"Whither . . . ?"
The scramble is on. Without knowing how the elections will turn out, a very visible part of the Republican party is out to assert or reassert its control over the so-called party establishment. The lead actor, at least a highly visible one, is Karl Rove who is building up the financial resources for this effort by reaching into the pockets of well-heeled patrons who have backed the GOP in the past. The goal: to reassert the customary control of the party establishment by business and other private interests, while seeking to head off insurgent groups like the Tea Party (TP) movement which, along with Sarah Palin, have come to be perceived by many as the overlapping voices of the so-called disgruntled voters seeking change.
For Rove personally, his self-created visibility has also led to some embarrassment. He initially supported the efforts of the Delaware Republican party establishment which backed Congressman Mike Castle in his primary race for Joe Biden's old seat in the Senate. In supporting Castle, Rove put down the character and political viability of Christine O'Donnell who was backed by the Tea Party. After O'Donnell's surprise victory over Castle, Rove and others had to quickly backtrack and embrace her for the November 2 elections.
The Delaware primary showed the concern that establishment Republicans have about being outflanked by the far right TP and Palin not only as competitors in electing candidates, but also in ideologically defining the Republican party. Historically, the establishment party has been conservative and any tensions within the party have generally been between right-of-center moderates and the more conservative, dominant wing of the party. Now the TP has shifted the ideological tension farther to the right with the TP taking more extreme and very vocal positions, however fuzzy on specifics, on a host of issues. The specifics of Palin's policy agenda are equally obscure. But the combined shrill of the TP and Palin have forced some mainstream conservative candidates for election or re-election to shift farther to the right to avoid being outflanked by TP- and Palin-backed candidates.
So unless the Tea Party/Palin sponsored candidates and those with TP/Palin support are totally blown away in four weeks, the establishment GOP is likely to be forced to move farther right on the ideological spectrum. Thus, Rove, backed by considerable financial resources, sees his tasks are to retain establishment control of the party philosophy, however altered, as well as having a large voice in the choice of future candidates. In the process, he also seeks to keep himself relevant as chief strategist and a mover and shaker of the party's future, roles he played previously for the benefit of former President George W. Bush.
On a slightly different but related note, I have always found columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. of the Washington Post to be a keen analyst of the state and direction of American politics. But his recent column "Tempest in a small Teapot" seemed a bit off the mark. He focused on the small numbers of TP adherents compared with the total size of the electorate and the number of voters in specific elections, noting further how the media has magnified the Tea Party in our politics. Where I see it differently is that it's not the numbers but the noise of the Tea Party movement that has made the difference, granting that its noise has been amplified by the media. But as that noise level has increased by the very vocal activism of TP adherents and fellow travelers, it has emerged as something bigger than the numbers cited by Dionne would suggest. At least for now the TP and Palin have become the voices of the unhappy voters(independents and moderate Republicans we are told). As that voice, they have on a number of important occasions eclipsed the establishment GOP as the spear carrier for those unhappy voters seeking a change from the policies of President Obama and the Democratic controlled Congress.
Stay tuned. After November 2 we may have a better view of "Whither the Tea Party?" "Whither Sarah Palin?" "Whither the GOP?" "Whither the rest of us?"
Friday, October 1, 2010
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
MIDDLE EAST: WHAT DOES PROGRESS LOOK LIKE?
Let us hope there is more going on than it appears. No matter where one looks in the Middle East, it seems that our best hope for progress is that there is something being worked out through back channel diplomacy. That is, something is being moved forward through direct secret discussions, official or unofficial, or through intermediaries. That has to be that hope since what we do see happening openly is not very encouraging.
In the unending search to give meaning to the so-called "peace process" between Israel and the Palestinians, what we are getting once again is confrontation rather than negotiation. By any standards, the road to creation of an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza is marked by numerous hazardous issues. Right now progress toward a Palestinian state seems to be blocked at the starting gate. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' insistence on another Israeli moratorium on building settlements on the West Bank before negotiations can continue is confronted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahou's apparently nonnegotiable decision that the temporary pause in settlement construction will not be renewed. Despite any misgivings he may have about ending the moratorium, Netanyahou is boxed in by the ultra-right, pro-settlement members of his governing coalition. Extension or renewal of the moratorium would supposedly mean the collapse of his coalition, forcing new elections. And Abbas has his own problems on negotiating flexibility because Hamas which controls the Gaza part of the proposed new state is simply opposed to the negotiation from the outset.
President Obama and leaders of some other governments with Mideast interests have been pressing Netanyahou to extend the moratorium, but to no avail. Obama is seen in Israel as being less supportive of the Jewish state than previous Presidents and thus has less leverage with the Israeli government. Moreover, Obama's waning popularity at home further weakens his ability to nudge Israel, which enjoys strong backing in the Congress and a large segment of the public, into a more flexible position on the settlement issue. On the other hand, the United States certainly has a severe problem of gaining acceptance in the Muslim world where we are viewed as pro-Israel beyond redemption, as well as anti-Muslim.
So, despite the fanfare that surrounded the opening of the latest round of negotiations, we seem so far to have made little headway in building up any new momentum. That is, unless Abbas backs down and continues talks despite Netanyahou's stand-fast decision on settlements. If Abbas does retreat, it would further demonstrate his political weakness as a meaningful negotiating partner who speaks in behalf of all Palestinians.
