P.M. Carpenter

Mayor de Blasio takes a dive

Amusing:

A tale that began with a Shakespearean touch — the mayor, on national television, denying Mrs. Clinton, his former boss, an endorsement on the day she announced her candidacy — appears to be ending with a murmur: Mr. de Blasio is in discussions with Mrs. Clinton’s camp about an endorsement….

Some Democrats say they are now watching for a subtle sign: whether Mr. de Blasio is allowed to make his endorsement alongside Mrs. Clinton, or if the announcement comes via news release, the type of distinction that can speak volumes in political circles.

Would the first option not be a trifle embarrassing? Not in politics, it wouldn't. As for the second option, volumes have already spoken.

 

Clinton on Sanders - overkill, as usual

Literally and figuratively, he can't win:

After weeks of inching toward a more aggressive posture against Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Sanders is now walking a fine line: He is trying to draw sharp contrasts between their records, yet not attack her on a personal level. He questions her political shifts on the Keystone XL oil pipeline, the Pacific Rim free trade deal and same-sex marriage rights, for instance, while trying to avoid impugning her honesty and judgment, a favorite Republican tactic.

It was expected of the Clinton campaign to react as it did: "It’s a shame Senator Sanders’s campaign has decided to make the campaign about political attacks." Standard-issue bullshit. But Bernie, to an unknown numerical extent, is suffering even worse from his own side. Pramila Jayapal, a "Washington State senator who is a prominent Sanders supporter in Seattle," told the NY Times — she actually told the Times — that "Denigrating Mrs. Clinton as a purveyor of 'establishment politics' struck [her] as name-calling."

I would give anything to have seen the look on the face of Sanders' top adviser, Tad Devine, when he read that. Could such disbelief have any precedent?

What wasn't expected — well, not much — was that the Clinton campaign would, this time around and so soon, live up to its Nixonian reputation; in particular, obsessing in truly malevolent ways about an already losing opposition, which the Nixon campaign so infamously did in 1972. Sexism, shouts Hillary from the stump about Bernie — which is of course asinine, pathetic overkill, and, as noted, rather Nixonian.

The nomination is hers — for Christ's sake it is already hers — and yet Hillary and her staff are hellbent on alienating clearer heads than Ms. Jayapal's. It's just the nature of the Nixonlike Clinton machine; something dark, brooding, and ultimately self-destructive. The characteristic can't hurt Hillary now, because Bernie never had a chance. And it won't hurt her in the general, because her Republican opposition is equally self-futile. But in time, it always catches up to the culprit, and the clock will start running 20 January 2017. Should be fascinating to watch what I quite expect then — presidential history aping itself.

 

Dems slated to save the GOP's bacon - again

I agree with Rand Paul. "Until people wake up and say [swift passage of the budget deal] is wrong for the country," he told The Hill, it should be "delay[ed]" and "shout[ed] about" — because, as Paul also said, "This is exactly the opposite of what every conservative Republican in America wants."

Exactly. Because it's right for the country. So naturally Republicans are expected to vote overwhelmingly against it.

"Two House Freedom Caucus members told The Hill as many as 100 House Republicans could ultimately vote for the deal," which is only 40 percent of the GOP conference. Politico reports that "Senior GOP lawmakers estimate that between 60 and 120 Republicans will vote for the package as is," which means as little as one-quarter of the GOP conference will vote aye. This leaves "Democrats to supply the vast majority of votes."

Hence the minority party is likely to ensure swift passage of the crisis-averting budget deal, while the majority party votes to kill it. And who will get credit for passing the deal, for rescuing the country from needless pain, for proving that they can "govern" responsibly? Why of course: the irresponsible, pain-inflicting majority party. And so Democrats will have made the country safe for yet more democracy — of the Republican variety, in which the minority party does the work, and the anarchic majority gets the credit.

