On Silver Linings

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Now I know why John Boehner cries all the time. I’d cry too if I knew I would go down in history as the man who lost control of the House of Representatives, capitulating to an extremist legislative fringe who answers only to their gerrymandered districts and has little concern that the economic underpinnings of America — its neglected infrastructure, failing systems and underfunded social safety net — are circling the drain.

Boehner began his tenure as Leader of the House, famous for his loyalty to the Republican party and a tan that only a Sunkist orange could envy. He’ll end it with a legacy of partisan obstruction at the hands of radicals who succeeded in imploding their own party, remembered for his defiance in the face of reason, his tearful gaze and trembling mouth.

Not all of us underestimated the Tea Party. They may have been born in the hot pot of Glenn Beck’s, Michele Bachmann’s and Sarah Palin’s paranoia, but they were always dangerously tone deaf ideologues, nannyed by FOX News and financed by the Kochs. Capitalizing on the fears that too large a slice of their taxed income is being frittered away by a liberal government, the Tea Baggers (who wisely let that handle die an infamous death, thanks to Jon Stewart) mobilized as a ‘new’ political movement but were loosely composed of frustrated small-government Libertarians aligned with the conspiracy theories nurtured by the Republican right-wing, and the Koch-funded, decades-old ideology known as the John Birch Society.

Swept into power in 2010 as heroes in their home town, the Baggers see their role as giant killers, disruptors sent to Washington to stop government cold, and thanks to the gerrymander SNAFU that has crippled election politics, they are succeeding beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. The American public, overall, is not with them as they stonewall legislation that would assist the economy and stabilize the nation, but as is increasingly evident, they don’t care.

In charge of the purse, the House has illustrated its ability to gut government in no uncertain terms. The sequestration that has put scientific study out of business, closed schools, and cost us critical jobs and services should serve as a primary example. The Baggers blame it on Obama, the black interloper in the White House responsible for everything gone wrong in this century. (No, Bush is not a factor in this conversation. They are still pretending his only error was spending too much for liberty’s sake.)

Here’s an apt quote from a Kirsten Powers article in The Daily Beast that makes the folly of the Tea Party plan to obstruct budget talks apparent:

Last year, Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute and Thomas Mann of Brookings wrote a book about this dysfunction known as the new Republican Party. It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism makes a compelling case that the problems in Washington are not the result of “both sides”—the oft-preferred media frame—but of a GOP that has become all but unrecognizable to most Americans.

Ornstein and Mann, both widely respected as straight shooters, describe themselves as moderates and have had long careers working with both parties. In an interview this week, they expressed exasperation with the GOP’s behavior in the debt-limit and budget negotiations. Ornstein lamented that the title of the book today would be It’s Even Worse Than It Was.

None of this is a surprise to those who watched the House stonewall credible legislation, choosing to waste time voting down Obamacare over 40 times. Still, that could be counted as belligerence, pushback against a president they consider illegitimate, and not just sheer craziness. As veteran journalist and pundit Cokie Roberts (daughter of a Dem Congresswoman and Dem House Majority Leader) said last week, finally breaking her forty-year tradition of avoiding bias with carefully worded opinion, no, this is an abject refusal of the Tea Party to give the president anything he asks of them, no matter the cost to party, nation, or the public they’ve sworn to serve.

No, not crazy. Crazy like a fox, perhaps, risking ridicule to keep hate alive and constituents outraged. How else can we explain their thirteenth — count ’em — attempt to defund much-hated ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) in a recent appropriations bill? The maligned ACORN was an anti-poverty program staffed by low-income workers to assist inner cities with social services and community information, including voter registration. Let me repeat, WAS such a program. The twelve prior votes defunded an organization that had disbanded in 2010 thanks to elaborate stings and traps set by conservative operatives attempting to prove voting fraud and criminal wrongdoing.

That’s crazy with a vengeance, I’d say, but not without careful consideration. The House continues to defund the specter of ACORN to keep their followers in the fold, much as they’re voting against insurance reform in the Affordable Care Act to keep their constituents in angst over socialized medicine. They will not spend time or effort giving the Kenyan a win, so they repeatedly vote on their own agenda, winning approval for their defiance because those on the far edge of the right-wing do not see the world as mainstream Americans do. They have been schooled with generations of buzz words and conspiracy theories, the pot sweetened with plans to avenge affronts to the honor of their cause.

But there’s a silver lining, long overdue in this growing effort to bring the two-party system back into something akin to balance. There’s a sense of desperation on the right side of the spectrum as it assesses its future in light of today’s reality. The Pubs lost the election they thought they had in the bag, they’ve lost the confidence of the public who have suddenly awakened to the actual logistics of “privatization” and a systemic inability to embrace issues of class and gender, race and equality. Now, faced with the possibility that Obamacare will work and make them increasingly irrelevant, the Republican party has opened a deep rift within itself; the party of lock-step has seemingly come undone.

But never fear, Extreme Red Team! Here come the Heritage Foundation, Club for Growth and Americans for Prosperity to the rescue! These frighteningly well-funded conservative PACs have flooded the air with anti-Obamacare ads, generated robo-calls to the faithful and written fat checks to their Pub Reps in order to keep those erroneous talking points coming. FOX followers believe an entire litany of misinformation, from continued threats of death panels to economic catastrophe, and mere facts cannot persuade them otherwise. They are counting on their Tea Party to keep them safe from socialism.

Yet, to all but the faithful, what the Republicans have accomplished this season is dismal: in July — mid-year — Congress had passed a mere 15 bills, among them The Freedom To Fish Act, opening boating access to Kentucky’s state dams, while somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000 additional pieces of law were summarily ignored. Their most recent legislative move was to cut the SNAP portion out of the Farm Bill, proposing that an additional 3.5 million ‘deadbeat’ Americans, including some 170,000 veterans and those who have been urged into career opportunities at Wal-Mart, should lose their food stamps in the coming months, while fully funding — in some cases increasing — corporate welfare for big farms in a separate bill.