Meanwhile, in Iraq the search for progress goes on. It has now been nearly seven months since the parliamentary elections but stalemate among the three centers of power has prevented the formation of a new government. The primary contenders are a Shiite coalition led by acting Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and a Sunni-secular Shiite block headed by one time Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. The election results gave Allawi's group the narrowest of margins in winning parliamentary seats, but without a majority. The Kurds are the third group involved but their aim is to see what benefits they can extract as the balance of power to further strengthen their already semi-autonomous control in their northern region. The United States has been trying to nudge the three groups into a power sharing arrangement but any progress in that direction is well hidden.
Finally, there is Iran, referred to in a previous post as the 800 pound gorilla. Among the many outstanding issues with that country are: 1) its nuclear ambitions; 2) its role in Afghanistan where it is helping the Taliban in its war with the U.S. and its NATO allies; and 3) Iran's role as a participant in any political settlement in Afghanistan, a settlement that would include so-called moderate Taliban leaders.
When Iran gets new pressures on the nuclear issue via economic sanctions or in its more- than-not-friendly economic and military relations with Russia and China, it resorts to the traditional Mideast negotiating strategy. That strategy is akin to the image of the protracted buyer-seller haggling over the price of a rug at the local bazaar. Iran has now suggested that it might be open to a possible solution that will guarantee it an external supply of enriched uranium to sustain its peaceful nuclear goals, while at the same time controlling its access to highly enriched uranium needed for weapons development. This has the echo of an earlier solution talked about but never concluded. If there are any serious talks on such an approach, one can almost be assured that Iran will seek to draw out such discussions in bazaar-like fashion while it continues to pursue its own nuclear ambitions, whatever they may be.
As to Afghanistan, Iran may have the luxury of more time before playing a role in any political settlement. First, unfortunately, it seems that there is still a lot of fighting to be done. While Afghan President Hamid Karzai might prefer a go-it-alone strategy for dealing politically with the Taliban, it is difficult to imagine a political settlement that does not take into account the views and concerns of the United States and the diverse, competing interests within the Pakistani government. A political way out of Afghanistan is still just a gleam in the American/NATO eye; meanwhile Iran can continue to play its hostile role while waiting to see what benefits it can extract at no cost by cooperating in regional political settlement at the right time.
In answer to the opening question, "What does progress look like" in the Middle East?; the answer is, "How can I tell? I don't see any."
In the unending search to give meaning to the so-called "peace process" between Israel and the Palestinians, what we are getting once again is confrontation rather than negotiation. By any standards, the road to creation of an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza is marked by numerous hazardous issues. Right now progress toward a Palestinian state seems to be blocked at the starting gate. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' insistence on another Israeli moratorium on building settlements on the West Bank before negotiations can continue is confronted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahou's apparently nonnegotiable decision that the temporary pause in settlement construction will not be renewed. Despite any misgivings he may have about ending the moratorium, Netanyahou is boxed in by the ultra-right, pro-settlement members of his governing coalition. Extension or renewal of the moratorium would supposedly mean the collapse of his coalition, forcing new elections. And Abbas has his own problems on negotiating flexibility because Hamas which controls the Gaza part of the proposed new state is simply opposed to the negotiation from the outset.
President Obama and leaders of some other governments with Mideast interests have been pressing Netanyahou to extend the moratorium, but to no avail. Obama is seen in Israel as being less supportive of the Jewish state than previous Presidents and thus has less leverage with the Israeli government. Moreover, Obama's waning popularity at home further weakens his ability to nudge Israel, which enjoys strong backing in the Congress and a large segment of the public, into a more flexible position on the settlement issue. On the other hand, the United States certainly has a severe problem of gaining acceptance in the Muslim world where we are viewed as pro-Israel beyond redemption, as well as anti-Muslim.
So, despite the fanfare that surrounded the opening of the latest round of negotiations, we seem so far to have made little headway in building up any new momentum. That is, unless Abbas backs down and continues talks despite Netanyahou's stand-fast decision on settlements. If Abbas does retreat, it would further demonstrate his political weakness as a meaningful negotiating partner who speaks in behalf of all Palestinians.
Meanwhile, in Iraq the search for progress goes on. It has now been nearly seven months since the parliamentary elections but stalemate among the three centers of power has prevented the formation of a new government. The primary contenders are a Shiite coalition led by acting Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and a Sunni-secular Shiite block headed by one time Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. The election results gave Allawi's group the narrowest of margins in winning parliamentary seats, but without a majority. The Kurds are the third group involved but their aim is to see what benefits they can extract as the balance of power to further strengthen their already semi-autonomous control in their northern region. The United States has been trying to nudge the three groups into a power sharing arrangement but any progress in that direction is well hidden.
Finally, there is Iran, referred to in a previous post as the 800 pound gorilla. Among the many outstanding issues with that country are: 1) its nuclear ambitions; 2) its role in Afghanistan where it is helping the Taliban in its war with the U.S. and its NATO allies; and 3) Iran's role as a participant in any political settlement in Afghanistan, a settlement that would include so-called moderate Taliban leaders.
When Iran gets new pressures on the nuclear issue via economic sanctions or in its more- than-not-friendly economic and military relations with Russia and China, it resorts to the traditional Mideast negotiating strategy. That strategy is akin to the image of the protracted buyer-seller haggling over the price of a rug at the local bazaar. Iran has now suggested that it might be open to a possible solution that will guarantee it an external supply of enriched uranium to sustain its peaceful nuclear goals, while at the same time controlling its access to highly enriched uranium needed for weapons development. This has the echo of an earlier solution talked about but never concluded. If there are any serious talks on such an approach, one can almost be assured that Iran will seek to draw out such discussions in bazaar-like fashion while it continues to pursue its own nuclear ambitions, whatever they may be.
