outlines this sickness. Some of the highlights (lowlights?):

--Should Barack Obama be impeached or not?
39% said yes, 29% "not sure," only 32% said no.

--Do you believe Barack Obama was born in the United States, or not?
58% said either no, or they weren’t sure.

--Do you think Barack Obama is a socialist?
63% said yes, another 16% said they weren’t sure; only 21% no.

--Do you believe Barack Obama wants the terrorists to win?
57% chose either "yes" or "not sure."

--Do you believe ACORN stole the 2008 election?
76% chose either "yes" or "not sure," only 24% "no."

--Do you believe Sarah Palin is more qualified to be President than Barack Obama?
53% said yes, only 14% said no.

--Do you believe Barack Obama is a racist who hates White people?
64% said either yes, or not sure; 36% no.

And so on. The idea that Republicans are politically invested in refusing to work with Obama or the Democrats on anything isn't just some Democratic party talking point. It reflects the political reality found in this polling data. A massive shift to the right and away from sanity itself has occurred, and the Republican base won't tolerate any "bipartisanship." Cooperation with Obama or Democrats is equated with treason. Look at what happened to Lindsey Graham when he merely suggested he may work with them on global warming; suddenly, one of the most conservative members of congress finds himself labeled a RINO, and is heckled by reactionaries calling him a traitor and demanding to know when he’s going to change parties. John McCain, who, less than two years ago, was the Republican choice for their presidential candidate, is now being primaried by former Republican congressman J.D. Hayworth, whose remarkable physical resemblance to Hermann Goering is matched only by his political similarities. All through last year, Republicans accelerated their efforts to rid the party of any and all who don't toe the most extreme right line (a line utterly alienating to the general public Greife mistakenly believes is politically closer to it). The Obama, speaking at a town hall in New Hampsire today, offered, in a different context, a perfect example of how this manifests itself in congress. Seven Republicans signed on to the PAYGO bill, which would have mandated cutting funds from some existing program (rather than taxing or borrowing) to pay for any new one. These Republicans were enthusiasts of the bill right up until the Obama announced his own support for it, at which time they became terrified of being seen as collaborators and immediately withdrew their backing.

The biggest obstacle to Republicans taking advantage of any slip-up by the Obama or the Democrats is the Republicans themselves. Greife concludes: "Republicans cannot rest on the knowledge their foe is suffering, we must pick up the mantle of real reform." Given the political reality of the moment, the image this immediately calls to mind is the scene in THE BIG RED ONE wherein the nutcase in the asylum snatches up a machine gun and starts mowing down his fellow inmates with chants, to the American troops, of "I AM ONE OF YOU! I AM SANE!" That's reform for you. If you're a conservative Republican, at least.

--classicliberal2

U.S. Supreme Court Legalizes Corruption Undreamt Of

Some of the earliest commentary has centered on the overreach of the court in issuing their appalling ruling, today; the fact that the ruling went so far beyond the scope of the campaign finance reform case that was before the court, the blatant activism of it, the disregard for the consequences of it. Few, so far, seem to grasp the full implications of it. This is an historical decision. An historically bad one, belonging, at birth, in the same dustbin of history as Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, Kelo v. New London, Bush v. Gore (the latter two the work of some of the clowns responsible for today's decision).

To put the matter in its proper perspective, the court has very likely just brought down the curtain on the last vestige of democracy that existed in the U.S. The right-wing majority empowered by too many years of ultra-conservative and quasi-fascist infestation of the White House has, in one fell swoop, just, in effect, removed all impediments to corporate interference in U.S. elections. Building on the dual fiction that money equals speech and that corporations are "persons" (an abomination imposed on U.S. law by a right-wing court of a previous era), the court held that these corporate "persons" can now endorse candidates. They can spend as much as they want promoting them. Restraints on their activities in the political arena imposed by campaign finance laws have been swept aside. The already corrupt system of all-but-open bribery popular efforts had attempted to reform has now been replaced by one of official, open, limitless bribery, given the false patina of free speech, and sanctioned by the highest court in the land.

And woe is us, indeed.

--classicliberal2

An Appendix For Boehlert on "Liberal Media Bias"

Earlier this week, Eric Boehlert had a noteworthy piece over at Media Matters, bidding "farewell to another decade of 'liberal media bias.'" In the real world, of course, there isn't any such creature when it comes to the corporate press, and Boehlert assembles an impressive little catalog of information aimed at setting the record straight on the point. Such a catalog can never be thorough enough, though, particularly in the space of a mere column, and, given the significance of the subject, I thought I'd add to it.

Boehlert begins at the dawn of the decade:

"The orgy of resentment that erupted toward Gore during the 2000 campaign season was likely unprecedented in American politics, as media elites did very little to hide their disdain for Gore. For years, they mocked him, bad-mouthed him, and made up nasty stories about him. (Hint: Inventing the Internet.)"

Fairly strong wording, but not strong enough, in my view, not by half. Not for what was happening at the time. Boehlert uses quotes from media figures about the hatred of the press for Gore, but, back in 2000, I focused on the actual results of this hatred, and provided more than a "hint" of the stories that were, indeed, being routinely fabricated from whole cloth, then repeated ad infinitum in an all-out effort to personally destroy the Democratic candidate. Assembled a catalog of my own about the extensive--and intensive--press efforts, and I'd offer it (and a brief follow-up I assembled, as well) as an appendix to Boehlert's piece.