This has got to stop. At some point, this simply must stop. Great fanfare preceded the 2014 elections, and the fanfare was all about how Republicans, in control of both houses, would govern responsibly. They would prove they could govern. They promised no more shenanigans, no more shutdowns, no more debt-ceiling crises. Mr. or Mrs. Straight Arrow, that would be your average Republican member of the 114th Congress. And now here they are, crooked, bent, wobbly and warped as ever — missing every judicious target as their twisted shafts again hurl straight into a bottomless nihilism.

Yet it won't stop. For Democrats are always there to bail them out. "Democratic leaders are not formally whipping Wednesday’s vote," reports The Hill, "but they are keeping a vote count to ensure the package passes." Why not? Why not allow the adolescent, incorrigible GOP hooligans to steal a third car, a fourth and a fifth; to commit an endless string of unconscionable felonies with utter impunity? Mom and dad will always be there to spring them. Not to worry, say the delinquents; our adult supervision, such as it is, is most forgiving.

At the very least, Democrats should delay passage (as Rand Paul advises) until Republicans feel the pain. Let the headlines scream: GOP FAILS AGAIN … GOP GOVT SHUTDOWN AGAIN A POSSIBILITY … GOP DEBT-CRISIS AGAIN ON THE TABLE. Drag the case out until it is Paul Ryan's to adjudicate. Introduce the new speaker, right off the bat, to the stinking world of beastly Republican "governance."

Let this persist a few days. Then pass it. That's the "should" of the very least of this thing. But the should won't be, because adult Democrats are chronic enablers.

 

The bright side of the NYT/CBS poll: at least it will alter Trump's script

Jeb Bush has got to be thinking of 2012, and the last man standing. The big difference is, Mitt Romney disposed of his chief opponents, one by one, with predatory alacrity. When he saw a threat, out came the negative cash, and the threat was no more. Bush is betting on natural attrition alone.

Trump held on for months — at the top, nationally — and only now is Carson eclipsing him, according to the latest NYT/CBS poll. Carson's problem, however, is that his support is soft: only 20 percent of his backers are solidly in his camp. Among Trump's supporters, more than half are there. And with only 28 percent of Republicans saying their "minds were made up," Trump still has abundant room to grow. He's a far better demagogue than Carson.

Trump's slippage may also inspire him to innovate (market conditions being what they are). It's hard to sustain a presidential campaign on the singular slogan, "My soap is the #1 seller in America." With no other message, as soon as Trump isn't #1, he loses his reason for being, and thus his campaign.

For now, Trump's response to his becoming #2 is mostly an honest one (never a particularly good idea in politics): "I don't get it," he said today on "Morning Joe." He also hit Carson on his varying abortion stances, but that, I presume, was just a warm-up.

Trump either goes negative in a big way, or he dies. Just like Jeb Bush.

 

Timid Ryan of Athens

About the budget agreement, Paul Ryan said to reporters:

This is not the way to do the people's business. And under new management we are not going to do the people's business this way.

Departing, Ryan was overheard adding, about the new management's old conference:

Your reeking villainy. Live loath'd and long,
Most smiling, smooth, detested parasites,
Courteous destroyers, affable wolves, meek bears,
You fools of fortune, trencher friends, time's flies,
Cap and knee slaves, vapours, and minute-jacks!

Yes, things should go swimmingly for Speaker Ryan.

 

Just print the goddamn thing

I don't understand the purpose of bowdlerized epithets.

CNN just interviewed the fearless Lindsey Graham, below whom there appeared CNN's delicate synopsis: "GRAHAM: AMERICA'S ISIS STRATEGY IS 'HALF-A**'" Half-apt? Half-act? Does half-a** really spare the sensitivities of those would be offended by the half-assed Lindsey Graham's vernacular putdown?

I mean, what of Ben Carson's crowd? Must it preemptively shield its eyes from the bottom third of every news screen? Or, with hairy digits does it scratch its ribs in translating wonder or denial? — we hereby vow we know not what "half-a**" means, and so we still roam with Jesus and we're still going to heaven.

