House Speaker's Commitment to the Party of Stupid

Updated - As the civil rights fight for marriage equity continues in the wake of Sen. Rob Portman's (R-Ohio) decision to support the right of individuals to marry, Americans were treated to a perfect example of the Republican Party's incoherency on legal discrimination.

Asked about Portman's change of heart, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), explained on ABC's This Week, "I believe that marriage is the union of a man and a woman."

Asked if his position might change, Boehner explained and elaborated (not really):

 "Listen, I believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. … It’s what I grew up with. It’s what I believe. It’s what my church teaches me. And I can’t imagine that position would ever change."

Boehner's repeated assertions that he feels this way because he believes this way is not an argument any more than is: 'I feel blacks and whites should not marry; it's what I believe. I don't like them blacks.'

ABC's Martha Raddatz did not reply, 'Mr. Speaker, you are proposing denying this right to marriage to gays and lesbians, but you won't explain yourself. What is your reasoning? Repeating how you feel or what you believe is no argument, is it?'

But Raddatz like every other network pundit interviewing Republicans on this issue refuses to point out in a simple follow-up that the GOP's I-feel nonsense is not reasoning in an adult democracy. It's infantile.

Why? What is Raddatz thinking?

Here is the perfect opportunity to expose Republican Party idiocy on a major civil rights issue presently before the courts set to rule on two possibly landmark cases—United States v. Windsor and Hollingsworth v. Perry (formerly known as Perry v. Brown and Perry v. Schwarzenegger).

A House Speaker should have to at least explain himself, right?

Raddatz is as indictable as Boehner. And Sen. Portman is not much better.

"By Portman’s own account, in other words, he opposed gay marriage until he realized that opposition to gay marriage stands in the way of his own son’s happiness," writes Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine (March 15, 2013). "Wanting your children to be happy is the most natural human impulse. But our responsibility as political beings — and the special responsibility of those who hold political power — is to consider issues from a societal perspective."
As Chait wrote in a needed sane commentary a short three years ago in making what is an obvious point on the I-feel, I-believe mantra:

Gay-marriage opponents have made that [I-feel] formulation their mantra. It’s a really strange way for them to summarize their argument, because it’s not an argument at all. ...

In a liberal society, consenting adults are presumed to be able to do as they like, and it is incumbent upon opponents of any such freedom to demonstrate some wider harm. (Chait. The New Republic, June 19, 2009)

Rational Budget Talk from Jonathan Chait

Jonathan Chait injects some reality into the national budget debate—applicable to the Wisconsin budget debate.

Chait, one should note, famously wrote of the early Bush-Cheney budgetary statements: "He's [Bush] lying," and that deficits and mounting debt were sure to follow. Chait was right. And he's right again.

From The New Republic:

A few weeks ago, I wrote a column pointing out how strange it is that President Obama is being blamed for huge budget deficits, when the projected deficits we face are entirely due to policies he inherited. In my column, I cited this paper by the Center on Budget and Policy priorities, which found that Obama's budget would reduce the budget by $900 billion over ten years compared with keeping current policies in place.

Yesterday David Leonhardt of the New York Times took up a similar question. Leonhardt looked at the budget from 2009 through 2012, and tried to figure out what had changed in those years since 2001. He found that the business cycle accounted for 37% of the higher red ink. More than half came from legislation signed by President Bush. Seven percent came from Obama's stimulus bill, and only three percent from his regular budget.

It was an admirable and serious article. A good sense of how serious can be seen in the contrast to a Politico story that ran the same day. Politico concerned itself entirely with the perception that Obama is responsible for the new debt without bothering to explore the merits of the perception. It ran quotes alleging as much (GOP Sen. John Cornyn: 'This was not an inherited situation. This was a matter entirely of this administration’s and this Democratic leadership’s making') without pointing out that the allegation is demonstrably false.

This debate such as it is sounds familiar in Wisconsin political circles with the same malarkey emitting from the GOP and its shills.

Obama Understands

From Jonathan Chait:

John McCain’s mantra tonight was simple: Barack Obama 'doesn’t understand.' He repeated this line over and over, and at one point directly said that Obama 'lacks the knowledge' to be president. But Obama demonstrated over and over that he does understand foreign policy. He has a better command of foreign policy issues than most presidential candidates (as does McCain.) McCain tried – and, I think, needed – to disqualify Obama as a foreign policy president, and I think he failed. McCain did land some blows, but Obama easily cleared the bar.

Buchanan: Petraeus Points to War With Iran

The fear and/or prediction of many that Bush, Cheney, McCain/Lieberman and company just may be stupid enough to launch an air strike against Iran this year has long been shared by isolationist, conservative columnist, Patrick J. Buchanan.

Because candidate McCain is so unschooled in foreign policy, McCain has repeatedly "confused the basic Sunni-Shiite sectarian divide that's absolutely fundamental to grasping the Middle East ... ," he fits in well with the neocon, imperialist foreign policy school.

Buchanan, citing Petraeus' testimony before Senate Armed Services Committee this week and other development, writes in his Petraeus Points to War With Iran:

The neocons may yet get their war on Iran. ... This is Bush's last chance to strike and, when Iran responds, to effect its nuclear castration. Are Bush and Cheney likely to pass up this last chance to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities and effect the election of John McCain? For any attack on Iran's 'terrorist bases' would rally the GOP and drive a wedge between Obama and Hillary. ...

Buchanan notes that the congressional Democrats have acted with the moral courage that is on a par of that displayed by the many authoritarian Arab countries that Vice President Cheney has been touring lately in the region.

In early 2007, Nancy Pelosi pulled down a resolution that would have denied Bush the authority to attack Iran without congressional approval. In September, both Houses passed the Kyl-Lieberman resolution designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization.

Courtesy of Congress, Bush thus has a blank check for war on Iran. And the signs are growing that he intends to fill it in and cash it.

This is going to be one fascinating fall election; less fascinating, though, if you happen to be a human being living in Iran.

Jonathan Chait on the Huckster's Snake Oil

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is no Jack Kennedy.

And Huckabee is no William Jennings Bryan, the populist turn-of-the-century, three-time Democratic nominee for president.

Jonathan Chait has a nice piece in TNR that demonstrates that Huckabee's quasi-populist appeal that has him near or at the top of Iowa's pre-primary polls is "ideological snake oil," easily removed by analysis and the most superficial glance at Huckabee's record.

Writes Chait:

Seeking more insight into Huckabee's apparently Bryan-esque worldview, I turned to his manifesto, From Hope to Higher Ground. In it, he recounts how, during his governorship, low-wage behemoth Wal-Mart hired away many of his top state employees. This is classic populist grist--a huge corporation buys up government employees to ensure docile oversight. Huckabee expressed his reaction to this outrage thusly: "Frankly, I appreciated it when they saw the same talent and ability in those individuals as I discovered when I originally interviewed and hired them." And he proceeded to call Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton--whose salary surely qualified as immoral if anybody's ever did--a "visionary" with "extraordinary integrity." What kind of populist is this guy?

A very confused one, it seems. When Huckabee first declared his intent to run for the presidency, he was generally dismissed as a naive country bumpkin who had no business in a national campaign. His articulate speeches and rapid ascent in the polls have won him a second look, and he is now lauded in such places as The New Yorker, which called him "curiously unthreatening." Alas, when you look closely at Huckabee's platform, it turns out that everybody pretty much had it right the first time around.

Read more of Jonathan Chait's piece in TNR.
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