GOP Candidates and foreign policy

We all know that conventional wisdom says that President Obama's re-election chances hinge on how the economy is doing. I think there's at least some truth in that - but most of us also know that the quality of his competition will certainly come into play once a candidate is chosen from this clown fest we call the Republican nomination process.

I am struck by how well President Obama's foreign policy (combined with Bush II's abject failures) has pretty much silenced and/or confused his opponents on that issue. The New York Times agrees.

For a while, we were concerned that the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination were not saying much about national security and foreign affairs. Now that a few have started, maybe they were better off before.

For example, in last night's debate we learned that Cain would/wouldn't negotiate with terrorists, that all candidates think we should eliminate foreign aid (1% of the budget)...oops, except for what we give Israel, that Perry thinks we should pull out of the United Nations, and that Bachmann doesn't know that Libya is in Africa. Finally, I don't know about you, but I came away from the debate totally confused about whether or not most of the candidates (except Ron Paul and Santorum on opposite sides of the question) would put defense cuts on the table. I just know that Gingrich HATES the idea of a Super Committee for deficit reduction.

In the past we've seen that Perry doesn't know that India declined to buy F-16s and so he accused the administration of refusing to sell them and that Cain doesn't think its important to know who is the leader of Uzbekistan (an important supply route for American troops in Afghanistan).

So far Romney has managed to avoid guffaws on foreign policy during the debates, but in his one speech on the topic lately, he said that on "day one" he would reverse all the cuts the Obama administration has made to defense...except that under President Obama, defense spending has actually increased. Oops.

And then there was that whole Romney fiasco last year when he criticized the New START Treaty and fellow Republican Dick Lugar called him out on his nonsense.

Senator Richard G. Lugar, one of the Republican Party’s senior voices on foreign affairs, fired back Thursday at Mitt Romney over his opposition to the new nuclear treaty with Russia, accusing Mr. Romney of “hyperbolic” rhetoric that is divorced from the reality of arms control.

In an unusually harsh statement, Mr. Lugar said Mr. Romney “repeated discredited objections” to the treaty and “appears unaware of arms control history and context.”

The truth is that none of these candidates has a rational thing to say about foreign policy. Their approach is much like the one Republicans have used about the economy...if President Obama proposes it - object. The problem they have is that what the President is doing has been wildly successful. So that's a dilemma for them. As the NYT says, they'd probably be better off ignoring the topic. But I don't suppose the American voter would find that acceptable either.

Photo of the Day - High Five

American Jobs Act

CNN recently completed a poll that included asking Americans what they thought about the various components of the American Jobs Act. Jed Lewison put the responses into graph form.



And what about Republicans in the Senate?



Any questions?

Whasup?

The truth is that I'm tired of all the talk about how crazy Herman Cain is and the so-called Occupy Wall Street "movement." On the former, aren't we pretty much at the stage of "duh" on teh crazy? On the later, Nate Silver puts the numbers on the biggest day yet, Saturday, at 100,000 across the country. And when it comes to using a term like "movement," I'm with p m carpenter...until they figure out a message, they're "a muddled meaningless revolt." Here's the article he linked to, which demonstrates that muddlement. The money quote:

“Demands are disempowering since they require someone else to respond,” said Gabriel Willow, a protester strolling past a sleeping-bag pod of young adults in the park last Monday.

But still, President Obama keeps on keeping on when it comes to a jobs agenda for the American people. If I was going to write about what he said yesterday, it would have been exactly what Extreme Liberal said. So just go read it.

Harry Reid is going to force the Senate to stay in session this week until they vote on the section of the American Jobs Act that would fund teachers, cops and firefighters...something that 75% of Americans support (even 63% of Republicans). But we're all pretty sure that GOP Senators will pull yet another filibuster and kill it simply because it would give Obama and the Democrats a "win."

Today, President Obama goes to Jamestown, NC and Emporia, VA to continue to push for jobs. If you want to start a movement for sanity and real life results - that's where its happening!