As to Afghanistan, Iran may have the luxury of more time before playing a role in any political settlement. First, unfortunately, it seems that there is still a lot of fighting to be done. While Afghan President Hamid Karzai might prefer a go-it-alone strategy for dealing politically with the Taliban, it is difficult to imagine a political settlement that does not take into account the views and concerns of the United States and the diverse, competing interests within the Pakistani government. A political way out of Afghanistan is still just a gleam in the American/NATO eye; meanwhile Iran can continue to play its hostile role while waiting to see what benefits it can extract at no cost by cooperating in regional political settlement at the right time.
In answer to the opening question, "What does progress look like" in the Middle East?; the answer is, "How can I tell? I don't see any."
Sunday, September 26, 2010
POLICY, POLITICS, AND QUOTABLE QUOTES
When I sat down to write today's post, a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson came to mind --"By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote." This led me to a few other quotes that seem appropriate for observing the current state of our politics.
-- "To feed the birds, you first have to feed the elephants." That political insight was given us by former Senator/Vice President/ Presidential candidate Hubert H. Humphrey, a happy political warrior of an earlier era. Over time the quotation has been used in altered form by others, terms such as supply side economics and trickle down theory. That is, feed the resources to the economic giants and the benefits will filter down to those below. That is where we are at in the current debate on what to do about the tax cuts made under President George W. Bush.
The GOP congressional leaders want to continue the tax reductions to the high income earners, defined as those filing joint returns with income over $250,000 a year, approximately 2 percent of tax filers. President Obama and the majority of congressional Democrats want to end the Bush tax cuts for the richest among us, while maintaining the reductions for the other 98 percent. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said that no action will be taken on the issue in that chamber before the November elections. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said there could be a vote in the House before lawmakers go home to campaign for the midterm elections now just five weeks away. While the Republicans have taken a virtually unanimous partisan position on the issue, the Democratic leadership finds that conservative Democrats in both chambers are either outright opposed to raising the tax rate on the upper brackets now, or certainly don't want to have to vote on the issue before the elections.
That is about where things stand today. The point of this post is to give new life and new meaning to Humphrey's pointed, old quote. So as the political jockeying goes on, the birds await.
-- "Can we all get along?" Thus spoke Rodney King nearly 20 years ago. King, an African-American, gained national attention in l991 when a videotape was made by a nearby observer showing a group of policemen beating on King repeatedly on a sidewalk after a high speed auto chase in Los Angeles. A portion of the tape was used by the media causing a public outcry against police brutality. The police said that the force used was necessary because King, a large man, was resisting arrest. Four of the policemen were charged with use of excessive force. When the four were acquitted the following year, a riot broke out that left 53 dead, almost 2,500 injured, and about $1 billion in financial losses. To aid in quelling the riot, King was put on television where he made his famous statement, "Can we all get along?" (In a later federal trial, two of the four were found guilty and imprisoned, two were acquitted.)
The same question might be asked today to help bring calm back to our "to the barricades" political atmosphere, now characterized to a mixture of sometimes toxic rhetoric of the candidates backed by far right cheerleaders such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. Disagreement on policy issues and the rhetoric used is only part of the problem of political virulence, and perhaps the lesser part. The atmospherics are more heated when candidates and non-candidates like Beck wrap themselves in messianic robes and go forth as though they have been sent as God's messengers on earth. Along side of this assumption of divine guidance is a wrapped-in-the-flag patriotism.
Herein lies the heart of the problem. Many of those who have taken up the causes of the far right are also stating implicitly that those who do not see God and country the same way are thereby outside the pale of heavenly grace and are un-American.
So to answer Rodney King, "Probably not, certainly not in the near term." Regardless of who wins or loses in the coming elections, the tone of our politics has become too high decibel and too highly charged to expect any early return to political civility. To close on still another quote, this time from Pogo the comic strip possum who said in a different context in l971, "We have met the enemy and he is us."
-- "To feed the birds, you first have to feed the elephants." That political insight was given us by former Senator/Vice President/ Presidential candidate Hubert H. Humphrey, a happy political warrior of an earlier era. Over time the quotation has been used in altered form by others, terms such as supply side economics and trickle down theory. That is, feed the resources to the economic giants and the benefits will filter down to those below. That is where we are at in the current debate on what to do about the tax cuts made under President George W. Bush.
The GOP congressional leaders want to continue the tax reductions to the high income earners, defined as those filing joint returns with income over $250,000 a year, approximately 2 percent of tax filers. President Obama and the majority of congressional Democrats want to end the Bush tax cuts for the richest among us, while maintaining the reductions for the other 98 percent. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said that no action will be taken on the issue in that chamber before the November elections. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said there could be a vote in the House before lawmakers go home to campaign for the midterm elections now just five weeks away. While the Republicans have taken a virtually unanimous partisan position on the issue, the Democratic leadership finds that conservative Democrats in both chambers are either outright opposed to raising the tax rate on the upper brackets now, or certainly don't want to have to vote on the issue before the elections.
That is about where things stand today. The point of this post is to give new life and new meaning to Humphrey's pointed, old quote. So as the political jockeying goes on, the birds await.