I don't get it.

 

Is a "reassessment" of the Boehner era in order?

ABC News' Rick Klein writes for "The Note":

[I]f Ryan is able to take advantage of what Boehner is handing off to him, it's enough to prompt a reassessment of the Boehner era. He led by lightly leading at times, with a restive group of congressmen who didn't always want a leader. But under the circumstances, between this budget deal and a permanent doc fix, he was able to get some things done that he wasn't supposed to be able to do.

My Note: Far from prompting a more generous "reassessment" of the Boehner era, it merely reaffirms the old one. Boehner was able to do what he did in the House only by leaving it. Speaker Boehner could do what he did today because there will be no Speaker Boehner tomorrow. He possessed absolute immunity from any internal political blowback. And that confirms the abject ungovernability of the Republican House, which the new speaker will promptly rediscover. (That is, we may strike Klein's "if.")

This is not to detract from Boehner's having done, finally, the right thing. That, no doubt, will be part of his legacy. But the overall assessment of his speakership term should remain the same: (Nearly) as long as he was speaker, Boehner allowed himself to be boxed in by the wingnuts — when he should have finally done the right thing much sooner.

***

 

Jeb's super PAC: Is an IPO in the wings?

Byron York paraphrases Jeb Bush's recent "outburst" on a South Carolina stage — I don't need this. The other guy's a clown, but if that's what you want, vote for him. I've got better things to do — and he covers the establishment's abhorrence of "such talk." "'I just cringed,' said one member of Jeb Bush's extended circle."

Of course the establishment was abhorred; it was the first intelligent thought Jeb Bush has articulated in months.

The real crime has been that of Jeb's unaggressive, unaggravated, unTrumping super PAC. Said a "veteran strategist" unaffiliated with the Bush, uh, campaign:

He has a super PAC with $100 million in it that has just sat there while they watched their candidate get destroyed. This is like if Travis at the Alamo had 10,000 soldiers he could call up and said no, we don't need them. What are they going to do with the money — declare a dividend?

That last line is simply adorable, and the only reason, really, for this post.

 

A budget deal and exploding GOP heads

The upsides to the budget/debt-ceiling agreement are many, especially in that they include some major downsides for His Imminence, Speaker Ryan.

Writes the NY Times: "[The deal] frees Mr. Obama from budget battles … and gives clean starts to Mr. Ryan as speaker and to Republicans trying to persuade voters that they can be an effective governing majority."

Freed Mr. Obama shall be, but the Big Bang lasted longer than will the "clean starts" for Ryan and persuasive GOP propaganda. Only Speaker Adios could pull off this agreement, and within a microsecond of his happy departure for sun-lit fairways, Radical Republicans will be whacking away at the new speaker's balls in moist sand traps.

Indeed, the ill-tempered wedge shots have already commenced. Rep. Justin Amash, a Freedom Caucus copperhead from Michigan, reacted to the news of successful governance with classic tea-party ire: "We're not just here to take commands. We're really tired of the top-down, micromanagement where you have just a few people, or in this case just the speaker and his team, determining the outcome." Amash's tweeting was even less intelligible: "It’s another 'govern by crisis' deal that doesn’t reflect the will of the House."

Go figure. The House will vote on it, will it not? Is that not the way in which the "will of the House" is expressed? And how is a negotiated legislative package, thus voted on, a "command"? What's more, only a tea partier could assert that a crisis-averting package is governance "by crisis." (Of course it must be allowed that in Tea PartyLand, averting a crisis is a crisis.)

Over in the Senate, the splendidly eloquent Jeff Sessions let slip what really torments the radicals: "What does Boehner got to do with it?… [I]t appears the president got whatever he wanted." Prehensile Jeff's final torment was captured on tape:

 

Special-interest damnations were also heard. Gurgled the Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity's president, prior to the sequestration-dispensing agreement's completion: "The biggest disappointment, in our minds, about Republicans in the House and Senate this entire year has been their failure on the budget. Let’s stick to those caps. You said you would do that. Keep your word. I mean, you told the American people you would."

