Monday Open Thread [12.7.2015]
NATIONAL—CNN/ORC: Clinton 49, Trump 46 | Clinton 50, Cruz 47 | Rubio 49, Clinton 48 | Clinton 49, Bush 47
NATIONAL—MSNBC/Telemundo/Marist: Clinton 52, Trump 41 | Clinton 51, Cruz 44 | Clinton 49, Bush 45 | Clinton 48, Rubio 45 | Clinton 48, Carson 47
Juan Williams says the GOP is at the breaking point:
2015 will be remembered as the year the Republican establishment totally lost control to the loud voices, all of whom are simply competing to be the most outrageous. As a result, the GOP now clings to an unstable identity as the party that distrusts all government institutions, loathes Obama, hates immigrants and has no faith in the economy. A party once encompassing Wall Street, eastern elites, southern social-religious conservatives and western libertarians has both fractured and narrowed. GOP guru Karl Rove is already raising the likelihood of a primary season that ends without anyone winning the nomination outright, a prospect that would lead to a brokered convention. That kind of fractious, spectacle has already been predicted by party elders, most notably former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson and former New York Sen. Al D’Amato. And as Rove noted, the fighting at a brokered GOP convention is not likely to end quickly.
Dan Balz: “Early next year, when Republican voters begin to select their 2016 presidential nominee, they will not just be choosing one individual from among a large field of candidates. They will also be choosing among competing theories about what the party needs to do to win the White House.”
“One choice pits what Donald Trump represents — the appeal of a strong personality — against what House Speaker Paul D. Ryan spoke about last week: the power of a conservative agenda. The other choice highlights strikingly different models for winning primaries and general elections, embodied in the campaigns of Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.”
From Gawker:
Conservative blogger, unrepentant sexist, Twinkie opponent and fat man who hates fat lesbians Erick Erickson has a strong opinion about The New York Times’ front-page editorial calling for tighter gun laws in the wake of a spate of mass shootings in the U.S.
A petulant child has a petulant child’s reaction, or the reaction of a terrorist. Take your pick.
Booman draws parallels between 1972 and 2016. 1972 was a year in which the Democratic Establishment lost control of the nominating process and then couldn’t support their eventual nominee (McGovern) with a straight face, and that lead to a 49 state wipeout.
So far, I’ve been focused primarily on how the Democratic Party establishment reacted to McGovern, but to get a full parallel to today we also have to look at how the McGovernites felt about the party establishment. I think it’s fair to say that “the new left” was utterly unimpressed with the congressional leadership of the party. The war in Vietnam was the primary source of discontent, but DC was still filled with reluctant desegregationist Democrats. Capitol Hill was still filled with ancient representatives who were far behind the times on women’s rights and environmentalism and other drivers of the progressive thought of the time. The hordes of activists surrounding the McGovern campaign were forward thinking and the party leadership was standing in their way.
By March of 1974, the disillusionment with Washington would be near-universal as the details of Watergate and CIA illegality came to light. But in the lead-up to the 1972 election, it was mainly discontent on the left that was driving McGovern forward and sweeping aside supposedly solid candidates like Muskie, Scoop Jackson, and Hubert Humphrey.
This is very similar to how present-day Republican activists feel about the leadership of their party in Washington and in the states. They have already cashiered Speaker of the House John Bohener and his deputy House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. They have already sunk the campaigns of Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal, and Scott Walker. Candidates who would be acceptable to the establishment like Govs. John Kasich and Chris Christie are struggling to get to 5% in the polls. And they seem to be rejecting Jeb Bush like week-old dog food.
The Democratic Party of the 1960’s delivered Vietnam and all its discontents. The Republican Party of the 2000’s and 2010’s delivered the Great Recession, the bailout, and a thousand broken promises. Both parties were so discredited with their own core supporters that they invited a grassroots insurrection.
It may not matter that one group of insurrectionists was on the right track and the other is, as Charlie Cook put it, “behaving crazily.” For our purposes, what might matter is what these similarities portend. […]
I want to reiterate something I said in my introductory piece.
The two parties have been locked in a stable pattern for a while now and the pattern can certainly persist into the future. But, every once in a while there is a slip along the dividing line and one party leaps ahead and gains a decisive advantage. This happened in 1972, for example. President Nixon certainly didn’t foresee how decisively he’d win that election. If he had, he wouldn’t have broken so many laws and engaged in so many dirty tricks. Yet, when you look back at 1972 with the benefit of hindsight, all the signs were there that the Democrats were approaching a complete wipeout.