"And how did the same press corps spend the years between Gore and Obama?" asks Boehlert. "Lying down for Bush, of course." I wouldn't characterize what occurred as "lying down," as that implies passivity, when, in fact, the press corps was largely an active, enthusiastic advocate for Bush for nearly the entirety of his time in the White House.

Specific examples of what Boehlert calls "lying down" are, as Boehlert notes, "too many to count." I would note that the press hatred of Gore in his contest against Bush continued into the ugly post-election dispute in Florida, where the press was in-the-tank for Bush, offering daily news "reports" that were essentially thinly re-written press-releases from the Bush campaign and the RNC, with no effort to correct the ludicrously false claims and implications contained therein. The corporate press was largely responsible for Bush's "victory," in Florida and thus nationally, just as it had been largely responsible for the closeness of the election in the first place. Months later, when a press consortium completed their recount of the Florida ballots and found that Gore had, in fact, won the state by every available counting standard, the story was buried--mostly ignored, or reported under blatantly misleading headlines that falsely suggested Bush had actually won. No one noticed, in any case.

The election aftermath was, of course, nothing compared to how deeply the press embedded itself in Bush's orifices in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S.. To get some idea of how bad this became, I'd quote right-wing activist/liar/fraud/clown Brent Bozell. Bozell's Media Research Center devotes itself to bitching about alleged "liberal bias" in the corporate press, a breed of bitching in which any hint of less-than-absolute-true-believer devotion to right-wing causes is written up as a sign of hopeless media dedication to heathen liberalism. That doesn't leave Bozell and co. with much to write about, of course, so they often just have to lie, mischaracterize, and misrepresent in order to have anything to sell. They can find "liberal bias" in a facial tic. After the terror attack, Bozell defined the mission of the MRC as open propagandist for the state:

"We are training our guns on any media outlet or any reporter interfering with America's war on terrorism or trying to undermine the authority of President Bush."

With all of that as prologue, here's how Bozell characterized the performance of the press after the terror attacks:

"...in the unforgettable present, as now our own land has come under attack, as our own citizens have died needlessly in collapsing heaps of metal and cement, as the crushing reality hits that our very freedom is now imperiled, our national press corps has responded, showing that in a real crisis, they are the best of the best. I know I speak for millions when I offer a heartfelt thank you to our entire national media for their sobriety, their sincerity and their refreshing sense of national purpose. Like all our leaders, they have responded to tragedy by showing us how to display the best of ourselves when we're feeling the worst."
--MRC head Brent Bozell (9/17/01)

Over the next few weeks, Bozell would, from time to time, use his column as an opportunity to slander a few critics of the "War On Terrorism," but his position on the press remained unchanged:

"Surely, the media are doing something right when this Blame America First crowd accuses them of 'pandering to the public's appetite for revenge.' In this conflict so far, our media have not succumbed to the above-America lobby, that the high calling of journalism is all about alienated 'independence,' somehow above being a neighbor or a citizen. They have suffered with all of us, and they are welcome in our saddened homes."
--Bozell (9/21/01)

"Much has been written about the terrific job done by so many in the wake of the Sept. 11 horror. Now Hollywood is weighing in, and it's played it well so far."
--Bozell (9/26/01)

This continued for months:

"...in this struggle, the far left is all alone, thoroughly out of the mainstream of political thought. As America struggled to process the toll of death and destruction, even the media elite cast aside their usual usual wartime cynicism. In the days following Sept 11, there was no wave of obnoxious claims that this President Bush had something to prove about his manhood or his military record. There was no declaration that this was somehow a conflict masking greedy designs for oil or other resources. There were no breast-beating demands for a reporter on every secret mission. As the war began, there was very little liberal bias, and conservative critics could only respond by thanking the media for the sobriety of their coverage. This must be driving [liberal columnist] Norman Solomon nuts."
--Bozell (1/3/02)

The assessment of one of the most rabid partisans in the business, an open propagandist for the state who feigns the ability to spot "liberal bias" in a reporter's cough.

With regard to press coverage of the build-up to the invasion of Iraq, Boehlert notes:

"A survey conducted by the liberal media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, which focused on the first two weeks of February 2003, found that of 393 people interviewed on-camera for network news reports about the war, just 17 percent of them expressed skepticism about the looming invasion."

Unmentioned is that FAIR followed up on that survey, beginning the day Bush launched the war, and continuing for three weeks. This one cast an even wider net--it examined the Iraq coverage of the three networks, PBS Newshour, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Reports, and Fox’s Special Report with Brit Hume. In this period, there were 1,617 sources appearing, but the results were even worse than before:

"Nearly two thirds of all sources, 64 percent, were pro-war, while 71 percent of U.S. guests favored the war. Anti-war voices were 10 percent of all sources, but just 6 percent of non-Iraqi sources and 3 percent of U.S. sources. Thus viewers were more than six times as likely to see a pro-war source as one who was anti-war; with U.S. guests alone, the ratio increases to 25 to 1... While the percentage of Americans opposing the war was about 10 times higher in the real world as they were on the nightly news (27 percent versus 3 percent), their proportion of the guestlist may still overstate the degree to which they were able to present their views on U.S. television. Guests with anti-war viewpoints were almost universally allowed one-sentence soundbites taken from interviews conducted on the street. Not a single show in the study conducted a sit-down interview with a person identified as being against the war."