Yea, the long knives and short irons are already out, and woe to the GOP congressperson — at some later primary time — who now votes to avert two crises for two years. That is not how modern Republicanism behaves. It is irresponsibly responsible, it gives that dreadful black guy what he wants, and above all, it lacks the anarchic thrill and nihilistic drama of a war-torn party in sustained crisis.

Or does it?

 

The Tea Party began when?

Gallup reports that Americans' support for the Tea Party movement has dropped to a miserable 17 percent. This was expected, what with the radicals' revolts in Congress, their speakership brawls, and their now close connection to GOP Trumpism.

More noteworthy — as well as praiseworthy — is Gallup's rather casual comment that "the Tea Party emerged in 2009 in opposition to the fledgling Obama administration."

This stands in contrast to the humbug that movement voices have hustled for years, and has been peddled by gullible journalists: to wit, that the Tea Party emerged not as a violent reaction to a black Democratic presidency, but through disgust with George W. Bush's "big government" Republicanism.

I have yet to hear a Tea Partier fail to reference the latter when reviewing the history of his or her movement's birth. Those references are unmitigated, revisionist bunk. Without President Obama, there would have been no Tea Party — and W. would have remained a Republican saint, with no interruptions.

I congratulate Gallup on its historical integrity. 

 

Donald Trump: honing his message

This, from Trump this morning, on the "Today Show," should help him with those working-class voters he's been cultivating:

It has not been easy for me. It has not been easy for me. I started off in Brooklyn. My father gave me a small loan of a million dollars. I came into Manhattan, and I had to pay him back, and I had to pay him back with interest.

I'm already on it …

I swear, Donnie, I'll sign a promissory note at any level of interest you like.

 

The ONLY way in which Carson is like Obama

You have probably already conceived this, so my apologizes for writing something superfluous, but I just realized that what most infuriates Donald Trump about Ben Carson is the same thing that most infuriates Republicans about Barack Obama.

To explain, I once had a friend who roundly despised another of my friends. One evening, over drinks, I asked the first, aforementioned friend what bugged him the most about the second. In a flash he blurted, You can't insult the son of a bitch! He had tried many times in many ways, but all he got in return was smiling composure and some absolutely unnerving equanimity. My second friend had been pulling an Obama, and the first had been piling himself up against an impervious, infuriating wall of serenity.

Carson's tactic in the face of Trump's fury is similar to my second friend's tactic and President Obama's tactic in the face of Republican frothing; although, quite unlike Obama's, Carson's serenity stems from a seemingly psychotic break from reality. At any rate, I never see Trump get so exercised as he does when attacking Carson. He just cannot insult the son of a bitch, and it is causing him to come undone.

 

Sarah Palin as a "crucial turning point"? I think not.

When I was a grad student, minoring in the history of science, one of my professors regularly bemoaned the scholarly pursuit of the true origin of Darwin's Origin. In every great idea or revolutionary discovery or mind-blowing scientific theory, there are precursors and predecessors — men and women who were "on to" pretty much the same thing, but fail to get the glory. Hence an entire intellectual industry has been devoted to finding who, really, first intimated that we primates are just that. The search goes back, and back, and back; the true origin of Darwin's Origin remains in doubt, so the search goes on.

One can play the same game in proffering theories as to who made the GOP go crazy, whose answer also explains, it follows, when the GOP went crazy. In a Washington Post op-ed, President Obama's former chief of staff, William Daley, attempts a bit of theoretical speculation:

[T]his year’s carnival-like GOP presidential primary makes one event, in retrospect, stand out as a crucial turning point on the road to upheaval: the 2008 embrace of then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be a heartbeat from the presidency….

