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Has Fox News Destroyed the Republican Party?

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It was more than two years ago when ABC News televised Terry Moran’s interview with David Frum, former speechwriter for George W. Bush.  On March 23, 2010 – the day after the interview – the ABC News website ran this piece by David Schoetz, which included an embedded video of the interview.  As we can see from the article, Moran’s interview with Frum was right on target:

Among the comments Frum made to “Nightline” was the assertion that “nobody ever won an election by spitting at his political opponents” and that “anger trapped the [Republican] leadership.”  But it was this exchange, which you can see starting at the 2:20 mark, that is generating some buzz today: Moran: “It sounds like you’re saying that the Glenn Becks, the Rush Limbaughs, hijacked the Republican party and drove it to a defeat?”  Frum: “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us and now we’re discovering we work for Fox.  And this balance here has been completely reversed. The thing that sustains a strong Fox network is the thing that undermines a strong Republican party.”  Our report posed the question: Will Democrats pay a price for pushing through health care at any cost? Or are Republicans the ones in trouble for the way they chose to fight?  We know where Frum stands.

As the battle over Obamacare began to reach a boiling point, Fox News televised a discussion between Bill O’Reilly and Charles Krauthammer on September 26 entitled, “Is Ted Cruz the new leader of the Republican Party?”  Krauthammer was less enthusiastic about Cruz than the fawning O’Reilly.  Krauthammer pointed out that the battle Cruz was waging against Obamacare was doomed and that Cruz was simply attempting to position himself as the next GOP Presidential candidate.  As an aside, I find it curious that those who tout the sanctity of the Constitution are so willing to ignore Article Two, Section 1, which states (in part):

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

Here is what Wikipedia provides concerning the controversy over this issue:

As Cruz was born in Canada, various commentators from the Austin American-Statesman[97] and the Los Angeles Times,[98] discussed Cruz’s legal status as a natural-born citizen. Because he was a U.S. citizen at birth (since his mother was a U.S. citizen who lived in the U.S. for more than 10 years as required by the Nationality Act of 1940), most commentators believe Cruz is eligible to serve as President of the United States.[10][99][10][100] After hearing that according to legal experts he is a dual citizen of Canada and the U.S., Cruz announced on August 19, 2013 that he would renounce his Canadian citizenship.[101]

I enjoyed the last sentence, which stated, “After hearing that according to legal experts he is a dual citizen …”  One would have thought that Cruz might be a legal expert himself, since he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School.  In any event, any plans Cruz had made for the Presidency were certainly destroyed by the government shutdown fiasco.  Of course, Cruz will always remain popular with his hard core supporters, despite the fact that he has alienated the Republican Party itself, and he has no chance of getting elected – even in the unlikely event that he should become the GOP nominee.

Cruz will always be haunted by his recitation of Green Eggs and Ham during his pseudo-filibuster, which Krauthammer aptly pointed out was simply an attempt to upstage the filibuster conducted by Rand Paul over the use of drones.

The bigger question concerns the devastation this fiasco has caused for the Republican Party.  As David Frum pointed out, the hero worship Fox News brings to the wingnuts of the GOP empowers those characters, making the GOP a party of extremists.  Although a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll showed that 74 percent of Americans disapproved of the way Congressional Republicans handled the budget crisis, the more important issue concerns the extent to which the GOP has sustained long-term damage as a result of this episode.  If it causes Republicans to become unelectable, they will have Fox News to blame.


 

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The Stupid War Against The Stimulus

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February 23, 2009

We keep hearing rants against President Obama’s economic stimulus bill.  The final version of the bill was passed by both the House of Representatives and the Senate on February 13.  On February 17, it was signed into law by our new President.  It is now called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.  Nevertheless, there are people out there (nearly all of them Republicans) fuming about the stimulus bill, despite the fact that the debate is now over.  The bill has already gone into effect.  So what’s the point?  Many commentators feel that currently, there is fierce competition to stand out as the new leader of the Republican Party.  Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal apparently believes he can advance his career by complaining about the stimulus and refusing to accept money allocated under the stimulus bill to expand eligibility for unemployment compensation because it would increase taxes on employers.  As Robert Pear and J. David Goodman reported for The New York Times, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour said that he, too, would reject the money for expanding unemployment insurance:

“There is some we will not take in Mississippi,” Governor Barbour told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.  “We want more jobs.  You don’t get more jobs by putting an extra tax on creating jobs.”

