Reagan's foreign policy wasn’t what you think—and doesn't matter today.
The suggestion that any Administration had the power to influence decisively the course of a tremendous domestic political upheaval in another great country on another side of the globe is simply childish. No great country has that sort of influence on the internal developments of any other one.
The idea that Reagan “won” the Cold War is one of the more pernicious and enduring distortions of Reagan’s real success, which involved both opposing and engaging with the Soviet Union as its system collapsed from within largely on its own. The claim of winning the Cold War greatly exaggerated the ability of the U.S. to shape events in other countries. That in turn has inspired later generations of conservatives and Republicans to imagine that they can successfully promote dramatic political change overseas in order to topple foreign regimes. As Kennan said in the same op-ed: “Nobody—no country, no party, no person—‘won’ the cold war. It was a long and costly political rivalry, fueled on both sides by unreal and exaggerated estimates of the intentions and strength of the other party.”
Congratulating Reagan for winning the Cold War is one more form of widespread abuse of Reagan’s legacy that has adversely affected how conservatives think about foreign policy and the proper U.S. role in the world. This has warped how the right understands American power and U.S. relations with authoritarian and pariah states for the last two decades. It also blinds many conservatives to the fact that other nations resent and reject American interference in their political affairs. In spite of the failures of nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan and the collapse of the so-called Freedom Agenda, this myth continues to make many on the right overly confident in our government’s ability to influence overseas political developments to suit American wishes.
There is no IRS scandal. Republicans pursue it anyway. Obama reaps the rewards.
Tea Party and right-wing groups are in the minority of those targeted.
Of the 298 groups subjected to additional review, 72 were “tea party” groups, 11 were “9/12″ groups and 13 were “patriots” groups, according to the inspector general’s report.
Controversial IRS practices are reported and investigated in a timely manner.
The Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration sent a letter to Congressman Darrell Issa and Congressman Jim Jordan on July 12, 2012 informing them they would be auditing the IRS in response to their concerns that certain groups might be receiving extra scrutiny. The letter came in response to a June 28th letter of that year from Congressman Issa and requests for an investigation.
The letter states that after meeting with the staff of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which Issa chairs, the IG Office of Audit began work on the issue. The IG offered in the letter to provide a status update to the staff of the committee throughout the investigation as well as provide copies of interim and final reports..
Conservatives outside of Congress admit there’s no “there” there.
”While there’s still more information to be gathered and more investigations to be done, all indications are that these decisions – on the AP, on the IRS, on Benghazi – don’t proceed from [Obama],” wrote Ben Domenech in The Transom, his influential conservative morning newsletter. “The talk of impeachment is absurd. The queries of ‘what did the president know and when did he know it’ will probably end up finding out “’just about nothing, and right around the time everyone else found out.’”
Heritage Foundation tells elected Republicans to stop legislating in order to focus on scandal.
Michael A. Needham: “We urge you to avoid bringing any legislation to the House Floor that could expose or highlight major schisms within the conference. Legislation such as the Internet sales tax or the FARRM Act which contains nearly $800 billion in food stamp spending, would give the press a reason to shift their attention away from the failures of the Obama administration to write another ‘circular firing squad’ article.”
Onslaught of false attacks backfires, leads to three point increase in Obama’s approval rating.
We urge you to avoid bringing any legislation to the House Floor that could expose or highlight major schisms within the conference. Legislation such as the Internet sales tax or the FARRM Act which contains nearly $800 billion in food stamp spending, would give the press a reason to shift their attention away from the failures of the Obama administration to write another ‘circular firing squad’ article.
Heritage Action’s Chief Executive Officer, Michael A. Needham, in a letter telling Republicans not to legislate in order to focus on taking down Obama.
Heritage Action is the lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation.
House GOP Freshmen Feel Left Out Of Failed Obamacare Repeal Rituals
“We need to get a vote on full repeal, and I’ve asked leadership for this. I’m a cosponsor of Michele Bachmann’s bill … that just goes straight at it for full repeal,” said Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), the chairman of the influential and deeply conservative Republican Study Committee. “We need to continue fighting for repeal. We need a clean vote on repeal.”
Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) urged leadership to hold a repeal vote so freshman members can serve up the same anti-Obamacare talking points for their conservative constituents that more senior Republicans enjoy.
“If you’re a freshman — the guys who’ve been up here the last year, we can go home and say listen, we voted 36 different times to repeal or replace Obamacare. Tell me what the new guys are supposed to say,” he said. “We haven’t had a repeal or replace vote this year.”
“We have not had a chance as freshmen to do that,” said first-term Rep. Trey Radel (R-FL). “Even if it’s just symbolic — and even if we understand that process-wise we are not going to be able to say, okay we want repeal, it’s done, and it’s over. But this is the issue that so many people around the country who love the Republican Party are frustrated with.”
It sounds like an Onion headline. Not the article. The party. The entire GOP sounds like an Onion headline.
Mark Sanford is a creep. Republicans are cool with it. Oh, and they still hate women.
Sanford continues to be unpopular in the district with 38% of voters rating him favorably to 56% with a negative opinion. 51% say the revelations about his trespassing last week give them doubts about his fitness for public office. Interestingly the events of the last week haven’t hurt Sanford too much with Republicans though- 65% say the trespassing charges don’t give them any doubts about him, and his favorability with GOP voters has actually improved from 55/39 a month ago to now 61/32.
While Mark Sanford’s poll numbers with Republicans have improved since the last time we looked at this race, Jenny Sanford’s have gone in the other direction. What was a 57/15 favorability rating for her with Republicans is now 47/27, suggesting that a lot of GOP voters are holding the trespassing allegations against her instead of her ex-husband.