Boehlert covers the pro-war position of the New York Times, but, remarkably, fails to mention one of the most important aspects of it; the dismal "work" of Judith Miller, who, in a series of "scoops" in the Times, acted as a stenographer for phony administration claims (often provided by phony "defectors") about Iraqi WMD programs. Though these stories wouldn't have held up under even minimal editorial scrutiny, they were approved and even placed on the front page of the Times. They became national news, picked up throughout the corporate press, and helped sell the public the administration's lies about Iraq. Miller was allowed to continue her streak for more than a year (after it became apparent there had been no Iraqi WMDs for years, she pimped the completely baseless "theory" that they'd existed, but had been moved to Syria before the invasion).

This wasn't the Times' only service to Bush. When, in 2005, it reported that Bush had been running a completely illegal surveillance operation, this uncharacteristic effort at legitimate reportage led right-wing critics to call for the prosecution of those at the Times. Unfortunately, just when it looked as if the Times had done something right, it emerged that the paper had actually uncovered the story during the 2004 presidential campaign, and had sat on it for a year instead of reporting it, thus helping ensure Bush re-election.

The best one can say is that it eventually did get reported. In a period of years when virtually nothing coming out of the administration bore any resemblance to the truth, it was difficult to find stories critical of Bush anywhere. Boehlert mentions the complete failure to report on the Downing Street memo, and while that is certainly one of the most egregious examples of the utterly broken nature of the corporate press, it's only one of enough examples to fill an encyclopedia. For 8 years, Bush was allowed to sit in governance over "the land of the free" and establish the framework for a monstrous dictatorship while the press cheered him on and left the public, which it's supposed to inform, almost entirely unaware of what was really happening. It's still mostly unaware, and that--the measurable results--is really the final nail in the coffin of right-wing nonsense about "liberal media bias."

Dawn of the Pre-Fab Pols?

"I think this is a referendum on a lot of what's been going on in the country, which is moving radically to the left."
--Sean Hannity (2 Nov., 2009)

"This is where conservative Americans are drawing the line. New York-23. This is where we are fighting, this is where we will take a stand against both the liberal wing of the Republican Party and Obama and the Democrat [sic] party."
--Rush Limbaugh (3 Nov., 2009)

The battle over New York's 23rd congressional district easily made for the top sideshow of this off-off-year election season. It's a very strong Republican district but it's a moderate Republican one, and when DeDe Scozzafava, a moderate Republican, was chosen as the party candidate, the ideological jihadists that have come to dominate the American right --the teabaggers, the Fox News crowd, right-wing talk-radio, etc.--drew their long knives and went for the kill. Scozzafava was angrily denounced as a RINO (Republican In Name Only), a "liberal," a "Democrat-lite" candidate--not conservative enough, and completely unacceptable because of it. The righties chose, as their alternative champion, Doug Hoffman, a bookish, clueless and extremely conservative candidate from the state's Conservative party, and threw their full and considerable weight behind making him the next congressman from NY23. As Newt Gingrich, John Boehner, and other establishment elements of the Republican party saw the disaster that was in the making and moved in to advise against it, the Hoffman-ites elevated the importance of the contest to a referendum on the future and the very soul of the conservative movement. Scozzafava, demonized and low on funds, withdrew from the race and endorsed the Democratic candidate Bill Owens. Last week, on election day, Owens destroyed Hoffman, becoming the first Democrat to represent the region in congress since 1857.

No, 1857 is not a misprint. And the district has been in Republican hands since 1871.

The conservatives pimping Hoffman were right about his candidacy being significant, perhaps even of major significance; they just completely missed the mark on why. Hoffman didn't even live in the district he sought to represent--he hadn't lived there in nearly a decade, in fact. While refusing to speak in anything more than vague generalities about national issues, he demonstrated a complete lack of knowledge of the issues of local concern he would have to address as a member of congress if elected.[1] He ducked the candidates' debate and mostly stuck to "campaigning" via appearances in national right-wing media outlets. Unable to raise money in "his" district, he had to depend, for funding, on his own personal wealth and on massive donations from the conservative forces backing his candidacy, all of them outside both his district and the state. And they spent a bloody fortune (final figures won't be available until the next filing but just one of Hoffman's benefactors--the Club For Growth--ponied up in excess of $1 million).

All of this points to Hoffman's real significance: he was, like the teabagger "movement," a fiction. A fabrication. A made-up candidate, built from huge injections of right-wing money, free access to a massive propaganda outlet in the form of the right-wing press, and endorsements by such figures as teabagger darling Sarah Palin and teabagger inventor Dick Armey (who took his FreedomWorks astroturf outfit to the district to stump for Hoffman). He was put together like a dummy corporation in the Bahamas and wheeled out to read his lines. He was astroturf.

Eric Boehlert has a column over at Media Matters today that posits the notion of Hoffman as a "media candidate," a creation of right-wing media. The contribution of the right-wing media to creating Hoffman is indisputable but I think Boehlert focuses too narrowly on it to the exclusion of everything else I've just been outlining.

The teabagger "movement" has been waging ideological jihad against Republicans and that's what Hoffman was created to do, so much so that the rightist elements who backed him declared his loss a moral "victory." The reason the party backed a moderate Republican in NY23, of course, is because NY23 is a moderate Republican district and the party establishment didn't think a hardcore rightist could win it (a notion that now has the election results to support it). This pragmatism certainly isn't representative of the Republicans' standard operating procedure, particularly in recent years. Reading through the fever swamp that is the right-wing blogosphere though, the portrait of the Republican party offered by the purists is one of an entrenched, overly moderate, even "liberal" party establishment that throws its support behind like-minded candidates, rather than conservatives. The purists are furious over this. They want the party to move radically to the right and adopt an unwavering purist line, unattenuated by pragmatic considerations.