Palin became a Fox News fixture, reinforcing the newly formed tea party’s "never compromise" demands. Bombast, not reason, reigned. Now the "settle for flash" aura of Palin’s candidacy looks like a warning that the party was prizing glib, red-meat rhetoric over reasoned solutions.

Alas, my former professor would be dismayed at my chortling at Daley's rather skimpy search for the Origin of the GOP's Extinction. You want bombast, not reason? You want glib, red-meat rhetoric over reasoned solutions? Then take a look at George W. Bush's bizarrely bombastic eight years, sated with red meat and starved of all reason. Then venture backward to the so-called Gingrich Revolution, which devoted itself to unseating a legitimately elected president out of pure, political glibness. Venture back further and visit Republicans' hysterical reaction to George H.W. Bush's reasonable attempt to reduce deficits. Go back yet further, and try to make sense of Reaganism's supply-sided sizzle. Examine its precursor, the New Right; and then its precursor, Goldwaterism; and then its precursor, the McCarthyism that equated liberalism with Stalinism; and even its precursor, the flamboyant neuroticism of the GOP's anti-New Dealism.

My dear Mr. Daley, you have merely scratched the surface.

My apologies, Professor.

 

"The Republican Party" is already no more

What did I mean yesterday morning in noting that the GOP is now drenched in the surreal, almost metaphysical "uncertainty principle"? I need not have explained; I knew not that Ben Carson, moments later, would demonstrate it so explicitly on "Meet the Press."

I thought — indeed, I was certain — the GOP had hit bottom with Donald Trump, for reasons I really don't need to explain. But then I watched Carson being interviewed by Chuck Todd at some length, and by comparison, Trump's political program became a model of clarity, intelligence, and sound reasoning. Listening to Carson was like being transported to some parallel universe in which obfuscation is infinite and black, immensely powerful, leporine holes are the norm.

"Why do you so easily go to Nazi metaphors?" asked Todd. For starters, answered Carson, it's because he's right in doing so. In fact "many people in the Jewish community, including rabbis," said Carson, have said "You're spot on. You are exactly right." So that's why he goes to Nazi metaphors. Because he is exactly right. Right?

Wrong. For the truer fact, continued Carson, is that he does not "go to" Nazi metaphors. That, friend, is a myth — a myth created by "some of the people in your [Todd's] business quite frankly who like to try to stir things up and try to make this into a big, horrible thing." What Carson has actually said is "something about something that we don't want to become and we never even want to get close to it."

It's the media who say he's "comparing" the U.S to Nazi Germany; it's only the media who say, "I'm saying we're there."

Tim Russert would have had the tapes cued up (Todd did not). Ben Carson, February 2014: "We live in a Gestapo age. People don't realize it". The next month, Carson was asked what he meant by that. "I mean, very much like Nazi Germany. And I know you're not supposed to say Nazi Germany, but I don't care about political correctness."

Todd did try to corner one of the two, parallel Carsons on gun control. But, like heading in one of Einstein's straight lines across the universe, they only wound up where they started. Carson's contention was that "the principle [of the Second Amendment] was that the citizenry should have, you know, access to whatever they needed in order to protect themselves from an overly aggressive government." So should "surface-to-air missiles" be available to American citizens? asked Todd. Carson responded, "I don't think you can get a surface-to-air missile legally in this country." The astonished Todd then noted: "And that's okay? I mean, that's my point." There is a legal limit as to what sort of weaponry a citizen can own, such as a surface-to-air missile. Carson's answer: "There is. And we have laws that, you know, take care of that" — which Carson seemed to be fine with, even though they offend his understanding of the sacred Second Amendment, which he just articulated.

If you didn't suffer the interview, read the transcript. There is much more, and it is horrifying.

