Month: July 2021

CLUELESS GOP FRESHMEN RAKE IN THE CASH BY SAYING DUMB STUFF

Based on media attention and fundraising prowess, many of today’s Republican congressional “stars” are knucklehead neophytes who make up for a lack of public policy chops by mastering the dark arts of outrage and chicanery. 

Think Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. She’s the QAnon alum from Georgia who, during her first few months in office, managed to insult more than a quorum of the House and Senate. She was elected in 2020 after endorsing a call for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s execution.

Although MTG, as headline writers call her, is clearly driving the clown car, she is not alone in the vehicle.  Riding shotgun is Colorado’s latest gift to Congress, Lauren Boebert who created all sorts of pandemonium when she tried to smuggle a loaded handgun onto the House floor. Then there is North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn, the House’s youngest member at 25. He insists Dr. Anthony Fauci is a “pawn in the Chinese Communist Party,” and that Sen. Cory Booker is working to “ruin white males.” 

Although these fumbling fledgling freshmen have yet to perform a substantive legislative act, their ability to monetize the preposterous placed them in the House’s top five percent of campaign fundraisers. In the first quarter of 2021, MTG raised $3.2 million, mostly from small dollar donors. The only House member to outraise her was the person she wanted killed; Speaker Pelosi at $4 million. 

In another era, very few of us would have even been aware of someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene.  Why is that? Well, once upon a time, members of Congress were ordained to venerate their high offices by working hard, speaking less, and generally earning respect through a persona of thoughtfulness and integrity.  All that has gone the way of rotary phones and floppy disks.

Sam Rayburn, the legendary House speaker during the Franklin Roosevelt era, crafted his own orientation session for newly elected members. According to his biographers, Rayburn listened to their plans for changing the world overnight. Then, he offered them a glass of bourbon and this advice: “You know here in Congress there are 435 prima donnas and they all can’t be lead horses. If you want to get along, you have to go along.” 

For decades, new senators were given information packets that explained the norms of Congress.  Following Rayburn’s equestrian theme, the briefing quoted the advice an unnamed senator offered new members back in the 1950s. He said Congress was composed of two kinds of people, “show horses and work horses. If you want to get your name in the papers, be a show horse. If you want to gain the respect of your colleagues, keep quiet and be a work horse.”

The late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy waited 17 months after he was first elected to speak on the floor of that chamber. And he began his primordial speech by apologizing for not waiting longer.  “. . .It is with some hesitation that I rise to speak on the pending legislation before the Senate. A freshman Senator should be seen, not heard; should learn, and not teach.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene is no Ted Kennedy.  She filed articles of impeachment against President Biden on his first full day in office, much to the embarrassment of House GOP leaders.  She publicly ridiculed the transgender daughter of a congressional colleague. She compared the House’s mandatory mask mandate to the Holocaust. Just last week, she tweeted that COVID-19 won’t hurt you unless you are obese or over 65, provoking Twitter to suspend her account for 12 hours. As discipline for her incorrigible outrageousness, the House voted in February to remove Greene from all committees.

That meant MTG suddenly had more time to convert that outrageousness into campaign donations.  Two weeks after the House voted to banish her from all committees, Greene’s popularity among Republicans went up 11 percentage points, and her national recognition gained 14 points.  That in turn led to more than 100,000 donors sending her an average of $32.

As Vox’s Gregory Svirnovskiy noted, MTG’s fundraising haul is “a reminder that gaining notoriety on conservative media – rather than making efforts to pass meaningful legislation – is what holds real value in the modern Republican Party.  

That’s why Rep. Cawthorn, the 25-year-old from North Carolina, decided to forgo the hiring of legislative analysts in favor of a staff focused only on communication. He, like Greene and Boebert, make no pretense of passing laws. To them, it’s all about marketing themselves by doing crazy stuff.  As their mentor, Donald Trump, taught them, there is a rabid, hateful, antivaxxer base out there that won’t hesitate to share their credit card numbers with anyone promising to blow the system up. 

Another key player in the Trumpian school of outrage over substance is, of course, Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz.   Although under federal investigation involving sex trafficking allegations, he raised $1.8 million in the first quarter, mostly by preaching the Gospel According to Trump and mouthing whatever other silly narratives struck his fancy.  In his recently released book, Firebrand, Gaetz spells out his formula for political success: “Why raise money to advertise on the news channels when I can make the news? And if you aren’t making the news, you aren’t governing.”

Take one more look at that last sentence to fully grasp the political philosophy of this young crowd of Republican influencers: “And if you aren’t making the news, you aren’t governing.” Back in the 18th Century, our founders struggled to create a new system of governance. They turned to the philosophies of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. They talked about “natural rights”, about a “social contract”, and “popular sovereignty”. They believed that the best form of governance is when elected leaders represent the interests of the people, a notion known then as republicanism. After intense thought and debate, they put it all together, this new concept of governing. That was the beginning of the United States of America.

Then, 245 years later, comes a clarion call for a totally new concept of government. And what is it? What does the trumpet sound? “If you aren’t making the news, you aren’t governing.”

God help us all if these new Republican firebrands ever take over.    