We need to let those who will come in the future to represent us [know] that we are serious. The 2nd amendment means nothing unless those in power believe you would have no problem simply walking up and shooting them if they got too far out of line and stopped responding as representatives. It seems that we are unable to muster that belief in any of our representatives on a state or federal level, but we have to have something, something costly, something that they will fear that we will use if they step out of line.
Some have suggested that the apprehended suspect should be held as an enemy combatant under the law of war. I am not aware of any legal basis at this point for such a designation in this case. Under the law of war, we have the authority to detain individuals who join a hostile foreign force engaged in attacking the United States. The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force authorizes such detention in the case of an individual who is a part of al Qaeda, the Taliban, or an associated force.
I am not aware of any evidence so far that the Boston suspect is part of any organized group, let alone al Qaeda, the Taliban, or one of their affiliates — the only organizations whose members are subject to detention under the Authorization for Use of Military Force, as it has been consistently interpreted by all three branches of our government. In the absence of such evidence I know of no legal basis for his detention as an enemy combatant. To hold the suspect as an enemy combatant under these circumstances would be contrary to our laws and may even jeopardize our efforts to prosecute him for his crimes.
The Tennessee State Capital Complex recently underwent renovations. One of the additions is pictured here.
Senators Bill Ketron (R-Mufreesboro) and Judd Matheny (R-Tullahoma) contacted senate clerks and building adminstrators, alarmed that it was…wait for it…a special facility for Muslims to wash their feet before praying.
As one might expect, these two are as unfamiliar with manual labor as they are with the muslim faith a because….it’s a mop sink.
But this is what you might expect from Ketron and Matheny, who recently wasted the state’s time and money seeking to make it a felony to adhere to Sharia law.
If Portman can turn around on one issue once he realizes how it touches his family personally, shouldn’t he take some time to think about how he might feel about other issues that don’t happen to touch him personally? Obviously the answers to complicated public policy questions don’t just directly fall out of the emotion of compassion. But what Portman is telling us here is that on this one issue, his previous position was driven by a lack of compassion and empathy. Once he looked at the issue through his son’s eyes, he realized he was wrong. Shouldn’t that lead to some broader soul-searching? Is it just a coincidence that his son is gay, and also gay rights is the one issue on which a lack of empathy was leading him astray? That, it seems to me, would be a pretty remarkable coincidence. The great challenge for a senator isn’t to go to Washington and represent the problems of his own family. It’s to try to obtain the intellectual and moral perspective necessary to represent the problems of the people who don’t have direct access to the corridors of power.
The real rap on Woodward isn’t that he makes things up. It’s that he takes what powerful people tell him at face value; that his accounts are shaped by who coöperates with him and who doesn’t; and that they lack context, critical awareness, and, ultimately, historic meaning. In a 1996 essay for the New York Review of Books, Joan Didion wrote that “measurable cerebral activity is virtually absent” from Woodward’s post-Watergate books, which are notable mainly for “a scrupulous passivity, an agreement to cover the story not as it is occurring but as it is presented, which is to say as it is manufactured.
Republican politicians and corporate media continue to frame the great debate of our time as “big government vs small government”. It’s an obsession. I actually think most Americans are open to both arguments even if they tend to side with one or the other most of the time. But this is not the great debate of our time. It’s an argument about how to get “there”.
The great debate of our time is not about how we get there. It’s about where we are going. And Democrats, whether you like them or not, have an answer for this question. Contemporary Republicans do not.
My desires for myself, my family, my friends and my country are actually pretty mainstream in the 21st century. I’ll take any size government that can help me achieve these things. I’ll consider any party that shares my aspirations.
The problem is not that Democrats and Republicans have competing visions for how to get “there”. It’s that Republicans are divided between those heading for an increasingly isolated and unpopular “there”, those who think we passed “there” 60 years ago and, increasingly, those who aren’t even sure where “there” is.
Small government isn’t a goal. It’s a tactic. The Republican party needs a vision. It needs to look forward. It needs to find the next thing and chase after it. It needs to convince us that it wants all Americans to have it. And it needs to prove that shrinking government is the best way to get there.
Until then, the GOP is just a cab driver who’s so invested in the argument over whether the bridge or the tunnel is faster that he forgets to ask where he’s taking you.
![John Kerry bids the Senate farewell after nearly 30 years in office.
Who will take Kerry’s place?
Massachusetts Gov. Deval L. Patrick (D) selected William “Mo” Cowan, his former chief of staff, to temporarily fill Sen. John F. Kerry’s seat, bringing the number of African Americans in the Senate to two, a historic high. [+]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/08aeb181260e7b0fd6b089816b09d155/tumblr_mhh3lvIAHm1qz9m0ho1_r1_500.png)
John Kerry bids the Senate farewell after nearly 30 years in office.
Who will take Kerry’s place?
Massachusetts Gov. Deval L. Patrick (D) selected William “Mo” Cowan, his former chief of staff, to temporarily fill Sen. John F. Kerry’s seat, bringing the number of African Americans in the Senate to two, a historic high. [+]
I’m bemused by neoconservatives who simutaneously pillory the Obama administration for the Benghazi screw-up, yet call for greater efforts to “do something” in Syria. What happened in Benghazi, and Algeria, and Mali are the direct follow-ons from the last time the U.S. ramped up its efforts in a non-strategic situation. If anything, it seems clear that Obama has learned from that lesson — as well as the Afghanistan “surge” — and determined that the utility of military intervention is more limited and the costs are even greater than he imagined in 2008. Furthermore, as the Congo comment suggests, he’s also conscious that if one really wants to apply liberal ethical criteria to the use of Amertican force, then Syria is not at the top of the queue.
