Bush / GOP

A new Wall Street Journal Online/Harris health-care poll found that 49% of Americans do not trust President Bush when it comes to health-care reform. Only 9% trust him “a great deal.” Among 2008 presidential hopefuls, Hilary Clinton ranks highest in voter confidence, with 48% saying they have a great deal or some trust in her ability to effect health-care reform.

Frank Rich, Vanity Fair and now Rolling Stone.  Increasingly, hard-hitting, issues-bases reporting is coming from sources once considered entertainment-focused.  Matt Tabibi's Rolling Stone magazine blog looks at Bush and the Estate Tax, and he's not talking about the 90s alternative rock band.  Warning: Mr. Tababi's language is not family friendly:

Not only does [the President's proposed FY 2008 budget] make many of Bush's tax cuts permanent, but it envisions a complete repeal of the Estate Tax, which mainly affects only those who are in the top two-tenths of the top one percent of the richest people in this country. The proposed savings from the cuts over the next decade are about $442 billion, or just slightly less than the amount of the annual defense budget (minus Iraq war expenses). But what's interesting about these cuts are how Bush plans to pay for them.

Sanders's office came up with some interesting numbers here. If the Estate Tax were to be repealed completely, the estimated savings to just one family -- the Walton family, the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune -- would be about $32.7 billion dollars over the next ten years.

The proposed reductions to Medicaid over the same time frame? $28 billion.

Or how about this: if the Estate Tax goes, the heirs to the Mars candy corporation -- some of the world's evilest scumbags, incidentally, routinely ripped by human rights organizations for trafficking in child labor to work cocoa farms in places like Cote D'Ivoire -- if the estate tax goes, those assholes will receive about $11.7 billion in tax breaks. That's more than three times the amount Bush wants to cut from the VA budget ($3.4 billion) over the same time period.

Some other notable estimate estate tax breaks, versus corresponding cuts:

• Cox family (Cox cable TV) receives $9.7 billion tax break while education would get $1.5 billion in cuts
• Nordstrom family (Nordstrom dept. stores) receives $826.5 million tax break while Community Service Block Grants would be eliminated, a $630 million cut
• Ernest Gallo family (shitty wines) receives a $468.4 million cut while LIHEAP (heating oil to poor) would get a $420 million cut

Read more...

And maybe misrepresenting your faith...

As we look ahead to the end of the Fidel Castro era, NDN continues to be a leading voice in the debate over the future of US-Cuban relations.  At the same time, the White House has been completely withdrawn at this critical time.  Who would have expected impotence and apparent indifference from the Bush Administration at a time when Fidel Castro's ill health has forced him to transfer power to his younger brother Raul. Even the top State Department Aide for Latin America admits that the administration has been sitting on its hands, waiting for an actionable moment:

"We don't feel that we've lost an important moment, because quite frankly, we don't see any significant possibility of change of any kind until Fidel is gone," Tom Shannon, the top State Department aide for Latin America, says...

But many observers say the post-Fidel era has begun _ with Raul Castro clearly in control.

This inaction is especially troubling at a time when there are bills in Congress, including one endorsed by NDN, to ease travel restrictions and increase contact between Cubans on the island and Cuban-Americans in the United States. 

If this story from the AP is any indication, President Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security is more politically poisonous than ever:  An advocate of partially privatizing Social Security, nominated by President Bush to become deputy director of the half-billion-dollar retirement income program, was rejected Wednesday by Senate Democrats.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said his panel will neither consider nor hold hearings on Bush's choice of Andrew Biggs, who was an outspoken enthusiast behind the president's ill-fated plan two years ago to let people divert some of their Social Security taxes into private investment accounts.

"It's a bad idea to give the No. 2 position at the Social Security Administration to someone who still supports that failed proposal," Baucus said.

There is a central dynamic in American politics today, one that is driving everything else - the enthusiastic repudiation of Bush era ideology and politics by leaders of both parties.   It is my belief that the failings of the Bush era, historic by any standard, will haunt by conservatism and the Republican Party for many years to come.  And as we head into 2008, it will be very difficult for the Republican Presidentials to distance themselves from this disapointing era, particularly the man who has been their primary enabled, John McCain.

To see how hard this is going to be for McCain, check out this tortured excerpt from an AP piece, via CNN:

BLUFFTON, South Carolina (AP) -- Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Monday the war in Iraq has been mismanaged for years and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will be remembered as one of the worst in history.

"We are paying a very heavy price for the mismanagement -- that's the kindest word I can give you -- of Donald Rumsfeld, of this war," the Arizona senator said.

"The price is very, very heavy and I regret it enormously." McCain told an overflow crowd of more than 800 at a retirement community near Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.

McCain, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, complained that Rumsfeld never put enough troops on the ground to succeed in Iraq.