THANKS TO THE SUPREME COURT, GOP MOVES CLOSER TO MAKING BLACK VOTES NOT COUNT

The racial reckoning ignited by George Floyd’s murder entered its second year with a severe case of whiplash. In a rare bipartisan vote, Congress designated Juneteenth as a national holiday, marking the end of slavery 156 years ago. Two weeks later, the Supreme Court took a sledge hammer to one of this country’s premiere civil rights laws.

As if that were not enough to provoke metaphysical vertigo, many of the Republicans who voted for the Juneteenth holiday are hellbent on keeping the subject of racial strife – past and present – out of public school classrooms.  They insist that systemic racism ended a long time ago and teachers should not talk about it.

So here’s a subversive extra credit assignment for high school students:  Download the Supreme Court’s recent decision eviscerating the Voting Rights Act (VRA), and then, with a highlighter, mark every past and present example of systemic racism you can find. (Tip: don’t forget to read Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent, even if you have to buy a second highlighter.) When you return to school this fall, quietly drop your work on the teacher’s desk.  If you live in a red state and like your teacher, put it in a plain paper bag.

The VRA was all about systemic racism. Long seen as the crown jewel of the civil rights movement, this powerful 1965 law was designed to quash a multitude of systems that kept Black people from voting. The law’s teeth were divided between two chapters. One of them required a number of southern states with a history of discrimination to have any new voting law approved by the Justice Department. Between 1965 and 2006, that department blocked nearly 1,200 discriminatory voting laws from taking effect (P. 8 of Kagan dissent).  

Eight years ago, however, the Supreme Court tossed that entire chapter out, saying that “times have changed,” and that states no longer need Justice Department approval on voting regulations.  To no surprise of anyone paying attention, the dearth of new discriminatory voting laws had little to do with changing times.  It was all about preclearance from the Justice Department.  Within days of that 2013 decision, Caucasian-centric states started cranking out election laws making it more difficult for people of color to vote.  That production line continues to operate at full speed.

The only solace was the remaining VRA chapter on enforcement, the one that prohibits states from having any election practice that “results in a denial or abridgement” to vote on the basis of race. In theory, the courts could strike down laws that brought about that kind of a discriminatory result. Until now, that is.  In its final decision of this year’s term, the Supreme Court used an Arizona case to effectively slam the door on the law’s only remaining enforcement mechanism.

That 6-3 ruling came from Justice Samuel Alito and five fellow conservative justices, all rabid adherents of deciding cases by the precise text of a statute, rather than attaching their own meaning to a law.  Amazingly, they ignored the law’s singular threshold for finding an election regulation to be discriminatory, namely that it “results in a denial or abridgement” of voting rights on the basis of race.  Instead, the majority upheld two Arizona election regulations that resulted in a disparate impact on the voting rights of Blacks, Latinos and American Indians (P. 32 of Kagan dissent). Why? Because, said the court, there was no proof that those results were motivated by an intent to discriminate.  Congress amended the VRA back in 1982 to make it clear that the standard of enforcement of a voting law is whether it has a discriminatory impact on the basis of race, regardless of motive.  

At issue in the Arizona case were two new election laws.  One made it a crime for people to pick up sealed absentee ballots and deliver them to a collection box or polling place. The other voided all ballots cast by voters in the wrong precinct. There was evidence that both laws impacted Black, Latino and American Indian voters far more than it affected whites.  

But, but, but, say Alito and his textualist buddies, the state had a noble intent with these laws, namely to prevent voter fraud, although there have been zero instances of such fraud involving out-of-precinct voting and ballot collection.   

Although intent is not an element in VRA enforcement, it doesn’t take a think tank to figure out what is motivating an avalanche of state election restrictions aimed at making it more difficult for minority voters to cast a ballot.  Most people of color vote for Democrats. Keeping them away from the polls is good for Republicans.

In making their case for these two Arizona laws, GOP legislators openly argued that the restrictions are needed to damage the Democrats’ get-out-the-vote campaigns.  During oral arguments at the Supreme Court, Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked an attorney for the Republican National Committee why the party has an interest in the litigation.  The answer: the restrictions reduce Democratic votes and “politics is a zero sum game.”

In other words, the party of Lincoln is saying, in effect: “Nothing personal, Black people. We want to keep you from voting because most of you support Democrats. It’s got nothing to do with race.” The enormity of this court decision reaches far beyond Arizona.  The flood gates in every red state are wide open to unlimited obnoxiousness when it comes to keeping racial minorities away from the polls.  So far in 2021, 28 restrictive voting laws have been passed in 17 states, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

There is a gravestone in a Hattiesburg, Mississippi cemetery that bares this inscription: “If you don’t vote, you don’t count.” According to The Nation, buried in that grave is Vernon Dahmer, a voting rights activist and Hattiesburg NAACP chapter president back in the 1960s. Just months after the VRA was passed, Dahmer died when his home was firebombed by Klansmen.

Fifty-six years later, the future of the Republican Party depends on making sure that millions of non-white voters don’t count.  

Even with Juneteenth as a federal holiday, systemic racism marches on. And on. And on.