That's a narrative straight from the moon. Where, after all, is this wave of "moderates" and "liberals" in the Republican party? You certainly don't find them in congress. The Obama's stupid "stimulus" plan got the votes of a grand total of 2 Senate Republicans. One (Arlen Specter), was then driven out of the party by the purists. The other (Olympia Snowe) became the sole Republican in congress to date to sign on to any iteration of health-care reform at any stage of the process (and even then, she said she was only doing it to keep her hands in the process).

So where are they? I read and sometimes participate in a conservative site called "The Next Right." A few days ago, I asked that question of the many teabagger jihadists there. None of them had good answers. Some threw out names like John McCain, Lindsey Graham, even George W. Bush!

Yes, George W. Bush, who enjoyed the fanatical devotion of the American right throughout his term--probably the most popular president among conservatives in the history of polling. The ABC/Washington Post poll asked respondents in January, as Bush was leaving office, to offer an overall rating of his administration: A whopping 82% of conservative Republicans rated him a success; 53% "strongly." If Bush was anything other than a devout conservative, it would come as a complete shock to the American right.

John McCain was crushed in last year's presidential election in large part because he was a Bush clone. He had a lifetime rating of 82.3% from the ACU (American Conservative Union),[2] and, as Congressional Quarterly pointed out, McCain voted for Bush's position 90% of the time during Bush's first 7 1/2 years in office. In the year leading into the election, he was with Bush 95% of the time, making him Bush's top ally in the congress. In the first half of 2008, he had voted with Bush 100% of the time.

It wasn't a surprise to me that Lindsey Graham's name was thrown out. He became a target of the purists earlier this year, as teabaggers appeared at his "townhall meeting" to heckle him, denigrate his conservatism, ask him when he planned to switch parties. In the real world, Graham is even more conservative than McCain. The reactionary Family Research Council granted him their "True Blue Award," Americans for Tax Reform has named him "Hero of the Taxpayer," Graham has an 89.79% rating by the American Conservative Union, and is persistently ranked among their "Senate Standouts" (made up of the 20 most conservative Senators). He has more "honors" from similar right-wing orgs than can be easily counted. The notion that Lindsey Graham is some sort of RINO or moderate or "liberal" or anything other than a very rock-solidly conservative Republican says nothing about Graham and everything about the reactionary idiots who make such claims.

And these were the examples I was given. Even if we ignored reality and pretended as if every one of them was legitimate, does such a small number really justify the ludicrous narrative we've been given by the purists? Is it worth the amount of rage we've seen or the remarkable degree of it or the extraordinary expenditure in time, effort and money advanced to combat it? I can see no case for it, even if we ignored the fact that these are all extremely conservative politicians, and if we aren't willing to ignore that--as there's absolutely no reason to do so--there's certainly no case for it.

What really places the teabagger narrative in a realm of fantasy that, in any other context, would earn its purveyors a slot in a mental health facility is the fact that in the real world, the Republican party, which has been driving out its moderates for years now, is, today, as far to the right as it has been in the lifetime of anyone reading these words. One of the simple souls who threw out McCain as an example of a mushy moderate Republican inadvertently demonstrated this when he pointed out that John McCain's 82.3% conservative rating from the ACU only made him the 39th most conservative Senator by the ACU's estimation. McCain only disagreed with the ACU--hardcore conservatives--17.7% of the time, and even that only puts him as high as #39.

The purists present themselves as great knights on white horses waging the Good Fight against an implacable Dragon, that being Republican heresy. The astroturfers behind the teabagger contingent know better but seem to have concluded that whatever can drag the Republicans even further to the right will serve their ends. They've had great success this year in manufacturing a "movement." Doug Hoffman was an experiment, an attempt to do the same thing with a candidate. He failed but I doubt he's going to be the last. The astroturfers have already told their minions his loss was a "moral victory." As one who doesn't want the right to rule, I can only hope they continue with such "victories" but as one who sees the need for an effective, credible opposition, I must concede this has been an unfortunate turn of events.

--classicliberal2

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[1]Asked questions about these subjects by the editorial board of the local Waterton Daily Times, Hoffman, lost at sea, became quite frustrated--"flustered and ill-at-ease"--and angrily complained that he should have been given such questions beforehand.

[2] The ACU ratings aren't comprehensive--like most orgs that offer such ratings, it cherry-picks issues in order to put its favored politicians on top. Still, their lifetime ratings do represent a far broader cross-section of a politicians' career than the ravings of the clown who wanted to make a fight of this--like any purist, he picked out three or four examples of non-conservative "heresies"--several of which weren't non-conservative heresies--and rested his entire case for the apostasy of pols like McCain on them.

Astroturfed Sound & Fury on the Capitol Steps

A little over a week ago, the psychotic Rep. Michelle Bachmann (Clown-MN) teamed with the astroturfers behind the teabagger "movement" (she's one of their darlings) to call for a big rally against offering affordable health care to the public. It all came together Thursday in a comedy of errors on the steps of the Capitol.

The teabaggers displayed their usual charm, waving signs promoting "birther"-ism, comparing health care reform to Dachau, and denouncing the Obama as a rank socialist. The latter sentiment was offered by most of the large number of speakers who took a turn at the mic. Mark Levin, brainless reactionary talk-show host, even said the Obama was looking to overturn the American Revolution.