-- "Can we all get along?" Thus spoke Rodney King nearly 20 years ago. King, an African-American, gained national attention in l991 when a videotape was made by a nearby observer showing a group of policemen beating on King repeatedly on a sidewalk after a high speed auto chase in Los Angeles. A portion of the tape was used by the media causing a public outcry against police brutality. The police said that the force used was necessary because King, a large man, was resisting arrest. Four of the policemen were charged with use of excessive force. When the four were acquitted the following year, a riot broke out that left 53 dead, almost 2,500 injured, and about $1 billion in financial losses. To aid in quelling the riot, King was put on television where he made his famous statement, "Can we all get along?" (In a later federal trial, two of the four were found guilty and imprisoned, two were acquitted.)
The same question might be asked today to help bring calm back to our "to the barricades" political atmosphere, now characterized to a mixture of sometimes toxic rhetoric of the candidates backed by far right cheerleaders such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. Disagreement on policy issues and the rhetoric used is only part of the problem of political virulence, and perhaps the lesser part. The atmospherics are more heated when candidates and non-candidates like Beck wrap themselves in messianic robes and go forth as though they have been sent as God's messengers on earth. Along side of this assumption of divine guidance is a wrapped-in-the-flag patriotism.
Herein lies the heart of the problem. Many of those who have taken up the causes of the far right are also stating implicitly that those who do not see God and country the same way are thereby outside the pale of heavenly grace and are un-American.
So to answer Rodney King, "Probably not, certainly not in the near term." Regardless of who wins or loses in the coming elections, the tone of our politics has become too high decibel and too highly charged to expect any early return to political civility. To close on still another quote, this time from Pogo the comic strip possum who said in a different context in l971, "We have met the enemy and he is us."
Friday, September 24, 2010
THE GOP "PLEDGE TO AMERICA": THE POLITICS OF IRRELEVANCE
The House Republican leadership's "Pledge to America" is amazing. Not for what it says in its 21 pages which few people will read, but that the GOP would even make such a pledge. Public opinion polls show clearly that Congress is very low in public esteem and that low estimate applies to both Democrats and Republicans in Congress. So it is difficult to imagine how the House GOP leadership thinks this will make a difference in the November elections, except that they may see it as giving a last minute Republican voice to the many unhappy voters out there.
The problem for the GOP, however, is that the large pool of disgruntled voters , mostly independents and moderate Republicans we are told, have already been given a voice by the Tea Party (TP). This is a basic distinction between the "Pledge" and Newt Gingrich's l994 "Contract with America" which became both the voice and the policy base for the huge GOP midterm election victory that year. Now it is the TP that has come to be viewed as the voice of the disgruntled. Thus, the "Pledge" is likely to be perceived by most as "too much and too late" and as merely an attempt to play catch up ball with the Tea Party. Put another way, the "Pledge" is "too late" for many voters who have already jumped on board the TP train and it has left the station.
And while the TP has been picking up speed over the past six months, the Republican party, which has become to be viewed as a party of partisan obstructionism in Congress, has been increasingly concerned about what a disruptive force the TP has been. Disruptive in that the Tea Party in pursuit of its own highly vocal, extremist agenda has frequently challenged the GOP by putting up or backing its choice of candidates against those supported by the establishment party. This was most clear in the Senate primaries in Kentucky, Nevada, Alaska, and Delaware. In the process the TP has driven the GOP ideological core toward being even more conservative. So now the establishment GOP is trying to figure out how to gracefully retreat and appear to embrace the TP victors. However, it is not that easy. The primary winners seem to prefer going with the old adage, "dance with the one who brought you", meaning the TP not the GOP.
So too the policy agenda of the new "Pledge to America". It has the appearance of playing catch up ball to allow the party establishment to beat its chests that the GOP is returning to its basic conservative principles which TP followers believe have been abandoned. Also, the "Pledge" is intended to have voters believe that Republicans have a policy agenda for "change" and it is not just the party of "no". But the Tea Party and its fellow travelers have been pursuing their own "change" agenda for some time, an agenda presented in simple terms -- anti-big government, anti-spending, anti-deficits, including some social issues such as anti-gay, anti-abortion, and anti-immigration reform. Many, and maybe most, unhappy voters have adopted various parts of this agenda as a reflection of their own concerns. They don't need a late-appearing "Pledge" from the establishment GOP to express their policy choices, general or specific. At the general level, the disgruntled seem to be satisfied with the glowing generalities of the TP agenda. At the level of specific policies included in the "Pledge", it is a case of "too much". Tea Party adherents are not interested in specifics, much less pages of specifics (at least by TP standards), which have not been part of the TP political rhetoric. Again, in other words, "don't bore us with details".
In l960 a small book, THE SEMISOVEREIGN PEOPLE, was written by political scientist Elmer Schattschneider. In it he said that the most devastating form of politics was the politics of irrelevance; that is no one cares. (The book should be required reading for any political science student today.) In many respects the Republican party is irrelevant in this November's elections despite efforts by Michael Steel, John Boehner, and Mitch McConnel to make it otherwise. Certainly the GOP as a party will come out of the elections as the winner with a lot of new seats in the House and Senate to be added to the many easy victories of incumbents re-elected from safe districts. But the new winners will owe more to the tone of politics created and amplified to a sometimes toxic level by the Tea Party rather than to any difference the GOP and its return-to-principles "Pledge" will make. This year, the establishment wing of the GOP, except for its campaign money, is rrelevant.
