Obama Shines, Jindal Flames Out

There wasn't much mystery preceding President Obama's address to a joint session of congress last night. Everyone knew it would be about economic stimulus, everyone knew it would involve cheerleading America, everyone knew it would be pretty damned good. Obama used the constitutional requirement that the president address congress on the state of the union "from time to time" to get both houses together in one place. Not specifically a state of the union address, it still filled the bill. The state of the union is not strong and Barack Obama -- as we've come to expect -- asked us all to roll up our sleeves and strengthen it.

Republicans -- still patting each other on the back for their near-universal opposition to Obama's stimulus -- were forced to face the undeniable fact that there was no victory here for them. The bill passed and the obstructionism of they were so proud of had cost them dearly. Polling shows that voters see the party as out of touch and just "not getting it." But, as I've pointed out before, in the House of Representatives at least, only the farthest right wing reps from the very reddest districts remain after two consecutive Democratic election cycles. They are the crazies, those for whom ideology borders on religious belief, those who are lost causes. Reality doesn't bother them, since it's not where they live. Being forced to face it the way they were must've been painful.

In this party made up of the surviving nuts, leadership has been hard to come by. They've elected party leadership, but no one pays any attention to them. "I don't even know the congressional leadership," says Utah's Republican Governor Jon Huntsman Jr. "I have not met them. I don't listen or read whatever it is they say because it is inconsequential -- completely."

Given this lack of leadership, the big celebrities in the GOP have been Sarah Palin, Joe the Plumber, and Rush Limbaugh. Seriously. They desperately needed someone serious to become the face of the party. Someone who wasn't a national joke or a divisive figure. Since only the crazies are left in Washington, they needed to go outside DC. They found Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.





He was just what they needed -- far enough right without seeming ridiculous and not an obvious fool. He's threatened to turn down a tiny sliver of the stimulus money for his state, while grandstanding on the threat. He's considering a presidential run the next time around and, unlike Sarah Palin, he speaks English. The GOP had found their guy. Gov. Bobby Jindal would deliver the Republican response to Obama's address. The new face of the Republican party was now something other than an unemployed plumber, an empty-headed former beauty queen, or a drug-addled blowhard.

It didn't go well. Jindal, already handicapped by limiting himself to the party line, was wooden and uncomfortable. He shot for a southern folksiness and wound up with the pacing and inflection of a Quick Draw McGraw. Even his walk to the camera at the Governor's Mansion in Baton Rouge was stiff, prompting one commentator on MSNBC to say "Oh God..." under his breath.

The governor started off well enough, pointing out the historical nature of the president's first address to a joint session of congress and giving a brief son-of-an-immigrant bio of himself, but things quickly went south. He claimed that Republicans had "better ideas," then went on to list off some of the things in the stimulus that he didn't like.

While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government, $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a magnetic levitation line from Las Vegas to Disneyland, and $140 million for something called volcano monitoring.

Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C.

We shouldn't be keeping an eye on volcanoes? And that "magnetic levitation line from Las Vegas to Disneyland?" Yeah, that's not in the stimulus. That "$300 million to buy new cars for the government" is $300 million to buy a more fuel-efficient fleet, saving the federal government money in the long run. As Republicans have been throughout this debate, Jindal makes stuff up to oppose. It makes you wonder how genuine their reasons for opposing it can possibly be.

Of those "better ideas," Jindal offered tax cuts, tax cuts, and tax cuts -- because using tax cuts to cure every ill has been working so well for us so far. He said that Republicans "stand for universal access to affordable health care coverage," but that's the first I've ever heard of it. They used to be all about health care savings accounts, where you put money aside to pay for health care -- because everyone's finding it just so easy to build up savings accounts these days. If the GOP has a plan for universal coverage, it might've been a good idea not to keep the details secret.

After they shut down the remote feed from Louisiana, even conservative commentators gave Jindal the thumbs down. "It came off as amateurish, and even the tempo in which he spoke was sing-songy," said Juan Williams on FOX News. "He was telling stories that seemed very simplistic and almost childish."

"In a moment when only the federal government is actually big enough to do stuff, to just ignore all that and just say ‘government is the problem, corruption, earmarks, wasteful spending,’ it’s just a form of nihilism," said conservative columnist David Brooks on PBS. "It’s just not where the country is, it’s not where the future of the country is."

"E-mails I’m getting are from disappointed conservatives," wrote Kathryn Jean Lopez for the National review's The Corner. "They wanted a full-throated response to Obama and expected and/or wanted more."

But these people should have less criticism for Jindal and more for the party in general. Jindal may not have done well, but he was only as good as the material he had to work with. Republicans really don't have anything but criticism to offer, so no one should be surprised that Gov. Jindal didn't have any solutions. If all you have is "Obama's wrong," it's hard to come up with some idea of what might be right.

The new face of the Republican party won't do much to change people's minds if the only thing it has to offer are the same tired old failures, instead of new ideas.

