The Republican Politics of Distraction and Destruction

You know a political party is absolutely bankrupt when it substitutes posturing for policy, diatribes for debate, venom for values, when it campaigns in full flight from its record, when meanness becomes a tool for mobilization, when it seeks salvation in the electorate's susceptibility to amnesia and shallowness and pins its hopes on the monumental distraction of a vice-presidential nominee called Sarah Palin. And the gullible media suddenly, but predictably, falls all over itself to praise her ability to read with eloquence a speech from a teleprompter! Following her speech at the Republican Party Convention Governor Palin seems to have succeeded in energizing the diehard supporters of both the Republican and Democratic parties. The following commentaries capture the dangerous political diversion that is Palin and the serious questions it raises about the judgement of Senator John McCain, the Republican Presidential Candidate. P T Zeleza, Editor, The Zeleza Post.

 

 

The Woman From Nowhere

John McCain's choice of running-mate raises serious questions about his judgment

 

THE most audacious move of the race so far is also, potentially, the most self-destructive. John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running-mate has set the political atmosphere alight with both enthusiasm and dismay.

 

Mr McCain has based his campaign on the idea that this is a dangerous world-and that Barack Obama is too inexperienced to deal with it. He has also acknowledged that his advanced age-he celebrated his 72nd birthday on August 29th-makes his choice of vice-president unusually important. Now he has chosen as his running mate, on the basis of the most cursory vetting, a first-term governor of Alaska.

 

The reaction from inside the conservative cocoon was at first ecstatic. Conservatives argued that Mrs Palin embodies the "real America"-a moose-hunting hockey mum, married to an oil-worker, who has risen from the local parent-teacher association to governing the geographically largest state in the Union. They praise her as a McCain-style reformer who has taken on her state's Republican establishment and has a staunch pro-life record (her fifth child has Down's syndrome). Who better to harpoon the baby-murdering elitists who run the Democratic Party?

 

Mrs Palin was greeted like the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan by the delegates, furious at her mauling at the hands of the "liberal media". And she delivered a tub-thumping speech, underlining her record as a reforming governor and advocate of more oil-drilling, and warning her enemies not to underestimate her ("the difference between a hockey mum and a pitbull-lipstick"). But once the cheering and the chanting had died down, serious questions remained.

 

The political calculations behind Mr McCain's choice hardly look robust. Mrs Palin is not quite the pork-busting reformer that her supporters claim. She may have become famous as the governor who finally killed the infamous "bridge to nowhere"-the $220m bridge to the sparsely inhabited island of Gravina, Alaska. But she was in favour of the bridge before she was against it (and told local residents that they weren't "nowhere to her"). As mayor of Wasilla, a metropolis of 9,000 people, she initiated annual trips to Washington, DC, to ask for more earmarks from the state's congressional delegation, and employed Washington lobbyists to press for more funds for her town.

 

Nor is Mrs Palin well placed to win over the moderate and independent voters who hold the keys to the White House. Mr McCain's main political problem is not energising his base; he enjoys more support among Republicans than Mr Obama does among Democrats. His problem is reaching out to swing voters at a time when the number of self-identified Republicans is up to ten points lower than the number of self-identified Democrats. Mr McCain needs to attract roughly 55% of independents and 15% of Democrats to win the election. But it is hard to see how a woman who supports the teaching of creationism rather than contraception, and who is soon to become a 44-year-old grandmother, helps him with soccer moms in the Philadelphia suburbs. A Rasmussen poll found that the Palin pick made 31% of undecided voters less likely to plump for Mr McCain and only 6% more likely.

 

The moose in the room, of course, is her lack of experience. When Geraldine Ferraro was picked as Walter Mondale's running-mate, she had served in the House for three terms. Even the hapless Dan Quayle, George Bush senior's sidekick, had served in the House and Senate for 12 years. Mrs Palin, who has been the governor of a state with a population of 670,000 for less than two years, is the most inexperienced candidate for a mainstream party in modern history.

 

Inexperienced and Bush-level incurious. She has no record of interest in foreign policy, let alone expertise. She once told an Alaskan magazine: "I've been so focused on state government; I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq." She obtained an American passport only last summer to visit Alaskan troops in Germany and Kuwait. This not only blunts Mr McCain's most powerful criticism of Mr Obama. It also raises serious questions about the way he makes decisions.