The problem for the GOP, however, is that the large pool of disgruntled voters , mostly independents and moderate Republicans we are told, have already been given a voice by the Tea Party (TP). This is a basic distinction between the "Pledge" and Newt Gingrich's l994 "Contract with America" which became both the voice and the policy base for the huge GOP midterm election victory that year. Now it is the TP that has come to be viewed as the voice of the disgruntled. Thus, the "Pledge" is likely to be perceived by most as "too much and too late" and as merely an attempt to play catch up ball with the Tea Party. Put another way, the "Pledge" is "too late" for many voters who have already jumped on board the TP train and it has left the station.
And while the TP has been picking up speed over the past six months, the Republican party, which has become to be viewed as a party of partisan obstructionism in Congress, has been increasingly concerned about what a disruptive force the TP has been. Disruptive in that the Tea Party in pursuit of its own highly vocal, extremist agenda has frequently challenged the GOP by putting up or backing its choice of candidates against those supported by the establishment party. This was most clear in the Senate primaries in Kentucky, Nevada, Alaska, and Delaware. In the process the TP has driven the GOP ideological core toward being even more conservative. So now the establishment GOP is trying to figure out how to gracefully retreat and appear to embrace the TP victors. However, it is not that easy. The primary winners seem to prefer going with the old adage, "dance with the one who brought you", meaning the TP not the GOP.
So too the policy agenda of the new "Pledge to America". It has the appearance of playing catch up ball to allow the party establishment to beat its chests that the GOP is returning to its basic conservative principles which TP followers believe have been abandoned. Also, the "Pledge" is intended to have voters believe that Republicans have a policy agenda for "change" and it is not just the party of "no". But the Tea Party and its fellow travelers have been pursuing their own "change" agenda for some time, an agenda presented in simple terms -- anti-big government, anti-spending, anti-deficits, including some social issues such as anti-gay, anti-abortion, and anti-immigration reform. Many, and maybe most, unhappy voters have adopted various parts of this agenda as a reflection of their own concerns. They don't need a late-appearing "Pledge" from the establishment GOP to express their policy choices, general or specific. At the general level, the disgruntled seem to be satisfied with the glowing generalities of the TP agenda. At the level of specific policies included in the "Pledge", it is a case of "too much". Tea Party adherents are not interested in specifics, much less pages of specifics (at least by TP standards), which have not been part of the TP political rhetoric. Again, in other words, "don't bore us with details".
In l960 a small book, THE SEMISOVEREIGN PEOPLE, was written by political scientist Elmer Schattschneider. In it he said that the most devastating form of politics was the politics of irrelevance; that is no one cares. (The book should be required reading for any political science student today.) In many respects the Republican party is irrelevant in this November's elections despite efforts by Michael Steel, John Boehner, and Mitch McConnel to make it otherwise. Certainly the GOP as a party will come out of the elections as the winner with a lot of new seats in the House and Senate to be added to the many easy victories of incumbents re-elected from safe districts. But the new winners will owe more to the tone of politics created and amplified to a sometimes toxic level by the Tea Party rather than to any difference the GOP and its return-to-principles "Pledge" will make. This year, the establishment wing of the GOP, except for its campaign money, is rrelevant.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
IRAQ: WHAT DOES SOVEREIGNTY MEAN?
At this point just about everything to be said has been said about the Tea Party and the candidates it supports in the coming election. So it's time to shift gears and look abroad at our seemingly endless commitment in Iraq.
A puzzling statement was made on August 31by interim Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. That was the date for the final withdrawal of the supposedly last U.S. combat troops from Iraq. The word "supposedly" is used because there has been combat since then, and presumably most U.S. forces are trained for combat roles in one form or another. On that date al-Maliki, in a nationally televised address, made the statement that Iraq is a "sovereign and independent nation". I suppose that under international law that may be true, the Iraqi government has the legal right to exclusive control of its territory and the population within. But there is considerable reason to doubt that such legal sovereignty translates into de facto sovereignty, actual control.
First, the government may have such legal sovereignty but it falls far short on its actual ability to govern and to exercise such control. It will soon be seven months since the parliamentary elections were held and as yet we see little indication that a new government is being formed. On the same day al-Maliki was declaring Iraq's sovereignty, Vice President Joe Biden was in that country trying to nudge the three political power centers to come together in some kind of power sharing agreement. The three centers are a Shiite coalition headed by al-Maliki, a Shiite-Sunni based coalition headed by another one time interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, and the Kurds. While little progress toward forming a new government is evident, perhaps the more important point to be noted is the U.S. intervention to structure a solution. Such high level involvement by this country hardly seems to fit any claim of exclusive authority implied within the term sovereignty.
Second, how sovereign can Iraq be when there are still 50,000 U.S. troops there? The presence and role of these troops open to question one of the implicit conditions of sovereignty--control of the security of the nation. Some of the remaining American forces have already been called upon to help put down anti-government insurgents. The case is made that these troops are there in training and combat support roles and they are scheduled to be withdrawn at the end of next year. The troop withdrawal arrangement is a major part of the status of forces agreement made between the al-Maliki government and former President George W. Bush.
One should not presume that "withdrawal" which we commonly understand to mean complete withdrawal will occur. Don't be surprised if the agreement is explicitly altered or re-interpreted to have a different meaning, one that will allow a substantial number of troops to remain there after 2011. The remaining force would continue to have an assist/support function to back up Iraqi security forces who have not been able to this point to provide an adequate level of security, and it may be a number of years before they can operate on their own.