And now they’ve followed Texas Representative Ted Cruz to the brink of disaster by refusing to allow the nation to pay its bills unless Obama defunds his signature health care reform legislation, a prospect even Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove think is crazy. With anti-government blueprints proving the power of the Birch Society legacy, Cruz — accused of being today’s version of Joe McCarthy — has pushed the Birchers’ most recent iteration, the Baggers, even farther into the extreme zone, baiting them to stick to their guns and shut down government “no matter what.” Do they not realize that such a move will not just create chaos in this nation and in world markets, but pit the Birchers against the corporate interests that support them?

I was not surprised to hear Obama declare, in one of his recent speeches, that we are no longer in the Cold War. The echoes of earlier ideological skirmishes still gather, but all zealots are not created equal. When George W. Bush played the nationalism card shortly after 9-11, gathering the war hawks and the xenophobes along with some of the sincerely patriotic in his net, it took trillions of dollars, over a million lives and two wars to tamp down the hysteria, but — gratefully – the neocons no longer have America’s ear.

Which is not to say, of course, that the mercenary heart of the military-industrial complex is not still throbbing with ambition, the war machine humming quietly in the Gulf, awaiting orders to strike at Syria if it drags its heels in surrendering chemical weapons. This nation has not succeeded at much in this last decade, but we still have a by-Gawd-best-in-the-world military presence, funded by largely unwilling taxpayers and championed by politicians who cannot survive without that lobbying money. Some things are harder to stop than others, but still, slowed is a first step toward halted.

The up-side to the unyielding excess of the right seems to be a newly embraced appreciation for the progressive left. Elizabeth Warren continues to make points with the public by asking tough questions of the banking community, a welcome voice of moral authority that has shifted thinking, along with penalties, on fraudulent financial practices.

The war that wasn’t (but still might be and nobody knows for sure) was stalled because of political response across a wide political spectrum, as progressives quickly and forcefully sounded bells against any use of deadly force. Is that a sea change? Feels like one. Larry Summers, known for his aggressive banking deregulation during the Clinton years, was shouted down as the probable candidate to chair the Federal Reserve, despite Obama’s long association with him. Citing poor timing, Summers withdrew his name. Peter Beinart had this to say:

To be sure, Summers had idiosyncratic liabilities. As president of Harvard, he had made insensitive comments about women and was running against the first woman with a serious chance of chairing the Fed.

But the main reason Summers dropped out is that he became identified with deregulatory policies that were far more tolerated inside the Democratic Party in 1999—or even 2009—than they are today. Four of the 12 Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee and 19 Democrats (plus one independent) of the 54 in the full Senate had already expressed their public opposition, meaning that Obama would have had to rely for Summers’ confirmation on Republican votes. The AFL-CIO had come out against Summers. So had MoveOn, Daily Kos, Chris Hayes, Paul Krugman, and the editorial page of The New York Times. By contrast, Summers had barely any high-profile defenders outside the administration. When people did speak up in his defense, it was often on background.

What the Summers fight shows is how dramatically the financial crisis has reshaped the economic debate inside the Democratic Party. In 2008, his patron and ally, Robert Rubin, was rumored as a potential Obama running mate. Today, Rubin has largely disappeared from public view and, given his role in the deregulatory policies of the 1990s, any defense he offered of Summers would have hurt his cause. In 2006, an ambitious Democratic policy wonk like Gene Sperling could write a book that criticized liberals for being insufficiently pro business without worrying that it would hurt his chances of getting a top government job. No one would do that today.

The economic debate has been reshaped. The business class is no longer getting a free ride, their fiscal practices are no longer ignored by the general public. Isn’t that a silver lining? These are the situations that bring us, one by one, to reconsider our outlook on the nation and on the world. We have begun to change our minds about who decides what in our reality. On so many issues, poll numbers show the majority of Americans on the side of the progressives, looking to achieve some balance from an extreme political trend that can no longer be tolerated — and not a minute too soon.

There are openings for progress quietly taking place all over the nation, ignored by those who favor the drama over the dharma. Make a game of finding them and throwing your support their way. And remember to acknowledge that sometimes we can only rise to the occasion if there IS one, challenging our abilities and tapping our creativity to overcome great need. For instance, the sequester has put us into emergency mode, calling on us to use what’s at hand in a new and different way. Here’s an encouraging article on re-purposing military equipment and rebuilding a civilian economy based on greening opportunities. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to replace our archaic system of warfare with fresh and innovative thinking and activity, creating a win/win where there has only been a zero-sum game for generations?

These small victories are not so small as they seem, and while they may not be enough to earn the respect of far-lefties looking for significant change, let’s remember how difficult it has been to bridge the deep divides of this new century. The more we identify as the 99%, determined to repair and re-establish the freedoms of our republic for the good of us all, the more the 1% is put on alert that the free ride is over. The prevailing thought of the Bush years is behind us now, even if it doesn’t feel like it at this moment of nose-to-nose obstruction.

What we determine with our whole heart, as these examples prove, can change everything, and quickly. If we needed to prove ourselves still capable of turning the ship of state, we’ve done that now, strengthening our resolve and encouraging us to use the many tools at our disposal to shift the energy. Silver linings, after all, can only grow more brilliant as they are nurtured and polished with our attention, support and appreciation. Seizing each new opportunity, we’ve begun to change the balance. Look for and find the silver lining — don’t stop now! We’ve just begun to shine!