House Republican leader John Boehner makes a poor imitation of a fiery orator--he has one of the most monotonous monotones in D.C., and perpetually bears the stiff, uncomfortable expression of a man trapped on a long elevator ride with someone suffering extreme outbursts of flatulence--but, for this occasion, he gave it has best shot, and with some amusing results. Ever suspect Boehner wouldn't know the Constitution if he was looking right at it? If so, then Thursday's little event was tailor made for you. In the middle of his remarks, he whipped out what he said was his personal copy of the U.S. Constitution, and, sternly waving it as a voodoo fetish against the evils of health care reform, proceeded to recite what he called its "preamble." What he actually recited was the preamble to the Declaration of Independence.

Somehow, "doh!" just doesn't sufficiently cover that one.

Perhaps even more amusing is the fact that, if any of the assembled teabaggers recognized the gaffe, they didn't bother to react to it.

Boehner was only one of perhaps two-dozen Republican members of congress who decided it was more important to make asses of themselves before a bank of cameras and a crowd of like-minded idiots than to actually do the job they were elected to do. One of the most amusing footnotes to this whole affair, in fact, was how a large number of Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee blew off a hearing on the reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act to attend, and, as a consequence, several Republican-sponsored measures strengthening that act were narrowly defeated.

So at least something good came out of all of this.

In the afterglow of the event, Bachmann appeared on Sean Hannity's Fox News show to offer the astroturf version of the final analysis of the day's events. Today's rally, she delightedly exclaimed, "was totally word of mouth. This was nothing that we organized, nothing that we planned. We didn't order one bus, one carload. Nothing. Complete word of mouth." This is an important point, when it comes to astroturf--it needs to be made to look real, instead of like astroturf. But, of course, it was astroturf; for a week before the "spontaneous" rally, the event was heavily promoted on Fox News and by the two main teabagger astroturf orgs, FreedomWorks (whose president even spoke at the rally) and Americans For Prosperity. The latter even provided a lot of the crowd, offering an unknown number of free bus rides for "spontaneous" demonstrators from all over the country (an AFP coordinator was caught on camera saying they had at least 40 buses bringing in people). Fortunately for the astroturfers, much of the press followed its usual pattern of "reporting" on the event without going into what was behind it, so the astroturfers mostly succeeded again. The only possible positive spin on the horrific, kill-crazy rampage that happened in Texas that same day is that at least it kicked this sorry sound-and-fury out of the top news-story slot that day.

--classicliberal2

A Conservative America?

An August Gallup poll yielded up an intriguing result: nationally, self-identified conservatives outnumbered self-identified liberals by a margin of 2-to-1, and outnumbered them in all 50 states as well, usually by large margins. This led to much back-slapping in conservative circles in the days and weeks after the poll's release. Right-wing talk radio offered "told you so"s. The conservative blogosphere rubbed its belly with a contented sigh. The Media Research Center whined about the lack of press coverage given the finding. The results played into a well-worn conservative narrative spun over the decades about the U.S. being, at heart, a conservative nation and hyping the results was, it seems, a handy way to bolster morale at a time when conservatives seem to be on the ropes. Unsurprisingly, there wasn't a great deal of attention given to what the poll really meant.

The hard, cold political reality facing the right today--the one that's still there after the poll results, and after all that back-slapping--is that the U.S. isn't a conservative nation. What's more, that conclusion isn't even particularly controversial for anyone who has examined the matter in any detail; for the most part, it isn't even close. Public opinion is more heavily polled in the U.S. than in any other country on earth. On issue after issue, Americans are not only with the liberals but with them overwhelmingly.

A few Google searches offer a glimpse of the polling this year:

--An AP/Roper poll from October showed that 64% of Americans oppose the war in Iraq. 67% told the CBS/New York Times poll in September that the war wasn't even worth fighting. Though conservatives have been utterly opposed to setting a timetable for withdrawal, the public has supported doing so for quite some time. A Newsweek/Princeton poll from April asked about Obama's then-proposed timetable for withdrawal by 2010 and found that 74% said that was either "about right" or wanted to withdraw even sooner.

--On the matter of health care, Americans have favored a single-payer plan, wherein the government provides health insurance for all, by about 60%, a number which has been stable for years. This is well to the left of any of the health care "reform" measures presently being debated in congress.

--66% told the CBS/New York Times poll in June they favored either gay marriage or gay civil unions. More importantly, opposition to such arrangements are centered in older adults (those over 40) and heavily concentrated in the elderly (those over 65)--the younger generations to whom the future belongs have adopted the more liberal views.

--The polling on global warming has shown huge majorities (over 60%) concerned about the problem for the last 11 years (and probably further back--that's the info I was able to track down with a Google search). The number, as measured by Gallup in May, had dropped from the year before (down to 57%), but it has briefly gone down before, and the long-term polling is very clear on the point. The boilerplate conservative position, on the other hand, is, of course, that global warming is either "exaggerated" or an outright hoax (the same Gallup poll showed that 66% of Republicans held to that view).

--A long-running majority of Americans favor abortion rights and have for decades. The Republican party platform position--a blanket ban on abortions without exception--polls at 6%-11%. A CBS/New York Times poll in June asked "in general, do you think the Court's decision [in Roe v. Wade] was a good thing or a bad thing?" 62% said it was a good thing vs. 32% bad. An interesting finding from that same poll is that, while (unsurprisingly) 74% of Democrats said it was a good thing, 40% of Republicans also said it was a good thing vs. 51% bad.

--In January, the ABC/Washington Post poll found that, while 55% of Republicans opposed loosening Bush-era restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, 59% of Americans favored doing so. Support has generally hovered around that level for a few years, now, and a more recent Pew Research Center poll in July found no change--support still at 58%.