"I think that Donald Rumsfeld will go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history," McCain said to applause.

The comments were in sharp contrast to McCain's statement when Rumsfeld resigned in November, and failed to address the reality that President Bush is the commander in chief.

"While Secretary Rumsfeld and I have had our differences, he deserves Americans' respect and gratitude for his many years of public service," McCain said last year when Rumsfeld stepped down.

My guess is that by the end of this year the Republican Presidential Primary will be a race to distance one self from Bush himself, and not just his politics.  Of course this won't be pretty or easy, and makes the GOP path to the White House in 2008 a hard one.

If you didn't see Chuck Hagel yesterday, I strongly recommend watching his opening statement.  It is powerful. 

If he runs for President he is going to be a formidable candidate.

US politics 2007 is being driven by one central force - the ongoing and deepening repudiation of the Bush Era, its politics and ideology.  It is as if we have to struggle, each day, to toss off the language, the arguments, the reality of this disapointing era, as Bush and his team desperately try to stop the ongoing assault on their governing construct and world view. 

Look at what has happened in recent weeks, and how the media is handling it all.  A majority of Congress, including prominent Republicans, rebuke the President on Iraq.  The Post frontpages a story about how our vets aren't getting the medical treatment they deserve.  The Times runs yet another story about how Iran isn't going away, and that any plan that we may have for the future of the Middle East must involve them. The Administration cuts a deal with another one of his Axes of Evil, North Korea, and then is pummled by the right, particularly by their own former UN Ambassador.  Today Russert destroyed Tony Snow on the inept stage management of the this week's version of its "Iran is the enemy" campaign, and on the same show, Senator Hagel, a likely Republican Presidential candidate, suggests all this Iran talk is a diversion to keep people's attention from the troubles in Iraq and the Iraq votes this week.  Libby's defense is that Bush and his team scapegoated him to save Rove.  A recent NIE rejected the Administration's assertion that Iran was driving the violence in Iraq, and a Pentagon Inspector General report concluded that Doug Feith, a leader of the neocon faction inside the Administration, created an alternative intelligence process in the runup to the Iraq War that systemically, well, how should we say? Lied.....

It is remarkable how far they've fallen. They have become literally un-believable.  In his interview on Russert this morning, Tony Snow kept saying things that didn't make any sense.  So why is Iran different from North Korea? Or from Russia during the Cold War? We can talk to them but not to Iran.  No real answer for that one.  He refered to our need to take on the enemy in Iraq.  But who exactly is this enemy Tony, and who exactly are our troops fighting there? And Tony why do we scream bloody murder about possible aid by Iran of the more radical Shiite elements in Iraq, but say nothing when our Sunni "allies" in the region help fund groups who are killing many more people, and more Americans, than the Shiites groups are? And why do we stay silent when a regional Sunni television station, currently aided by the Egyptian government, broadcasts segments glorifying the killing of Shiites and Americans? Or stay silent when the Pakistani Intelligence Services, who like the increasingly famous Iranian Quds force, are an integral part of their government, aids the Taliban, the group that housed and aided the 9/11 terrorists? 

Essentially their answer to everything now is that we have to win the war, pulling the troops out will lead to regional chaos and that we need to support the troops.  The ground they have to work from has gotten so small.  But even this one core argument isn't what it was, and has lost a great deal of its potency.  In listening to Snow this morning describe what would happen if we pulled out the troops - Al Qaeda growing in strength, regional actors moving into a failed state, extremists empowered - it sounded as if he was describing Iraq today, as it already is.  And the stories in recent days about the lack of adequate care for troops returning home, rotations being shortened, shortages of critical body and vehicular armor on the ground in Iraq, Generals warning that the Army is on the verge of breaking - and then, even the Administration's claim that they are supporting the troops begins to falls apart.  Once that happens they will have no ground left to stand on. 

It is now clear that the Administration is also in the proces of losing the battle for ideological control of the country.  Their arguments, words, frames, constructs, no longer make sense.  What happened in Congress on Friday and Saturday was just another manifestation of the main dynamic driving American politics today, the repudiation of Bush era politics and governing philosophy.  We are moving on to a new era, slowly, more slowly than is good for the country, but we are moving on.  

A final hearty congratulations to the Congressional leaders of both parties who are doing the hard work of making Bush and his allies history.  This is tough stuff, and as I sit here tonight I admit I am a little amazed at what Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi pulled off this week.  It was no easy thing, but it also showed that there are many tough but important battles ahead.

As the House is wrapping up 3 days of debate on a non-binding resolution opposing the President's decision to send roughly 20,000 more US troops to Baghdad, I wanted to share with you three of the most absurd moments of the debate. 

First, Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) takes a machete to logic and argues that a vote to rebuke the President is actually a vote for the stay the course in Iraq.  I wish this was tongue-in-cheek, but I'm not sure the earnest, Rand Corporation-quoting, "Democrat Party"-referencing, gentleman from Sea island, Georgia is capable of it.

Next, we have Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) of anti-Muslim discrimination fame.  Here's Virgil explaining how voting for the resolution would condemn us to live in a country where our money reads "In Mohammed We Trust," and "the green crescent flag of Islam flies over the Capitol and the White House."  Virgil Goode has no idea the 19th century is over, really. 

Finally, there is Rep. Don Young (R-AK), who quoted a fake Abraham Lincoln quote, and now refuses to retract it.

Our good friend Tom Schaller has a new weekly column with Baltimore Sun.  This first one is a good one:

America's view of Republicans crumbles in Iraq

Thomas F. Schaller

February 14, 2007

According to the latest Gallup survey, Republican self-identification has declined nationally and in almost every American state. Why? The short answer is that President Bush's war of choice in Iraq has destroyed the partisan brand Republicans spent the past four decades building.

That brand was based upon four pillars: that Republicans are more trustworthy on defense and military issues; that they know when and where markets can replace or improve government; that they are more competent administrators of those functions government can't privatize; and, finally, that their public philosophy is imbued with moral authority. The war demolished all four claims.

In uniform or out, Americans think Iraq is a disaster, oppose escalation and blame Mr. Bush and his party for the mess in Mesopotamia. Heading into the 2006 mid-terms, polls showed Republicans trailing Democrats as the party most trusted to handle Iraq and terrorism. Nationally, Mr. Bush's war approval ratings hover around 30 percent.

Military members are skeptical, too. A Military Times poll released in December revealed that only 35 percent of military members approved of the president's handling of the war - despite the fact that 46 percent of them are self-identified Republicans (down from 60 percent in previous Military Times polls) while just 16 percent are Democrats. According to a recent Zogby survey of troops serving in Iraq, 72 percent want American forces home within a year.

Congressional hearings last week on war contracting dispel the second claim. Billions of dollars appropriated for Iraq cannot be accounted for, and contracts have been doled out with limited oversight and little regard for competitiveness.

Robert Greenwald's powerful documentary Iraq for Sale exposes many of the absurdities. You wouldn't sign a three-year, $250,000 lease for a vehicle you could buy outright for $50,000, but our government does. The "cost-plus" procurement protocol pays contractors a fixed percentage on top of whatever they spend, encouraging them to spend as much and as inefficiently as possible. So rather than vehicles with minor mechanical damage being repaired, many are junked in favor of expensive replacements.

Meanwhile, the same troops Mr. Bush brags he will do "whatever it takes" to support often wait in two-hour chow lines, or shower in bacteria-contaminated water. "The hearings and the introduction of legislation, while long overdue, will begin to have an immediate effect on those who have been ruthless and relentless in their profiteering," Mr. Greenwald says hopefully.

As for the third pillar - superior management skills - there's insufficient space on this page to revisit the myriad blunders made by America's civilian leaders.

Little foresight was given to post-invasion scenarios. Disbanding the Iraqi army was an early, colossal mistake. We had too few troops there, as L. Paul Bremer III, former civilian administrator of Iraq, later admitted. And the torture policies on view at Abu Ghraib gave terrorists a fantastic recruiting tool.

Notice, too, how management "success" has been steadily defined downward: from disarming an unarmed Saddam Hussein, to bringing liberation and democratization, to establishing basic security, to avoiding a domestic civil war, to "holding and clearing" Baghdad, to the current goal of preventing a regional conflagration that wouldn't be imminent had we not gone to Iraq in the first place. Talk about the soft bigotry of low - and lowering - expectations.

Finally, there is the war's morality. In what moral system is it justified to wage a war without paying for it? Mr. Bush tormented Sen. John Kerry in 2004 for "voting for before voting against" funding the war. But Mr. Kerry voted for a version of the $87 billion appropriation bill that also raised revenues to pay for it. Instead, we pile the war's costs atop our mountainous national debt, leaving future generations to pay for it later - plus interest.

The administration is asking for another $245 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan - an amount that, were it set aside and allowed to accrue interest, could pay the entire budget of a mid-size state like Maryland for almost a decade. This sum, too, will be added to America's giant credit card bill - an act of moral cowardice from the same White House that gives lectures about the sanctity of marriage and embryonic stem cells.

The Iraq war's human consequences abroad are far more tragic than any impact they are having on partisan politics at home. But for Republicans, the last casualty of Mr. Bush's war of choice may be the party itself.

Thomas F. Schaller is an associate professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and author of "Whistling Past Dixie." His e-mail is schaller67@hotmail.com. His column appears Wednesdays in The Sun.