I haven’t touched on all the signs I’m seeing of a complete Republican wipeout. Not even close.
Stay tuned. Booman is analyzing the political landscape in a series of articles. I have long thought, against the conventional wisdom, that the 2016 election was going to be a blowout. I thought the same in the 2012, again against the conventional wisdom, and relatively speaking, it was.
Matthew Yglesias at Vox on last night’s Oval Office address, which I thought was pretty good. But why was it necessary?
The Oval Office address represents Obama’s best effort to meet the psychological needs of a frightened nation under attack while sticking on a policy level with a restrained policy that Obama recognizes is emotionally unsatisfying but that he regards as offering the best chance for success. […]
We saw in Paris that firearms attacks lead major newspapers to leap toward declarations like “war in the heart of Paris” (la guerre en plein de Paris) and “this time it’s war” (cette fois, c’est la guerre) that are, of course, reminiscent of the post-9/11 declaration of a “war on terror.”
But a war against whom? And with what purpose in mind?
Public policy wars are at times metaphorical (war on poverty, war on drugs) but given that terrorism is a matter of hard security, a literal military war is clearly what the media and the political system desire. But it’s far from clear that extended control over physical territory abroad is necessary for orchestrating violent acts in Western cities. On the contrary, as the president said last night drawing more western troops onto Muslim soil appears to be one of ISIS’ objectives:
We should not be drawn once more into a long and costly ground war in Iraq or Syria. That’s what groups like ISIL want. They know they can’t defeat us on the battlefield. ISIL fighters were part of the insurgency that we faced in Iraq, but they also know that if we occupy foreign lands, they can maintain insurgencies for years, killing thousands of our troops and draining our resources, and using our presence to draw new recruits.
The attack in San Bernardino was new and horrifying. But the problem of ISIS is not new. The previous American policy — airstrikes, training, diplomatic work in Syria, no big ground troop presence — was already the policy that Obama thought most likely to succeed. A new attack appears to require a new response, but there is no new response that Obama thinks makes sense.
Andrew Prokop agrees:
So, even if the president had nothing incredibly new to say, he wanted to try and accomplish at least three key things.
First, he wanted to assure Americans that he takes the threat of terrorism seriously and that his administration is doing something about it. Rhetorically, he chose to frame the speech as one about terrorism rather than, say, gun violence — and repeatedly used the words “terrorist” and “terrorism” in reference to San Bernardino and similar attacks. And substantively, he argued that the policies his administration is already implementing abroad — air strikes, training ISIS’s opponents, efforts to reach a peace deal in Syria — are the best way to address this threat.
Second, Obama wanted to start framing gun control measures as an important piece of a larger anti-terrorism effort. He did so subtly, and treated guns as simply one piece of a broader problem. But in addition to saying it should be harder for people to buy assault weapons, he called on Congress to “make sure no one on a no-fly list is able to buy a gun.” Commentators are divided about the wisdom of this idea, but it seems to be politically popular. Indeed, shortly after the speech, one Republican swing state senator facing a tough 2016 race — Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire — backed the idea, with caveats.
And third, he wanted to again push back against Islamophobia. As Max Fisher wrote even before the San Bernardino shootings, there’s been a disturbing escalation in anti-Muslim rhetoric from some circles — including from the top-polling Republican presidential candidate, but not limited to him — recently. The shooting obviously won’t help this situation, so Obama wanted to reiterate once again, in a high profile setting, that this “fight” should not be defined as one of “America against Islam.”
When asked about the Syrian refugees, Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore (R) said she wanted to fly to Paris and “shoot ’em in the head myself.” She said this about innocent refugees, which includes the elderly, children and women.
Sean Wilentz: “If the Republicans win the presidency in 2016, they will also almost inevitably control both the Senate and the House of Representatives, giving them virtually unfettered command over the entire federal government to go along with their domination of the great majority of the state governments. The Republican president could easily be in a position to appoint new justices to the Supreme Court for an unstoppable right-wing majority that would last for a generation to come.”
“If, however, the Democrats win the presidency in 2016, they will almost certainly take back the Senate and make gains in the House – and the Democratic president will likely be able to appoint new justices to the Supreme Court that will eventually comprise a liberal majority. Between these two stark alternatives, there is no middle ground. In 2016, the country will become either one thing or the other.”