And so on. One is hard pressed to find a single major public policy issue on which the liberals don't hold an overwhelming advantage in public sentiment.

Conservatives hold a different kind of advantage though, that of money. Lots and lots of money, which is made available to them because they're the natural allies of the Establishment.

Any liberal movement has to start from nothing or virtually nothing and build itself the hard way, from the ground up. They are grassroots efforts that have virtually nothing in the way of resources, are generally marginalized, often feared and despised, even criminalized and have to fight like hell, often for decades, to get anything at all. Look at the movement for extending marriage benefits to homosexuals. Twenty-five years ago, it was the pipe-dream of a hated micro-minority and probably wouldn't have polled out of single digits. Today, it's not only a majority position, it's an overwhelmingly majority one.

Conservatives, on the other hand, rarely have to build anything. They find millions of dollars available to them on the first day they launch a "movement." Money from powerful interests looking to maintain their prerogatives or looking to keep the general public fighting amongst itself over hot-button wedge issues in order to keep it from challenging those prerogatives. If one is a conservative, that must feel great but that money is as dirty as an old carburetor, and conscientious conservatives--if the breed isn't entirely extinct by now--haven't really come to terms with that. Their vastly superior monetary resources have meant conservatives are grossly overrepresented in just about every major institution. It also seems to generate a significant disconnect between the conservatives and the general public. Because they can call upon such vast resources at the drop of a hat, the conservatives are insulated from the concerns of the very real people they claim to represent, rather than being born of those concerns. Because they can so easily appear to have a significant advantage by virtue of their greater visibility, they believe they do have that significant an advantage. This gives them a warm security blanket beneath which they can proclaim America The Conservative.

It just isn't there in the public opinion data though. Self-identification as "conservative" outscores self-identification as "liberal" only because the omnipresent American conservative machine has spent decades of time and a kingdom's fortune demonizing the word "liberal." Most people aren't ideologues or policy-wonks and don't give a great deal of thought to what catch-all word may most precisely describe their politics. "Liberal" is, for them, only a word they perceive as having acquired some sort of negative taint in political discourse. They shy away from applying it to themselves. But for all that conservative money and noise and all the advantages it appears to give the right, the people are still with the liberals--and with them overwhelmingly--on the issues.

Just ask them.

--classicliberal2

MONEY!!!

Money isn’t "an issue" in U.S. politics. It’s virtually the only issue. If given even half the weight it merited, it would lead the news almost every night. Instead, it's something on which the press simply doesn't report at all. Stray stories, here and there. It's sometimes scandalized, but the very little reporting that does appear occurs in a vacuum. No consistent narrative. No follow-up. Certainly never anything remotely approximating the sort of feeding frenzy that regularly accompanies stories about sex, crime, or, more recently, dead pop stars.[1]

Without the money angle, most political stories become inexplicable. The “mainstream” corporate press largely portrayed the teabagger phenomenon, to name one of the prominent recent examples, as a genuine “movement,” instead of what it actually is, a 100% corporate-invented astroturf campaign fueled by nonsense spread by right-wing media outlets (themselves huge corporate interests). The facts about the actual forces behind the "movement" are readily available. On the internet, they're literally only a quick Google search away. But someone who stuck to most “mainstream” corporate press outlets would know virtually nothing about it, except that there was this sudden, loud uprising of angry, anti-Obama mobs. The goal of astroturf is to give the impression of a genuine grassroots campaign--when, as has happened here, the press treats it as one, the campaign has succeeded.

The Center for Responsive Politics calls their website opensecrets.org. The information they collect isn't really "secret." It's all publicly available. It's "secret" because, among other things, the press, which is supposed to be a watchdog about such things, won’t, as a rule, touch such information with a 10-foot pole. Common Cause issued one of their "Legislating While Under the Influence" reports on health care industry contributions to congress, and you’ll learn more about health care reform by reading its relatively few pages than you’d learn from the combination of every report of every network newscast on the subject.

One "secret" kept by the press is that Sen. Max Baucus, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, is the top recipient of health-care industry donations in the congress.

An even better-kept secret is that Baucus allowed the former Vice President of Wellpoint to write "his" bill. Everywhere in the press, it's just "the Baucus bill." And, since it's the most conservative health care bill in congress (and the one that offers no real reform), it's more often than not being treated, by the press, as the only one. There are actually four others that long ago passed out of the relevant committees of both houses--the ones dealing with health care--whereas the Wellpoint bill is being hashed out in the Finance Committee.

The health care industry spent a fortune getting politicians (including the Obama) to support provisions mandating that everyone carry health insurance. Wellpoi… er… Baucus included a provision making health coverage mandatory, and imposing a tax penalty on anyone who fails to comply.[2] This sets up a dynamic one would think our watchdog press would find interesting: The Wellpoint plan publicly subsidizes Americans' purchase of health care. It also creates, at the point of a gun, millions of mandatory new clients for the current nightmare of a health insurance industry. The government subsidies to those new clients go, of course, to those insurance companies, who, in turn, spend millions of dollars purchasing politicians like Max Baucus.

What a deal!

If the press would report ANY of this, the “Baucus” bill would have been dead before it ever began, but that would require abandoning the fairy-tale narrative of American politics as a battle of competing ideologies and dealing with what actually makes the trains run on time.

--classicliberal2

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[1] The reasons for this are many and varied. Among a great many other things, the media orgs are, themselves, huge corporate interests with their own chunk invested in the process Their even-bigger-money ownership has even more money in it.