 

Vetted for 15 minutes

 

Mr McCain had met Mrs Palin only once, for a 15-minute chat at the National Governors' Association meeting, before summoning her to his ranch for her final interview. The New York Times claims that his team arrived in Alaska only on August 28th, a day before the announcement. As a result, his advisers seem to have been gobsmacked by the Palin show that is now playing on the national stage. She has links to the wacky Alaska Independence Party, which wants to secede from the Union. She is on record disagreeing with Mr McCain on global warming, among other issues. The contrast with Mr Obama's choice of the highly experienced and much-vetted Joe Biden is striking.

 

Mr McCain's appointment also raises more general worries about the Republican Party's fitness for government. Up until the middle of last week Mr McCain was still considering two other candidates whom he has known for decades: Joe Lieberman, a veteran senator, independent Democrat and Iraq war hawk, and Tom Ridge, a former governor of Pennsylvania (a swing state with 21 Electoral College votes) and the first secretary of homeland security. Mr McCain reluctantly rejected both men because their pro-choice views are anathema to the Christian right.

 

The Palin appointment is yet more proof of the way that abortion still distorts American politics. This is as true on the left as on the right. But the Republicans seem to have gone furthest in subordinating considerations of competence and merit to pro-life purity. One of the biggest problems with the Bush administration is that it appointed so many incompetents because they were sound on Roe v Wade. Mrs Palin's elevation suggests that, far from breaking with Mr Bush, Mr McCain is repeating his mistakes.

bankrupt

 

From The Economist September 4, 2008-09-04

 

The Sarah Palin Smokescreen By Katrina Vanden Heuvel

 

Here's the deal: Palin is the latest G.O.P. distraction," Bob Herbert wrote in a New York Times op-ed on Tuesday. "She's meant to shift attention away from the real issue of this campaign--the awful state of the nation after eight years of Republican rule. The Republicans are brilliant at distractions."

 

Herbert's right on target. Barack Obama honed in on that point in Denver too, "If you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters. If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from. You make a big election about small things."

 

On cue, Sarah Palin attempted to paint an absurd caricature of Obama in her speech at the Republican Convention last night: "What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he's done turning back the waters and healing the planet? The answer is to make government bigger ... take more of your money ... give you more orders from Washington ... and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world."

 

More than anything, this election should be about the big issues of our time--ending a disastrous war, restoring America's reputation in the world and building an economy that works for more than just the very rich. The challenge for Democrats is to frame these issues in a way that connects with traditional American and progressive values, exposes Republican callousness and extremism, and in doing so trumps the GOP's political marketing which cynically and cleverly plays on symbolism. As George Lakoff wrote , "Just arguing the realities, the issues, the hard truths should be enough in times this bad, but the political mind and its response to symbolism cannot be ignored..... Democrats, in addition, need to call an extremist an extremist: to shine a light on the shared anti-democratic ideology of McCain and Palin, the same ideology shared by Bush and Cheney. They share values antithetical to our democracy."

 

In order to have a fighting chance after eight ruinous years of Bush, the Republicans need voters to lose sight of where we are as a nation and how Republican leadership got us there. We saw that with the GOP's politicization of Hurricane Gustav in an attempt to whitewash eight years of hostility to the notion of government's role as a force for public good. We see it with their hypocritical media-bashing. {Let's not forget, as Bloomberg News' Al Hunt told the New York Times, "Probably no one in American politics over the last twenty years has had a closer relationship with the national press than John McCain." And we are seeing it again now. McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis admitted as much - as The Nation's Christopher Hayes noted --when he said, "This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates."

 

That's exactly how Republicans win. Democrats can't let them get away with it. So it was good to see Obama and Joe Biden both calling the Republicans out for the lack of attention being paid to the economy at the Republican Convention in St. Paul on Tuesday.

 

"You did not hear a single world about the economy," Mr. Obama said. "Not once did they mention the hardships that people are going through."

 

Harold Meyerson also wrote about the Republicans' failure to address the economy at their convention in an op-ed in Wednesday's Washington Post: "I have combed the schedule of events here without finding a single forum... devoted to what John McCain and the Republican Party propose to do about America's short and long-term economic challenges.... For all these woes, McCain offers only a continuation of Bush's tax cuts for the rich and an ideological bias toward the very kind of deregulation that has wrecked the housing market.... If the election is about the economy, they're cooked - and their silence this week on nearly all things economic means that they know it."