Observes the NYT: "In a Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll released Friday, not only was Mr. Carson the top choice among Republicans, with 28 percent, but he was also described by those surveyed as the most presidential candidate, the most pragmatic and the one they would trust most with a finger on the nuclear button." Again, horrifying. But note that Carson's partisans amount to only 28 percent of Iowa Republicans. And what is it they most like about Carson? "His low-key approach [which] is precisely what would tame Washington’s bitter partisanship, rather than Mr. Trump’s swagger."

It is there one finds the uncertainty principle in play. Just what does it mean to be a Republican these days?

Trump's swagger is of course greatly admired by many Republicans, yet it's disdained by others — as is "bitter partisanship." The Times also cites pollster Peter Hart's focus group of last week. "Many criticized Mr. Trump as divisive while praising Mr. Carson as 'wise' and a 'gentleman.'" Further, "Trump is rough; Carson is reassuring"; Trump is "disturbing," Carson is "calming." (It took a focus group to reveal this supernova of conspicuousness?)

Examine other Republicans, and one finds Marco Rubio's bomb-'em-all mentality. Examine yet others, and one finds an affinity with Rand Paul's neo-isolationism. Many Republicans believe in climate change. Many do not. Many believe that vast wealth inequality is a national stain. Many believe that vast wealth inequality is a natural product of self-made Americanism. One could go on.

Survey Democrats on these and other topics and you'll find enormous agreement. You will find, in short, party coherence. But survey Republicans and you'll find there is no such thing — no such thing as a typical Republican; indeed, no such thing, really, as a Republican Party. What you will find is utter, ideological anarchy. One simply cannot be "certain" as to what a Republican or Republicanism is. Both are fluid, and as profoundly incoherent as Ben Carson.

 

The GOP and mysterious, unseen, unseeable forces

This morning Ross Douthat predicts that Marco Rubio will be the GOP nominee. If not Rubio, says Douthat, "I’m guessing that Mitt Romney is still ready to serve." (I have more faith in the latter prediction.)

Douthat comes to this forecast first through a sense of appalled denial — "No major party has ever nominated a figure like Trump or Carson" — then, elimination: Paul was fleeting, Fiorina wants only to be a secretary again (of the newly created Department of Homeland Bile), Kasich "is too moderate," Christie is haunted by all things Christie, Cruz is almost universally hated, Jindal and Huckabee "are boxed out by Carson and Cruz," and Santorum, Graham and Pataki are, well, Santorum, Graham and Pataki.

"That leaves Jeb! and Marco Rubio," writes Douthat.

I'm not as ready to dismiss Bush or embrace Rubio, for reasons that are irrelevant to my thesis herein. And my thesis is this: It has come to pass, I believe, that the Republican Party now labors under the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, or, rather, its first cousin of physics, the "observer effect." That is to say, whenever one looks at the party — its favs, its base, its ideology — the mere act of looking seems to change the party.

It's not that the GOP lacks absolutes, for so does every political party, as does physics. It is, instead, that the party's predictability so rapidly mutates under the act of examination.

Observe that Trump is a venomous infidel, and he only gets stronger; observe that Carson is a remorseless halfwit, and he too gets stronger; observe that Bush is toast, and the establishment rushes to push the toaster's pop-up button; observe that the base wants electability, and it demands a fringe fruitcake; observe that the base demands a fringe fruitcake, and suddenly it wants a Mitt Romney.

Observe anything of the GOP today, and by tomorrow the GOP will have changed. The most one can say with any confidence is that anarchy rules, which is more than a bit oxymoronic.

Yesterday, the NYT quoted George H.W. Bush's elder political physicist, John Sununu, in a moment of distressed objectivity: "I have no feeling for the electorate anymore. It is not responding the way it used to. Their priorities are so different that if I tried to analyze it I’d be making it up."

As for Sununu's former boss, he's so disheartened by his party's darting and spinning and thrashing about in the presidential contest that even the undiscovered country seems preferable: "I’m getting old," says H.W. to friends, "at just the right time."

I'm with Werner Heisenberg, whose fame rests on the impressive fact that he had no idea as to what was going on.