[2] That wasn't strong enough for the industry, which wanted criminal penalties--jail time--for those who failed to carry health insurance. The failure of the bill to include this is largely responsible for the last-minute industry push against reform which has so befuddled the corporate press this week--again, if you don't follow the money, the story is inexplicable.

ACORN, American Politics, & the Conservatives Who Make 'Em That Way

One of American conservatism's favorite targets, in recent years, has been the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. ACORN is, as it describes itself, "the nation’s largest grassroots community organization of low- and moderate-income people." They help poor people. They've been doing it for nearly 40 years now. Some of their work has received federal funding. One aspect of their activities--their voter registration efforts--has become a flashpoint for right-wing ire in more recent years, particularly in the last two, as those efforts are, like everything else ACORN does, aimed at those of moderate income, who, of course, tend to vote Democratic.

The conservative critics have drawn from their usual playbook in smearing the organization, layering lies upon lies in the hope that they can bury ACORN before any glimmer of the truth is able to penetrate. Alleged involvement of a dozen ACORN volunteers in voter registration fraud--fraud committed against ACORN--is used as "evidence" of the corruption of the entire enterprise. ACORN's forwarding of phony registrations to state governments is used in the same way. Omitted from the conservative accounts: the fact that those states legally require ACORN to do this and the fact that ACORN does make efforts to flag, for those states, registrations they believe phony. "ACORN" has been adopted by internet conservatives as shorthand for "voter fraud,"intentionally conflating registration fraud (the actual charge falsely imputed to ACORN) with vote fraud.

Right-wing activists recently set up a "sting" against ACORN. On the pretense of posing as a hooker and her pimp, they entered various ACORN offices seeking tax advice on how to set up a brothel staffed by underage girls. They carried hidden cameras, recorded the whole thing and, a week ago, released edited versions of their work to various right-wing outlets. This has caused a sustained furor on the right, with the standard ever-escalating rhetoric. This "proves" the irredeemable corruption of everything ACORN touches, proves that everything its right-wing critics have said about it is true, etc.

Despite worming its way into the mainstream press, a lot of this story has fallen apart in the last few days. The activists involved, who have appeared regularly in conservative press outlets, have studiously avoided any appearances in non-conservative forums. They've failed to release complete videos. They've claimed the four ACORN offices at which they allegedly succeeded were the first ones they visited and that they'd never been turned away by any office. When an ACORN official disputed that, saying they'd approached her in Philadelphia and she'd sent them packing, they went on Fox News to call this a lie and to demand ACORN apologize. As it turns out, the official in question had actually called the police after her encounter with them; she's now released the police report on the incident for all to see.[1]

That's funny.

What isn't funny is that the Senate, a few days ago, reacted to the story of the "sting" by voting to cut off federal funding of ACORN.

Now, ACORN, in spite of some insane conservative claims to the contrary[2], never got much from the feds and a loss of those funds probably won't make that big a difference to the organization but the whole affair is illustrative of the Alice-in-Wonderland nature of contemporary American conservatism and points to some larger fundamental problems with American politics.

Rock-solid Glenn Greenwald wrote about this yesterday:

"ACORN has received a grand total of $53 million in federal funds over the last 15 years--an average of $3.1 million per year. Meanwhile, not millions, not billions, but trillions of dollars of public funds have been, in the last year alone, transferred to or otherwise used for the benefit of Wall Street. Billions of dollars in American taxpayer money vanished into thin air, eaten by private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, led by Halliburton subsidiary KBR. All of those corporate interests employ armies of lobbyists and bottomless donor activities that ensure they dominate our legislative and regulatory processes, and to be extra certain, the revolving door between industry and government is more prolific than ever, with key corporate officials constantly ending up occupying the government positions with the most influence over those industries.
...

"So with this massive pillaging of America's economic security and its control of American government by its richest and most powerful factions growing by the day, to whom is America's intense economic anxiety being directed? To a non-profit group that devotes itself to providing minute benefits to people who live under America's poverty line, and which is so powerless in Washington that virtually the entire U.S. Senate just voted to cut off its funding at the first sign of real controversy--could anyone imagine that happening to a key player in the banking or defense industry?"

Stirring up anger against some powerless, relatively insignificant entity like ACORN is a standard practice of the American conservative elite It's a tactic and it's no accident that it keeps people battling among themselves in order to prevent them from uniting and presenting a potential threat the the prerogatives of the wealthy, the powerful, the corporate interests who actually control the U.S.

Nearly every "issue" that has made conservatism a mass movement in the U.S. is of this nature. Some enemy is identified, usually something or someone of no real consequence, and the full venom of the right is unleashed against it. We're told the real problem with America is illegal immigrants with brown skin and a different language, baby-killing abortionists, pointy-headed intellectuals at colleges, hedonistic homosexuals, welfare recipients, godless heathens who remove prayer from schools, socialist would-be dictators, liberals and the Hollywood "elite." At this rhetoric's most extreme, we're told there is, being waged against the U.S., a "culture war," a phrase and concept lifted directly from the Third Reich.

The effectiveness of those who respond to this sort of rhetoric is usually minimal, insofar as the phony "issues" they've adopted are concerned. Abortion remains legal, government continues to stay out of the business of endorsing religion, homosexuals are not officially condemned by the State, etc.

Organization around these issues is, however, remarkably effective at implementing policies that are to the benefit of the, broadly speaking, money elite in the U.S.. Vote for a candidate who promises to ban abortion, all you get is an elected official who votes for trade policies that deindustrialize the country to the benefit of that elite. Vote for someone who promises to keep the homos in line, all you get is an elected official who votes for tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us. Vote for the candidate who promises to ban flag burning, all you get is an elected official who votes to take away your right to sue your doctor when he goes into surgery drunk and leaves you a quadriplegic. And so on. Often the populations affected the worst by these policies are the very ones that react most strongly to the wedge issues and empower these policies' implementation.