In short, Iraq's claim of sovereignty appears to fall well short of the independent power and authority we normally associate with the term. Currently it has neither a constituted national government that reflects the results of the last election, nor the means of providing its own security. On the other hand, it may be as sovereign as Afghanistan.
A puzzling statement was made on August 31by interim Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. That was the date for the final withdrawal of the supposedly last U.S. combat troops from Iraq. The word "supposedly" is used because there has been combat since then, and presumably most U.S. forces are trained for combat roles in one form or another. On that date al-Maliki, in a nationally televised address, made the statement that Iraq is a "sovereign and independent nation". I suppose that under international law that may be true, the Iraqi government has the legal right to exclusive control of its territory and the population within. But there is considerable reason to doubt that such legal sovereignty translates into de facto sovereignty, actual control.
First, the government may have such legal sovereignty but it falls far short on its actual ability to govern and to exercise such control. It will soon be seven months since the parliamentary elections were held and as yet we see little indication that a new government is being formed. On the same day al-Maliki was declaring Iraq's sovereignty, Vice President Joe Biden was in that country trying to nudge the three political power centers to come together in some kind of power sharing agreement. The three centers are a Shiite coalition headed by al-Maliki, a Shiite-Sunni based coalition headed by another one time interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, and the Kurds. While little progress toward forming a new government is evident, perhaps the more important point to be noted is the U.S. intervention to structure a solution. Such high level involvement by this country hardly seems to fit any claim of exclusive authority implied within the term sovereignty.
Second, how sovereign can Iraq be when there are still 50,000 U.S. troops there? The presence and role of these troops open to question one of the implicit conditions of sovereignty--control of the security of the nation. Some of the remaining American forces have already been called upon to help put down anti-government insurgents. The case is made that these troops are there in training and combat support roles and they are scheduled to be withdrawn at the end of next year. The troop withdrawal arrangement is a major part of the status of forces agreement made between the al-Maliki government and former President George W. Bush.
One should not presume that "withdrawal" which we commonly understand to mean complete withdrawal will occur. Don't be surprised if the agreement is explicitly altered or re-interpreted to have a different meaning, one that will allow a substantial number of troops to remain there after 2011. The remaining force would continue to have an assist/support function to back up Iraqi security forces who have not been able to this point to provide an adequate level of security, and it may be a number of years before they can operate on their own.
In short, Iraq's claim of sovereignty appears to fall well short of the independent power and authority we normally associate with the term. Currently it has neither a constituted national government that reflects the results of the last election, nor the means of providing its own security. On the other hand, it may be as sovereign as Afghanistan.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Tea Party: A New Puritanism
As noted in my previous posting, the Tea Party (TP) is creating some uncertainty within the Republican party establishment, among GOP congressional leaders, and for would-be presidential aspirants. But the biggest problem for them should be the basic nature of the Tea Party movement itself. It has taken on the character of a puritanical movement. That is, it has a package of grievances it perceives as threats to our governmental and fiscal future and moral values. In political terms, this translates to, "if you want our support you must accept and endorse the entire package or we'll fight against you."
The TP is not a coherent, structured organization. It is an umbrella movement that brings together multiple groups with diverse agendas. The current central core of the TP package is anti-big government and anti-federal spending/deficits. Within this core anti-agenda are President Obama's biggest legislative successes--stimulus spending, health care reform, and financial regulation. His successes are their clubs to beat on him and, it must be said, their rhetoric has gained some traction among voters.
But there is also another set of anti- issues linked to the TP--social policy issues including anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, and anti-immigration reform. There is a tug of war within the TP on whether to include the diverse social issues on their agenda. But TP adherents include groups focused on social policy. If the umbrella TP cuts out such issues, it risks losing those fellow travelers who feel intensely about the social policy agenda. Further, given the inclusion of God and religion in the speeches of some the most visible TP leaders and spear carriers such as Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck and Senate candidates such as Sharron Angle of Nevada and most recently Christine O'Donnell of Delaware, it seems highly unlikely that the TP can confine itself to a secular-only path to national redemption. In short, the whole is defined by the sum of its disparate parts.
If you are skeptical about "puritanical" as a term to describe the TP, you might consider the case of Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts.
Very early this year Brown was elected to fill the vacant seat of the late Senator Ted Kennedy. Brown started his campaign as a clear underdog and his upset victory was attributed in significant part to late support and money from the Tea Party movement. But he quickly earned the ire of the TP in late February when he voted with the Democratic majority to block a filibuster on a $15 billion jobs bill. If that wasn't enough, in the summer he was one of the three Republicans who bucked the party leadership and crossed the aisle to help the Democrats pass the financial reform legislation aimed at curbing the excesses of Wall Street which were at the heart of the financial meltdown in the fall of 2008. His vote on financial regulatory reform, according to the Associated Press, resulted in TP activists protesting outside his office.
Some of Brown's decisions off the floor also drew the ire of the TP and other conservative activists. In April, he chose not to attend a rally on the Boston Common which featured an appearance of Palin, the political darling of the TP. Palin was later quoted as telling Fox News that while Massachusetts may "put up with" Brown, conservatives in Alaska would not. He also traveled to fund raising events for mostly moderate candidates for the Senate and House. Given that he was elected in a state with a Democratic tilt, it might be expected that he would choose to join the shrinking ranks of moderate Republicans and the majority Democrats on some issues rather than support the naked partisan, obstructionist strategy of the GOP congressional leaders.