-Wisco

The Grandstanding Old Party

Now that the stimulus has passed, you might think the time for Republican grandstanding was over. Thing is, you'd be wrong for thinking that. It's out of Congress's hands and into the those of the states -- and it's there that some Republican governors are using it to make political hay. They're doing this by pretending to reject the stimulus funds for their states.

But this is only a sham rejection -- they're making a big deal about rejecting a tiny portion, as if these drops in the bucket amounted to some sort of real savings. Case in point, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal.

Associated Press:

Gov. Bobby Jindal says he doesn't want Louisiana to tap into $98 million in stimulus money for expanding unemployment benefits for people who wouldn't normally be eligible to receive them.

The federal stimulus package would cover the benefits for a period of time, but the Jindal administration says it requires a permanent change in state law that would force businesses to pay higher taxes once the federal dollars run out.

Jindal said Friday that he doesn't support that change, which is tied to $32.8 million in stimulus cash. Without that change, the state also can't access a separate $65.6 million pool of unemployment money in the stimulus bill.

The problem here is that all that stuff about a "permanent change" isn't actually true. The stimulus would've funded the program for three years, at which point he could've phased it out. Last time I checked, "permanent" wasn't synonymous with "three years." In pretending to both misunderstand the bill and stand up for Louisiana's businesses, Jindal is throwing away benefits for 25,000 of his taxpayers. Keeping people broke is a hell of an economic recovery plan. Louisiana is allocated nearly $8 billion in the bill, Jindal's turning down $98 million. For every dollar of stimulus he accepts, he'll turn down roughly $0.01.

Yeah, that's a real profile in courage.





If Jindal and other governors theatrically and dishonestly "making a stand" won't take the money, other state execs will.

Raw Story:

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has a very simple message for any GOP governor who doesn't want federal stimulus package money earmarked for his or her state: "I'll take it."

"I feel very strongly that I think that President Obama right now needs team players," Schwarzenegger said Sunday morning on ABC's This Week George Stephanopolous. "It's a very difficult time now, where we have to play together, rather than using politics and always attacking everything," he said.

He's not alone in this sentiment. "You better believe I'm going to take every dollar that is coming to Michigan and if my colleagues here, Minnesota and South Carolina, don't use theirs, I'm going to be first in line to say for my people, for our citizens, to put people to work and to make sure they can survive through this," said Michigan Democrat Jennifer Granholm on FOX News.

As I said, Bobby Jindal's not the only Governor making a big deal of turning down a penny in stimulus money -- using the same pretense. Mississippi's Haley Barbour has said he'd also reject $50 million for the same program for the same reason.

"Once the federal money is gone we would have to replace it with state money, which means we would have to raise the unemployment insurance tax on employers," he said.

South Carolina's in the same boat. Despite having the third-highest unemployment rate in the nation, Republican Governor Mark Sanford goes farther than Jindal or Barbour -- threatening to turn down $2.8 billion.

Of the three, two -- Jindal and Sanford -- are openly considering presidential runs in 2012. The base hates the stimulus -- mostly because they'll believe anything some moron with an R after their name tells them. And turning down a portion of it -- no matter how inconsequential -- scores big with the chumps. So what if unemployment continues to rise in their states? They've got political points to score.

But it may not cost them in unemployment. "[T]here may be a 'beggar thy neighbor' strategy going on here," writes Matt Yglesias. "If Louisiana makes its unemployment benefits less generous than what’s available in other states, then maybe unemployed citizens will leave Louisiana for Texas and other neighboring states, thus creating an artificial appearance of an improved economic situation. It would be the equivalent of Mike Bloomberg fighting poverty by demolishing all the low-income housing in New York and hoping the poor people all move elsewhere."

I'm not sure I'd call this a "beggar thy neighbor" strategy, so much as a "Vlad the Impaler" strategy -- Vlad once wiped out poverty in Romania by killing all the poor. The easiest way to reduce unemployment isn't to get people jobs, it's to get rid of the unemployed. And all this costs these governors is the sacrifice of taking $0.99 instead of a buck. What a hardship. You wonder where these would-be future presidents would chase the unemployed to at the national level.

When all is said and done, Jindal, Barbour, and Sanford are just playing games. They're taking a high-profile bill and using it for a PR stunt. Since they're Republicans, they don't offer any real solutions, they just say "no."

The time for Republican grandstanding is never over.

-Wisco

Hookerquake Coming for the Religious Right?

It's a good news, bad news sort of thing. The good news is that a bunch of legislative lawbreakers may be about to take a fall. The bad news is that it'll happen over something that shouldn't matter.

By now, you've probably heard of Louisiana Senator David Vitter, who's name turned up on D.C. Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey's recently released phone records. While still recovering from that revelation, Vitter -- who runs Rudy Giuliani's southern campaign -- was also outed by New Orleans Madam Jeanette Maier. "As far as the girls coming out after seeing David, all they had was nice things to say," she told a reporter for the AP. "It wasn't all about sex. In fact, he just wanted to have somebody listen to him, you know."