 

If the Republicans succeed in making this election about something other than the big issues, they are likely to win. If it's about a likable woman governor who can shoot a gun and field dress a moose, or a churchgoing commander of the Alaskan National Guard, they are likely to win. Or if they pull off the feat of making the reactionary right-wing McCain-Palin ticket seem more "connected to the people" than Obama-Biden whose stance on the issues is in touch with millions of Americans who seek a more active government in these economically squeezed times, then they are likely to win.

 

If voters really want real change, rather than Reality Politics TV-style change [sponsored by the Republicans and that darn elitist corporate media], here are some important facts to consider: since 1948, the economy has grown faster on average under Democratic presidents than under Republicans; and income inequality trended "substantially upward under Republican presidents but slightly downward under Democrats," according to Princeton professor of political science, Larry M. Bartels, author of Unequal Democracy.

 

These historical trends have serious implications for today's challenges of increasing poverty, stagnating wages, and a greater concentration of wealth than anytime since 1928 .

 

In these next sixty-one days until the election, small-d democrats who are committed to forming a more perfect union will need to do everything we can to stay focused on the big issues, expose Republican callousness and anti-democratic policies for what they are, and lay out the clear choice that lies before us.

 

From The Nation September 4, 2008

 

Palin: Wrong Woman, Wrong Message By Gloria Steinem

 

Sarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

 

Here's the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing -- the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party -- are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women -- and to many men too -- who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the "white-male-only" sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.

 

But here is even better news: It won't work. This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.

 

Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, "Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs."

 

This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even on issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can't do the job because she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn't say the same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden's 37 years' experience.

 

Palin has been honest about what she doesn't know. When asked last month about the vice presidency, she said, "I still can't answer that question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?" When asked about Iraq, she said, "I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq."

 

She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she's won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain's campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate's views on "God, guns and gays" ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.

 

So let's be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can't tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.

 

Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves "abstinence-only" programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

 

I don't doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle Assn., she doesn't just support killing animals from helicopters, she does it herself. She doesn't just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town. She doesn't just echo McCain's pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, she should bear the child. She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child.

 

So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, "women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership," so he may be voting for Palin's husband.

 

Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest.

 

Republicans may learn they can't appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women.

 

And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can't be equal outside the home until men are equal in it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children.

 

This could be huge.

 

Gloria Steinem is an author, feminist organizer and co-founder of the Women's Media Center. She supported Hillary Clinton and is now supporting Barack Obama.

 

From The Los Angeles Times September 4, 2008

 

Palin Fails by Her Own Standards By Steven Rosenfeld

 

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin accepted the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nomination Wednesday night in a confident and insistent address that attacked members of the media and Washington "elites" who questioned her experience to be vice president and mocked Barack Obama for his qualifications, stances on issues and even his inspiring words.

 

After several days of silence, Palin introduced herself to America as the newest GOP attack dog. She alternately wrapped herself in what she described as all-American small-town values and engaged in nasty smear tactics -- belittling Democrats, mischaracterizing Obama and insulting Americans, who she and her campaign speechwriters must think will not have enough sense to see past such a thin veil.

 

Palin established the confrontation tone early in her speech by deriding "pollsters and pundits" who "wrote off" Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), the Republican nominee, early in his presidential campaign for supporting a troop surge in Iraq. She then introduced her family, praised her rural upbringing and experience in local and state government, and concluded -- in a departure from reality -- that her brief political resume qualified her to serve as vice president.

 

"And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves," Palin said, comparing herself to Obama's community work after law school. "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."

 

Then, as was typical of her speech, she broadened her political attack.

 

"I might add that in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening," Palin said. "We tend to prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco."

 

Palin was referring to comments Obama made at a fundraiser that were controversial during the Democratic primaries when he was asked about why rural voters often vote for Republicans when the GOP did not advocate for their economic interests. She then drew a picture of life in small town America that was at least as divisive as Obama's remark was controversial, by suggesting rural America is where the country's truest patriots, hardest workers, and members of the military come from.

 

"I grew up with those people," she said. "They are the ones who do some of the hardest work in America ... who grow our food, run our factories, and fight our wars. They love their country, in good times and bad, and they're always proud of America. I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town."

 

Vice-presidential candidates are often used by presidential campaigns to criticize the opposing ticket -- so the presidential nominee does not have to descend to the muddier side of politics. However, as Palin wrapped herself in a mythic version of small-town America to emphasize Republican values, she also presented a distorted picture of political realities in the country. Most notable in this regard was her criticism of the media and Washington "elites," even though her party has held the White House for seven-plus years and majorities in Congress until 2006.