The conservatives go after ACORN because ACORN's voter registration efforts are aimed at demographic groups who tend to vote Democratic but liberals and the left in general are challenged by them much more broadly--to the point that words like "liberal" and "socialist" have become curses--because the left is seen as a potential challenge to the prerogatives of the money elite. The economy is said to function like a force of nature. Deindustrialization is, in this view, like a flood or a hurricane or an earthquake, rather than a predictable consequence of entirely intentional right-wing policy. Worse, any sort of progressive policy proposals are presented as "socialist" intrusions, the actions of a Bolshevist state. When the U.S. government began its run of massive bailouts of failed businesses last year, there was public anger. When it turned out the executives at AIG were getting huge bonuses, even while being bailed out, there was even more anger. The conservatives have worked tirelessly to harness this anger and redirect it away from businesses and toward the government, constructing a scenario wherein the bailouts aren't a consequence of the total domination of Washington by business interests but are, instead, a socialistic power-grab by the would-be Bolshevist in the White House (and that all of these bailouts were actually undertaken by Obama's conservative Republican predecessor is quietly buried).

These aren't insignificant matters. The intensity of the conservatives' focus on ACORN in recent days and the remarkable degree of hatred and bile poured upon what is, in the end, a small, relatively insignificant entity is inexplicable without an understanding of them. American conservatism itself is inexplicable without that understanding.

--classicliberal2

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[1] The ACORN employee they caught on camera at one of their "successes" said she saw through their ruse immediately, didn't take anything they said seriously and plied them with ridiculous comments. She told them she'd murdered her husband and this was picked up by those pimping the story as a shocking revelation and actually spurred an investigation by law enforcement. As it turns out, her ex-husbands are all alive and well.

[2] Sean Hannity put the amount in the "trillions." The actual amount is a little over $3 million/year for the last 15 years.

"Grassroots" Astroturf

This past weekend, a gaggle of demonstrators descended on the nation's capitol to protest... something. They'd been organized by the same well-financed astroturf orgs that have been behind pretty much all of the major anti-Obama demonstrations to date, and, during the proceedings, Matt Kibbe, the president of Freedom Works (the major astroturfer involved), took to the stage to proclaim that, according to ABC News, the rally had drawn 1.5 million people. Within a short period, right-wing Twits and creatures like Michelle Malkin had escalated that figure to 2 million, and it had circulated around the world. As it turned out, of course, Kibbe had lied. There was no such ABC News report. There was no such estimate. Malkin, the Twits, and the rest had taken Kibbe's lie--an astroturf lie--and inflated it by another half a million. The actual turnout for the event was a modest 60,000-70,000. Amusingly enough, the buzz, throughout this week, has been a sustained whine from the right about how the corporate press didn't take this event seriously enough.[*]

These astroturf "protests" are culturally significant, just not in the way the complainers would have you believe. They're noteworthy because they point to the social cancer that is the Bubble People phenomenon on the right. They also point to the fact that this--a very large segment of the population--can be organized relatively easily by well-financed astroturf groups and made to look, on the surface, a lot like a real grassroots mass movement. That's what astroturf movements exist to do. This has been perhaps the biggest success story of their history.

Those on the right, even some otherwise thoughtful voices, have tended to defend the protests as legitimate expressions of grassroots unrest, either setting aside their artificial origins or arguing those origins are irrelevant. Such arguments aren't even close to sustainable, though. This illusion of a movement lacks anything that would remotely resemble a program, above and beyond "WE HATE BARACK OBAMA!", screamed to the heavens with equal measures of vigor and froth. The tea-baggers, the townhall disrupters, the capitol marchers--what exactly is their program? That they're furious about "death panels" and illegal alien coverage in the health care bill? That they're furious a man who isn't a U.S. citizen, and probably even a Muslim, is being allowed to be President? That the administration is trying to implement socialism or fascism or some other black -ism? It's all just nonsense, a tapestry of falsehood spun for the purposes of organizing those who have been conditioned in such a way as to remove their capacity for critical thought, when it comes to the voices inside their closed bubble. This illusion of a movement has no goals, it has no program, it doesn't even have a central organizing principle other than irrational Obama hatred. And, of course, the further implication of this is that, as a "grassroots" movement, it can't really lead to anything, either, except maybe getting Barack Obama shot by some unhinged right-wing nutcase "patriot" who thinks he's saving us all from the next Hitler.

That isn't to say the astroturfers behind all of this don't have very definite goals. As they've stated, their big one, at present, is to defeat any health care reform. Create the illusion of a mass movement to scare those in congress and get lots of press doing it, which provides an ever-expanding platform for spreading further misinformation that turns public sentiment. This is what they're paid to do. This is what they've proven remarkably effective at doing this year.

This is what the "protests" are, what's behind them, why they're significant. This is not, however, how they're covered by the corporate press. If anyone has cause to complain about that coverage, it isn't those who have been doing the complaining this week.

--classicliberal2

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[*] In a related story, the Wall Street Journal reported that Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) has just "released a letter he sent to Washington’s Metro system complaining that the taxpayer-funded subway system was unable to properly transport protesters to the rally to protest government spending and expansion." As it that wasn't enough, Brady, himself, voted against funding for the Metro system earlier this year.