The article noted that California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (also a Republican) would be happy to take any money from the stimulus bill that had been rejected by any other governor.

The hostility against the stimulus just doesn’t make sense.  A few Republicans may think they might look like heroes to the traditional Republican “base” right now, but as the stimulus plan begins to bear fruit, they are going to look like fools.

Tom Friedman discussed one intriguing conversation he had with a true American capitalist (the sort of voter Republicans always have taken for granted) in the February 21 New York Times:

The wind and solar industries in America “were dead in the fourth quarter,” said John Woolard, chief executive of BrightSource Energy, which builds and operates cutting-edge solar-thermal plants in the Mojave Desert.  Almost five gigawatts of new solar-thermal projects — the equivalent of five big nuclear plants — at various stages of permitting were being held up because of a lack of financing.

“All of these projects will now go ahead,” said Woolard.  “You are talking about thousands of jobs  …  We really got something right in this legislation.”

These jobs will be in engineering, constructing and operating huge solar systems and wind farms and manufacturing new photovoltaics.  Together they will drive innovation in all these areas — and move wind and solar technology down the cost-volume learning curve so they can compete against fossil fuels and become export industries at the “ChinIndia price,” that is the price at which they can scale in China and India.

Mr. Wollard “gets it” but the usual Republican spokesmen don’t.  As Jonathan Alter points out in the March 2 edition of Newsweek:

Columnist Charles Krauthammer called the $787 billion stimulus package “a legislative abomination,” and Karl Rove wrote that “the more Americans learn about the bill, the less they like it.”

Polls say otherwise.  The public likes the signs of action, respects that the new president is willing to admit error and appreciates his constant reminders that there are no easy cures to what ails us.

*   *   *

The GOP did a good job trivializing the stimulus, but Obama may have the last laugh.  The package is so big, and stretches across so many states, that it provides him at least four years of photo ops as Daddy O on tour, bringing home the jobs right in your local media market.  It was hardly a coincidence that video of bridge repair in Missouri began airing only moments after the president signed the bill.

As Walter Alarkon explained in his February 21 posting on The Hill website, there is a split among Republican governors as to whether the party’s next leader will be a centrist or a traditional conservative.  As his piece demonstrated, there are some Republicans who “get it”:

One possible White House hopeful, Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. (R), wouldn’t criticize the stimulus despite his red state bona fides.  He said that the federal money would fund infrastructure projects that could help the Beehive State’s economy.

“You have to have a party that is results oriented, that actually develops solutions to some of our nagging problems of today,” he said.

He said that Republicans who turn to “gratuitous rhetoric” will continue to lose.

Another Republican who “gets it” is Florida Governor Charlie Crist.  During his February 22 appearance on NBC’s Meet The Press, David Gregory asked Governor Crist whether he thought it was a mistake for the Republican Party to define itself by opposition to the stimulus.  Governor Crist gave this response:

Well, it may be.  All I know is I have to do what I think is in the best interest of the people of Florida.  And from my perspective, it’s to try and help them.  Help them every single day in every way that I can in education, in infrastructure, in health care; do the kinds of things that keep us from having to raise taxes.  You know, another part that people don’t talk about in the stimulus bill is that it cuts taxes.  About a third of it cuts taxes.   . . .   At the same time, because of the stimulus we’ll be able to pay our teachers more next year than we were this past year.  So I think it works, it works well, it helps people, it does what’s right.

How does one argue with that?  The current moot debate over the stimulus bill simply underscores one of the reasons why the Republicans suffered such huge losses in 2006 and 2008.  They need to abandon the failed strategy of focusing on the preferences of their so-called “base” and start representing the rest of America.  If they don’t learn this lesson, they will never win a majority in the Senate or the House and they will have to abandon their dreams of another Republican President.