 

"I'm not a member of the permanent political establishment," Palin said. "And I've learned quickly, these past few days, that if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone. But here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion; I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country. Americans expect us to go to Washington for the right reasons, and not just to mingle with the right people."

 

Palin portrayed herself as a reformer in Alaskan politics, although independent press accounts in recent days strongly suggest otherwise. Despite an ongoing investigation by Alaska's Legislature into Palin improperly using her office to pressure the state police to fire an officer who divorced her sister, and Palin heading a fundraising committee that accepted unlimited donations for Sen. Ted Stevens, now under federal indictment for corruption, Palin said that she fought and beat "special interests."

 

"We are expected to govern with integrity, good will, clear convictions, and a servant's heart," she said. "I pledge to all Americans that I will carry myself in this spirit as vice president of the United States. This was the spirit that brought me to the governor's office, when I took on the old politics as usual in Juneau; when I stood up to the special interests, the lobbyists, big oil companies, and the good-old-boys network."

 

Palin's account of herself as an anti-corruption and anti-spending crusader also included her oft-repeated claim that she opposed building a bridge costing several hundred million dollars to a remote town of 14,000. Press accounts from Alaska note that she supported "the bridge to nowhere" for years, before finally canceling the project as governor.

 

Palin touted her efforts closing a deal to build a new major natural gas pipeline, saying efforts to drill for oil, natural gas and to build more nuclear power plants would be the cornerstone of the country's energy independence. Energy was the only domestic issue Palin discussed at length in her speech, which notably did not mention the economy, health care, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, immigration, family planning, appointing Supreme Court judges or the relation of church and state -- she is an evangelical. She dismissed Democratic priorities such as global warming and civil liberties.

 

"Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America's energy problems -- as if we all didn't know that already," Palin said. "But the fact that drilling won't solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all."

 

Palin's harshest attack concerned the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Obama's qualifications to lead the military.

 

"This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word victory except when he's talking about his own campaign," she said, speaking of Obama. "Victory in Iraq is finally in sight; he wants to forfeit. Terrorist states are seeking nuclear weapons without delay; he wants to meet them without preconditions. Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America; he's worried that someone won't read them their rights."

 

Notably, the only foreign policy issues raised by Palin concerned using U.S. troops to ensure the country had an ample supply of oil from the world's trouble spots. If anything, these remarks suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would continue the current White House policy of deploying troops overseas to ensure oil imports.

 

"Families cannot throw away more and more of their paychecks on gas and heating oil," she said. "With Russia wanting to control a vital pipeline in the Caucasus, and to divide and intimidate our European allies by using energy as a weapon, we cannot leave ourselves at the mercy of foreign suppliers.

 

"To confront the threat that Iran might seek to cut off nearly a fifth of world energy supplies, or that terrorists might strike again at the Abqaiq facility in Saudi Arabia, or that Venezuela might shut off its oil deliveries, we Americans need to produce more of our own oil and gas," she continued. "And take it from a gal who knows the North Slope of Alaska: we've got lots of both."

 

Palin also attacked Obama for saying he planned to raise taxes on the top 5 percent of American income earners, which the Democratic nominee has said was necessitated by a federal deficit that has ballooned since the Bush administration needlessly invaded Iraq.

 

Palin's attacks undoubtedly previewed those the McCain campaign will use in the final two months of the campaign, as Republicans try to convince Americans that a candidate who did not wear a military or law enforcement uniform as a younger person is unfit to be president.

 

"Though both Senator Obama and Senator Biden have been going on lately about how they are always, quote, 'fighting for you,' let us face the matter squarely," Palin said. "There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you, in places where winning means survival and defeat means death, and that man is John McCain."

 

Of course, Palin did not hold herself to those same standards, which many newspaper editorial writers have said is the most important consideration for the running mate of a candidate who would be the oldest American ever to enter office as president. Instead, she joked that the only different between a "hockey mom" -- her role prior to government service -- and "a pit bull" was lipstick. Indeed, her introduction to America and national politics was as the GOP's newest attack dog.

 

Steven Rosenfeld is a Senior Fellow at AlterNet.org, where he reports on elections from a voting rights perspective. His books include Count My Vote: A Citizen's Guide to Voting (AlterNet Books, 2008), What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election (The New Press, 2006), and Making History in Vermont: The Election of a Socialist to Congress (Hollowbrook Publishing, 1992). An award-winning journalist, he has been a staff reporter at National Public Radio, Monitor Radio, TomPaine.com, and at daily and weekly newspapers in Vermont

 

From AlterNet September 4, 2008

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