Awww...Steve noticed!

Anyone who reads here often has probably figured this out - but I've never said it outright. Today I will. Steve Benen is my favorite writer on the internet. He's thorough, thoughtful and incredibly prolific.

On top of all that, today he noticed.

It’s a trivial point, of course, but I think it’s clear the president is awfully good with kids.

I would argue that it is NOT trivial...not at all. So many of our politicians spout platitudes about children being our future. In President Obama, we have one that demonstrates he actually believes it!

In honor of Steve's awareness, here are a couple of goodies from today.

Once again, conservatives get what the poutragers missed

There's an interesting article at Investors.com titled The Austerity Myth: Federal Spending Up 5% This Year. Its basically boohooing data released by the Treasury Department on Friday saying that overall, there haven't been any reductions in federal spending this year.

Surprise...surprise!!!! Let's recap what happened.

First of all, the Republicans took the government hostage over the 2011 budget and threatened a shut-down if they didn't get their cuts. Problem was, they only focused on a number (how much they wanted cut) and didn't pay attention to the details. The result was that President Obama and the Democrats were able to get them to sign on to a deal that turned out to be smoke and mirrors...basically cutting $ that wasn't going to get spent anyway. And what looked to be $38 billion in cuts turned out to only be $352 million.

Then the Republicans decided on another hostage...the debt ceiling. They took the government to the brink of economic collapse and Speaker Boehner bragged that he got 98% of what he wanted. We've already talked about how that one is likely to come back to haunt them in 2012. But the overall reality is that any possible spending cuts were delayed until 2013.

Conservatives are starting to wake up to the fact that they've been outmaneuvered on all this. I wonder how long it will take the poutragers to notice.

What Republicans hope the public doesn't notice

Seven years ago Republican guru Grover Norquist telegraphed the strategy.

During his presentation, Norquist explained why he believed that there would be a permanent Republican majority in America.

One person interrupted, as I recall, and said, “C’mon, Grover, surely one day a Democrat will win the White House.”

Norquist immediately replied: “We will make it so that a Democrat cannot govern as a Democrat.”

The specifics of how they're implementing that strategy now that we have a Democratic president are clear...they've become the "party of no." As an example, take a look at this history of the use of filibusters.



As Steve Benen points out:

Consider this tidbit: cloture was invoked 63 times in 2009 and 2010, which isn’t just the most ever, it’s more than the sum total of instances from 1919 through 1982. That’s not a typo.

In other words, Republicans did what they could to make governing impossible in 2009-2010. Now, with a Republican House combined with the use of the filibuster, we're at a total standstill.

As Transportation Secretary Lahood said last week about his fellow Republicans:

“A big percentage of the Republicans that were elected this time came here to do zero, and that’s what they’ve done,” he said. Those lawmakers, he said, have obstructed other people who are trying to get things done.

Even former Defense Secretary Robert Gates is sounding alarms.

"I do believe that we are now in uncharted waters when it comes to the dysfunction in our political system--and it is no longer a joking matter," former Defense Secretary Robert Gates told an audience two weeks ago at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia, where he received the Liberty Medal for national service. "It appears that as a result of several long-building, polarizing trends in American politics and culture, we have lost the ability to execute even the basic functions of government much less solve the most difficult and divisive problems facing the country. Thus, I am more concerned than I have ever been about the state of American governance."

This is nothing new to those of us who have been paying attention. But as retired Republican Congressional staffer Mike Lofgren noted a few weeks ago, the Republicans are counting on low-information voters not noticing.

A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.

A deeply cynical tactic, to be sure, but a psychologically insightful one that plays on the weaknesses both of the voting public and the news media. There are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. These voters' confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that "they are all crooks," and that "government is no good," further leading them to think, "a plague on both your houses" and "the parties are like two kids in a school yard."

Ignorance on the part of the public is the card the Republicans are playing. THAT'S the message we need to get out there when it comes to tackling the dominance of the 1%.