Good to know. I should say right here and now that I really couldn't care less about who does and doesn't visit prostitutes. Like I say, it shouldn't matter. My view on prostitution is like my view on drugs -- legalize and regulate as a public health issue, not as a criminal issue. Both are so low on my list of priorities that I couldn't really call myself as an advocate of either position. But if someone in Washington got the ball rolling on them, I'd be supportive. I'd rather deal with war, poverty, healthcare, and evironment first, but if someone wants to do the right thing on drugs and prostitution along the way, then yay for them.

What Vitter is facing isn't so much a case of committing the actual crime of being involved with street panderers -- at least, not in my mind. No, the immoral part of all this is his political pandering. He passed himself off as one of those perfect Christian robots in order to gain favor with the religious right. That is Vitter's crime -- he practiced false advertising. That and pushing this idiotic idea that the perfect Christian robot is even possible, let alone desirable.

Vittner once ran a campaign ad that said, "[Same sex marriage] is a real outrage. The Hollywood left is redefining the most basic institution in human history... We need a U.S. Senator who will stand up for Louisiana values, not Massachusetts's values." Apparently, Vitter believes Louisiana values include sleeping with prostitutes. Here I thought that was Nevada values -- who knew? Maybe we should try Hawaiian values for a while. Luaus and guys juggling firesticks seems pretty harmless.

Of all the dirty tricks the right -- and the religious right in particular -- pulls, none pisses me off so much as this idiotic divisiveness. He cast other americans in Massachusetts and Hollywood as enemies. Hey, it's their damned country too, moron. But that it's being said be some guy who puts on a fake halo for the cameras, while sleeping with sex workers off camera, is especially maddening. He's willing to throw other americans who -- by his own measure -- are no better or worse than he is under the bus. Just to get ahead and score votes from the most narrowminded and intolerant people. For that he's scum. Antiamerican scum who deserves whatever trouble he finds himself in now and much, much worse.

I could bring up the fact that he argued that Bill Clinton should be impeached on the grounds of immorality alone (I guess I just did), but I think we've pretty much established what a hypocritical ass, what an opportunistic phony, Vitter is. And he seems typical of all of the right wing, Bible-banging, let's-all-hate-other-americans morons that the 'values voters' have been busy packing Washington with for years. And the payoff for all of that hard work seems to be coming.

Dana Milbank in the Washington Post, via The Palmetto Scoop:

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), approached by a group of reporters outside the lunch, offered an unexpected defense [of Vitter]. "All of us have to look at it and say that we could be next," he said in answer to a Vitter question. "We all think that we're not vulnerable to something like that happening, but the fact is this can be a very lonely and isolating place."

DeMint's fears seem to be valid. A major player in exposing Vitter was Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler magazine. Raw Story reports that Flynt and a team of investigators are 'involved in more than 20 investigations relating to his recent call for information on Washington sex scandals.' The investigations include 'high ranking Republican and Democrat members of the Senate and the House.' And Flynt is clear that his targets are 'family values' phonies. "If somebody's living a lie... they become fair game," he told reporters for RS.

What I find so beautiful about this is that it's a trap these guys have set for themselves. After years and years of telling people who is and isn't evil, they've actually given a pass to those they accuse of evil. What if a liberal dem were busted this way? It wouldn't raise an eyebrow on either side of the aisle. The sane (I assume) would have the same reaction I would -- "Ha ha! Celebrity with prostitute -- call David Letterman!" And that would be about the extent of it. The insane would only see what they already were led to believe -- they wouldn't hate him any more or any less. For our hypothetical liberal, there would probably be no consequence, other than any legal trouble he may face.

But for Vitter and DeMint and any of those other dems and GOPers under the microscope, the stink of hypocrisy is the thing. It's not about the prostitutes, anymore than Ted Haggard's or Jimmy Swaggart's problems were. It's about telling everyone you're freakin' perfect, teaching them to hate the imperfect, and riding that wave of hate as far as it will take you. The damage isn't only done to the hated, those they teach to be haters suffer as well -- an America has been created in people's minds where enemies are everywhere and even their very religion is threatened. Politicians like Vitter take people who are well meaning, but probably not very smart, and turn them into paranoid lunatics. Last time I checked, paranoid lunatics tend not to be very happy. And these people they've taught to hate the imperfect are, by necessity, imperfect themselves. As a result, there's probably a degree of self-hatred in every values voter. Again, it's hard to see how this would help build a happy life.

There are already calls for Vitter's resignation, but most of those making the call are proving they don't get it.

Shreveport Times:

In the wake of U.S. Sen. David Vitter's admission that he engaged a Washington, D.C., prostitute, a member of the Republican State Central Committee called for him to resign.

Vincent Bruno, of Kenner, said today that Vitter should resign "for his own good, the good of the party and the good of his family." If he doesn't resign, Vitter should "join the Democratic Party where they think that kind of behavior is OK."

Good thinkin' Bruno. Once you drive all the imperfect people away from the religious right, you won't have any leaders left but one.

And, last I heard, GOP Jesus wasn't running for office.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; Lousiana; Larry Flynt; crime; sex; scandal; Washington; David Vitter's problem isn't really prostitutes, it's the same problem as everyone's in the religious right -- hypocrisy