So far, all of the TP activism has occurred outside of Congress (although sometimes on the sidewalk of the Capitol), with the TP looking in as a very vocal spectator. But it has also had some highly visible successes as a participant in the primaries, O'Donnell being the most recent. If, come November, the TP successes are extended to include getting some of their candidates into the House and/or Senate, the pressure for moving the party policy agenda closer to the TP extremist position will be inside Congress within the party caucuses of the two chambers. Like the Brown experience, the TP "our way or the highway" puritanism also extends to would-be presidential hopefuls. They will be subjected to the same litmus test on policy issues wrapped in an overarching God/religion/country theme.
So while the TP rhetorically portrays itself as wanting to give the country back to the people, return to the Constitution, and restore old values, it appears instead to be a movement that simply wants to define in its own terms what all of this means and support only those who accept what the movement says -- OR ELSE!!
The TP is not a coherent, structured organization. It is an umbrella movement that brings together multiple groups with diverse agendas. The current central core of the TP package is anti-big government and anti-federal spending/deficits. Within this core anti-agenda are President Obama's biggest legislative successes--stimulus spending, health care reform, and financial regulation. His successes are their clubs to beat on him and, it must be said, their rhetoric has gained some traction among voters.
But there is also another set of anti- issues linked to the TP--social policy issues including anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, and anti-immigration reform. There is a tug of war within the TP on whether to include the diverse social issues on their agenda. But TP adherents include groups focused on social policy. If the umbrella TP cuts out such issues, it risks losing those fellow travelers who feel intensely about the social policy agenda. Further, given the inclusion of God and religion in the speeches of some the most visible TP leaders and spear carriers such as Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck and Senate candidates such as Sharron Angle of Nevada and most recently Christine O'Donnell of Delaware, it seems highly unlikely that the TP can confine itself to a secular-only path to national redemption. In short, the whole is defined by the sum of its disparate parts.
If you are skeptical about "puritanical" as a term to describe the TP, you might consider the case of Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts.
Very early this year Brown was elected to fill the vacant seat of the late Senator Ted Kennedy. Brown started his campaign as a clear underdog and his upset victory was attributed in significant part to late support and money from the Tea Party movement. But he quickly earned the ire of the TP in late February when he voted with the Democratic majority to block a filibuster on a $15 billion jobs bill. If that wasn't enough, in the summer he was one of the three Republicans who bucked the party leadership and crossed the aisle to help the Democrats pass the financial reform legislation aimed at curbing the excesses of Wall Street which were at the heart of the financial meltdown in the fall of 2008. His vote on financial regulatory reform, according to the Associated Press, resulted in TP activists protesting outside his office.
Some of Brown's decisions off the floor also drew the ire of the TP and other conservative activists. In April, he chose not to attend a rally on the Boston Common which featured an appearance of Palin, the political darling of the TP. Palin was later quoted as telling Fox News that while Massachusetts may "put up with" Brown, conservatives in Alaska would not. He also traveled to fund raising events for mostly moderate candidates for the Senate and House. Given that he was elected in a state with a Democratic tilt, it might be expected that he would choose to join the shrinking ranks of moderate Republicans and the majority Democrats on some issues rather than support the naked partisan, obstructionist strategy of the GOP congressional leaders.
So far, all of the TP activism has occurred outside of Congress (although sometimes on the sidewalk of the Capitol), with the TP looking in as a very vocal spectator. But it has also had some highly visible successes as a participant in the primaries, O'Donnell being the most recent. If, come November, the TP successes are extended to include getting some of their candidates into the House and/or Senate, the pressure for moving the party policy agenda closer to the TP extremist position will be inside Congress within the party caucuses of the two chambers. Like the Brown experience, the TP "our way or the highway" puritanism also extends to would-be presidential hopefuls. They will be subjected to the same litmus test on policy issues wrapped in an overarching God/religion/country theme.
So while the TP rhetorically portrays itself as wanting to give the country back to the people, return to the Constitution, and restore old values, it appears instead to be a movement that simply wants to define in its own terms what all of this means and support only those who accept what the movement says -- OR ELSE!!
Friday, September 17, 2010
The Tea Party Express: 2010 and 2012
SECURING THE BASE: WHO IS THE FRINGE?
Democrats, we are told, are gleeful over the Tea Party Express (TPE) victories last Tuesday and in earlier primaries, giving hope that the extremism of the TPE will drive Republican moderates and disgruntled independents into the Democratic fold in November. For the Democrats, the big one on Tuesday was the Delaware primary giving Christine O'Donnell, backed by the TPE, a big win over her moderate opponent, Representative Mike Castle, in the race to take over Joe Biden's Senate seat. That, Democrats believe, demonstrates that right wing extremists are taking over the GOP and thus will tip the voter balance enough to give Democrats victories not only in Delaware but also in some other tough places like Nevada and Kentucky. And maybe allow House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to keep her job.
Besides the supposed boon for the Democrats, the post-primary election analyses see the wins by a number of extreme right wing candidates as a GOP headache not only for November but also for Republican leaders in the House and Senate in the next Congress. If TPE candidates win and go to Washington, can the GOP leadership bring the TPE victors into the fold or will they be openly challenged to push the party legislative agenda still farther to the right? So the ultimate question for Republicans in the short term is--who are the ideological fringe, the shrinking number of moderate Republicans or the small number of successful TPE-backed extremists who may be coming to Congress? I say "small" because, even if they all win, they will represent only a small fraction of the House and Senate membership. The two chambers will still be overwhelmingly dominated by incumbents. But even if only a small number, they certainly have proven to be vocal, thus posing a considerable annoyance at least to GOP congressional leaders whether in the majority or minority. And, of course, the voices of any new TPE members will be reinforced by outside cheerleaders like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.
