The Smithian

May 15th, 2013

'Sexism and racism are the guiding impetus behind the Republican Party’s Benghazi obsession. Conservatives will predictably respond in a shrill manner to such a suggestion. Nevertheless, given the ways in which racism and sexism are dominant landmarks on the cognitive map of contemporary Right-wing politics, the synergy of those two social forces are over-determining the Republican Party’s hostility to a black president, and a female Secretary of State. The manufactured Benghazi scandal is a perfect storm for a Republican Party wherein racism and sexism are synonymous with contemporary conservatism.' — Chauncey DeVega

May 6th, 2013

thesmithian

I do not believe that partisan polarization makes dysfunctional gridlock likely. It’s not partisan polarization that’s the problem; it’s the broken, radical Republican Party. Essentially, party polarization isn’t nearly as important as the array of problems within the GOP—antagonism to compromise as an organizing principle; a closed information loop dominated by the Republican-aligned press; a conservative marketplace which blunts the electoral incentive for much of the party; and loss of interest in and capacity for public policy. Without those internal dysfunctions, even an extremely conservative Republican Party would be able to cut deals and allow the political system to function relatively smoothly even with divided government…

Jonathan Bernstein

April 17th, 2013

thesmithian

'So, to the White House and the Senate leadership: You all are about to get creamed. Again. I know the GOP will obstruct everything. Good. Use that as your springboard. Just dismiss this foolishness of trying to craft a bipartisan legislative agenda and go for the full on political combat. So just get rid of the filibuster, stop fucking around trying to balance the budget, and just start doing shit for regular people who are broke.'

April 12th, 2013

thesmithian

Zoom

In conjunction with other conservative groups attacking the “liberal” judiciary and the press, they continued to shore up the movement’s populist credentials by identifying an elite to which conservatives could stand opposed — a task that grew in importance as populist elements within the Republican Party gained even more prominence. They continued to provide a vocabulary for conservative college students (and their parents) to express frustration with their higher education experiences. And they helped to call into question the credibility of academic knowledge, which made the growing number of conservative intellectuals in think tanks working on topics like taxes or energy policy or financial deregulation seem more reliable and trustworthy by comparison.

more, from an excerpt, here.

In conjunction with other conservative groups attacking the “liberal” judiciary and the press, they continued to shore up the movement’s populist credentials by identifying an elite to which conservatives could stand opposed — a task that grew in importance as populist elements within the Republican Party gained even more prominence. They continued to provide a vocabulary for conservative college students (and their parents) to express frustration with their higher education experiences. And they helped to call into question the credibility of academic knowledge, which made the growing number of conservative intellectuals in think tanks working on topics like taxes or energy policy or financial deregulation seem more reliable and trustworthy by comparison.

more, from an excerpt, here.

April 10th, 2013

thesmithian

'...The patchwork Republican approach to sequestration—i.e. "let's pass individual bills repealing specific cuts that have gotten especially bad publicity because they hit middle-class people, while leaving all the cuts to poor people in place"—strikes again.'

April 8th, 2013

thesmithian

'...Simply put, a large portion of the party, including the GOP-aligned partisan press and even many politicians, profit from having Democrats in office.'

April 5th, 2013

thesmithian

‘Just a few hours after the White House released its official budget, which included the social security cuts that liberals hate…’

…House Speaker John Boehner rejected it out of hand, saying it doesn’t go nearly far enough…There’s not even lip service paid to the fact that Obama is risking mutiny in his own party by putting Social Security on the table…

and…

There’s no way Boehner even had time to read the whole thing.

more.

April 3rd, 2013

thesmithian

'Any delays in instituting the law can—and likely will—be magnified into a media narrative about the administration’s broken promises; but it shouldn’t bare the brunt of the blame. The orchestrated Republican effort to deny ACA’s health care benefits is largely responsible. The GOP may have failed in its effort to repeal Obamacare in Congress, lost at the Supreme Court in June and the ballot box in November, but the party isn’t backing down from trying to dismantle or delay the law.'

April 3rd, 2013

thesmithian

‘Republican North Carolina state legislators have proposed allowing an official state religion…’

…in a measure that would declare the state exempt from the Constitution and court rulings. The bill, filed…by two GOP lawmakers…and backed by nine other Republicans, says…courts cannot block a state “from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.” The legislation was filed in response to a lawsuit to stop county commissioners in Rowan County from opening meetings with a Christian prayer…

more.

March 31st, 2013

thesmithian

California’s political story—in which a radicalized G.O.P. fell increasingly out of touch with an increasingly diverse and socially liberal electorate, and eventually found itself marginalized—is arguably playing out with a lag on the national scene too. So is California still the place where the future happens first? Stay tuned.

more.

California’s political story—in which a radicalized G.O.P. fell increasingly out of touch with an increasingly diverse and socially liberal electorate, and eventually found itself marginalized—is arguably playing out with a lag on the national scene too. So is California still the place where the future happens first? Stay tuned.

more.

March 23rd, 2013

thesmithian

Zoom

The outsize influence of hard-line elements in the party base is doing to the GOP what supporters of Gene McCarthy and George McGovern did to the Democratic Party in the late 1960s and early 1970s—radicalizing its image and standing in the way of its revitalization.

more.

The outsize influence of hard-line elements in the party base is doing to the GOP what supporters of Gene McCarthy and George McGovern did to the Democratic Party in the late 1960s and early 1970s—radicalizing its image and standing in the way of its revitalization.

more.

March 20th, 2013

thesmithian

I don’t think the GOP is in that much trouble. (And, twice in 20 years now, we’ve seen how deftly they can disrupt the administrations of the people who beat them.) They’ve locked up the House for the foreseeable future. They’re getting all kinds of laws past in the states that would have been unthinkable even a decade ago. They’ve stacked the courts to the point where the DC circuit can rule against recess appointments, and where it looks like the teeth of the Voting Rights Act are about to be pulled. The entire economic debate is being fought out on ground only a smidge to the left of their own choosing. Sensible gun control turns out to be DOA, at least in part because Democratic politicians are afraid of mighty Republican ad buys in contestable states. Campaign finance is a a dead parrot, and the system in situ is vastly to their advantage. Real action on climate change is utterly stalled. So, with all that, the RNC does a little examination of conscience about why they’ve lost the popular vote in six of the past seven presidential elections, and everybody goes into high-sterics, as my mother used to say.

Charles P. Pierce, at Esquire