For President Obama, GOP obstructionism has already been a problem in getting important pieces of his economic recovery program through Congress, particularly in the Senate where the 60-vote rule has served the Republican minority well as the instrument of obstruction. Obama's problem is likely to be even greater if there is a small but vocal group of new right wing extremists pushing their definition of "change" on their mainstream conservative brethren.
But going beyond the many analyses of what lies ahead in elections just over six weeks away is what all of the sound and fury of the TPE and its fellow travelers may mean for the longer term, the presidential elections of 2012. The ideological trajectory of the Republican party seems to be clearly heading in the direction of the right wing extremists, as exemplified by the Tea Party and its adherents. Without knowing how this November's elections will turn out, GOP presidential hopefuls already must calculate whether to move further to the right or leave room for attracting the party's moderate voters and independents. Such calculating is part of the basic strategy of elective politics--first secure the base. One only has to listen to Newt Gingrich with his increasingly outrageous rhetoric to see where he thinks the party base lies. For Sarah Palin, there's no problem. She has helped define the far right base. For other would-be's like Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee, it is a bit trickier. While they have certainly been right of center, they do not appear as yet to have committed themselves to the more extreme right policy positions or the Gingrich-like vocalizing , although Romney was quick to endorse O'Donnell after her victory. And then, of course, there is Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina who has so far confined himself to being a TPE spear carrier in the primaries but may become more ambitious in the near future.
The bottom line for all of the 2012 Republican presidential hopefuls, however, is not how the TPE and its adherents do in November. Win or lose, the TPE has already clearly demonstrated that they can make a significant difference and it is not likely to go away. The message is that the Republican voter base has shifted farther to the right and any presidential hopeful who ignores that does so at his or her peril. If Democrats are correct in their thinking that the right wing extremism displayed by the TPE will help them this year, then the continual sliding of the GOP to the right should also serve Obama well in 2012.
Democrats, we are told, are gleeful over the Tea Party Express (TPE) victories last Tuesday and in earlier primaries, giving hope that the extremism of the TPE will drive Republican moderates and disgruntled independents into the Democratic fold in November. For the Democrats, the big one on Tuesday was the Delaware primary giving Christine O'Donnell, backed by the TPE, a big win over her moderate opponent, Representative Mike Castle, in the race to take over Joe Biden's Senate seat. That, Democrats believe, demonstrates that right wing extremists are taking over the GOP and thus will tip the voter balance enough to give Democrats victories not only in Delaware but also in some other tough places like Nevada and Kentucky. And maybe allow House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to keep her job.
Besides the supposed boon for the Democrats, the post-primary election analyses see the wins by a number of extreme right wing candidates as a GOP headache not only for November but also for Republican leaders in the House and Senate in the next Congress. If TPE candidates win and go to Washington, can the GOP leadership bring the TPE victors into the fold or will they be openly challenged to push the party legislative agenda still farther to the right? So the ultimate question for Republicans in the short term is--who are the ideological fringe, the shrinking number of moderate Republicans or the small number of successful TPE-backed extremists who may be coming to Congress? I say "small" because, even if they all win, they will represent only a small fraction of the House and Senate membership. The two chambers will still be overwhelmingly dominated by incumbents. But even if only a small number, they certainly have proven to be vocal, thus posing a considerable annoyance at least to GOP congressional leaders whether in the majority or minority. And, of course, the voices of any new TPE members will be reinforced by outside cheerleaders like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.
For President Obama, GOP obstructionism has already been a problem in getting important pieces of his economic recovery program through Congress, particularly in the Senate where the 60-vote rule has served the Republican minority well as the instrument of obstruction. Obama's problem is likely to be even greater if there is a small but vocal group of new right wing extremists pushing their definition of "change" on their mainstream conservative brethren.
But going beyond the many analyses of what lies ahead in elections just over six weeks away is what all of the sound and fury of the TPE and its fellow travelers may mean for the longer term, the presidential elections of 2012. The ideological trajectory of the Republican party seems to be clearly heading in the direction of the right wing extremists, as exemplified by the Tea Party and its adherents. Without knowing how this November's elections will turn out, GOP presidential hopefuls already must calculate whether to move further to the right or leave room for attracting the party's moderate voters and independents. Such calculating is part of the basic strategy of elective politics--first secure the base. One only has to listen to Newt Gingrich with his increasingly outrageous rhetoric to see where he thinks the party base lies. For Sarah Palin, there's no problem. She has helped define the far right base. For other would-be's like Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee, it is a bit trickier. While they have certainly been right of center, they do not appear as yet to have committed themselves to the more extreme right policy positions or the Gingrich-like vocalizing , although Romney was quick to endorse O'Donnell after her victory. And then, of course, there is Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina who has so far confined himself to being a TPE spear carrier in the primaries but may become more ambitious in the near future.
The bottom line for all of the 2012 Republican presidential hopefuls, however, is not how the TPE and its adherents do in November. Win or lose, the TPE has already clearly demonstrated that they can make a significant difference and it is not likely to go away. The message is that the Republican voter base has shifted farther to the right and any presidential hopeful who ignores that does so at his or her peril. If Democrats are correct in their thinking that the right wing extremism displayed by the TPE will help them this year, then the continual sliding of the GOP to the right should also serve Obama well in 2012.
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