It's Been a Bad Week for GOP Lies About Obama

[This article also appears on Huffingtonpost.com. You can access it from my author page here.]

A study came out this week demonstrating, not surprisingly, that pundits and politicians tend to be consistently wrong with their predictions. (As an aside, I was not surprised but quite happy to see that Paul Krugman was rated as the most accurate prognosticator, with former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, Sen. Charles Schumer, and House minority leader Nancy Pelosi close behind; George Will was among the least accurate.)

It made me think of how, from the time Barack Obama stood on the steps of the Capitol and took the oath of office, Republicans made destroying him politically their number one priority. In doing so, facts were optional (death panels and socialism, anyone?). After all, like the study shows, they could make all kinds of outlandish threats and predictions, and they didn't have to be (and weren't) correct.

But as the last week or two unfolded, I was struck by how several news events absolutely obliterated three of the top lies told by Republicans to try and bring down the president (no matter the cost to the country).

1. President Obama is soft on terrorism/won't protect the country/is a Muslim sympathizer. From the time Obama took office, he has had to contend with a Republican campaign to portray him as week on national security. The attacks really took off after the unsuccessful attempt by the "underwear bomber" on Christmas Day 2009, as the Republicans engaged in what Steve Benen brilliantly described as a "collective display of pants-wetting."

But the record shows that Obama has been more aggressive than his predecessor was in targeting and killing terrorist group leaders, including authorizing more drone attacks. But the last couple of weeks really made the Republican scare tactics look downright silly. First, NATO bombed Muammar el-Qaddafi's home, killing his son. Then, putting nearly 10 long years of frustration to bed, Obama authorized a daring and well-planned operation to kill Osama bin Laden at his retreat in the suburbs of Islamabad. (Remember, George W. Bush didn't prioritize catching or killing bin Laden.)

And while terrorists may be able to strike in the United States no matter what precautions are taken by the president, it is telling that the greatest domestic terrorist attack of the last 100 years took place on Bush's watch (despite being given a memo in August 2001 entitled "Bin Laden determined to strike in US"), but, to date, under Obama, no foreign attacks have been successful on U.S. soil.

Based on the week's events, Republicans will look idiotic if they again try to engage in scare tactics based on an idea that Obama isn't capable of keeping the American people safe.

2. President Obama wants to raise your taxes. These attacks were works of pure fiction, given that Obama campaigned that he wouldn't raise taxes on anyone making more than $250,000 per year, and would cut taxes on most families below that range. And what did he do? Exactly what he promised. In fact, he went beyond his campaign promise, agreeing to extend the Bush tax cuts for everyone, including the wealthy. The result? The Bureau of Economic Analysis just found that Americans now enjoy their lowest tax burden since 1958.

You can argue the wisdom of extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy (I think it was a horrible decision that will further increase the deficit while helping nobody who needs assistance). But despite the fear mongering tactics of Republicans who promised the American people Obama wanted raise their taxes, he has been a tax-cutting president.

3. President Obama wasn't born in the United States. The thing is, it's not like anyone with a quarter of a brain actually doubted Obama's place of birth. After all, he released a scan of his birth certificate in 2008, and Honolulu newspapers reported his birth at the time. But on April 27, as unnecessary as it was, Obama released his long-form birth certificate, putting the issue to rest once and for all.

Many Republicans claim they never questioned Obama's place of birth, and that the birthers represented a small percentage of the party. But even days before Obama released his long-form birth certificate, a CBS News/New York Times poll showed that 45 percent of Republicans believed the president was born outside of the United States. And more importantly, most Republican politicians and pundits who claimed not to be birthers offered only lukewarm dismissals of such claims, refusing to condemn those that questioned the location of the president's birth.

The release of Obama's birth certificate has given Americans a lot of questions to ask themselves: Why did Republicans spend so much time on a patently ludicrous accusation, even while the country was grappling with important problems, including a struggling economy, two wars, and national security, just to name a few? What does it say about a party that would conduct its business that way? And why was this president hit with this kind of an accusation? Nobody asked John McCain for his birth certificate or doubted his eligibility for the presidency, even though he was actually born outside of the continental United States (in the Panama Canal Zone). To be clear, I am not challenging McCain's eligibility. It would be ludicrous to do so because he was legally qualified to run. I am only pointing out that McCain didn't have to endure this kind of scrutiny about his place of birth. Why do you think that is?

Bonus Lie: President Obama is a socialist trying to nationalize industries, as evidenced by the automobile bailout. When, shortly after taking office, Obama decided to bail out Chrysler and General Motors to avoid two million lost jobs at a time when the country was already reeling from high unemployment, he was met with criticism from Republicans. Sen. Richard Shelby, a month before Obama took office, said that attempts to help the auto companies were "only delaying their funeral." But a funny thing happened on the way to the funeral home. By 2010, with the auto makers prospering and getting ready to go public again, Obama declared the bailout a success.

And drowned out by the bigger stories of this week, GM quietly announced Thursday it has tripled its profits.

GOP claims about Obama's actions in the auto industry have been proven to be wrong.

Republicans have been portraying Obama as a socialist, someone out of the political mainstream, since he took office. But the facts show that this just another GOP lie. One third of Obama's stimulus bill was made up of tax cuts, he extended the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, and his health care overhaul, rather than cut out the private insurers, instead handed them millions of new customers. And, of course, his 2012 budget proposal includes a five-year freeze on domestic spending and cuts to a bevy of programs that help low-income Americans and the environment.

Again, you can argue the merits of his proposals, but the Republican lies about Obama's ideological position have been exposed. And the news of GM prospering is just the latest example of Republicans mischaracterizing the president. He never intended to nationalize the industry.

In any event, at a time when the country faces important decisions to make and short- and long-term problems to address, no real effort is being made to come up with solutions, and no real debate is taking place, mainly because Republicans are too busy doing whatever they can to politically destroy the president, often by making false claims about him. But the events of the last two weeks have highlighted the strategy, revealing so many GOP assertions as being straight-out wrong.

I have no hope that the Republicans will change how they operate. But I do hope the American people have taken notice and will react accordingly.

Democrats Have to Stand Up to the GOP's Budget Proposals, Even If It Means a Government Shutdown

[This article also appears on Huffingtonpost.com. You can access it from my author page here.]

As I write this, we are hours away from a government shutdown, as, for the time being, the Democrats and the president have failed to cave in to the far-right, potentially catastrophic budget demands of the Tea Party-owned Republicans on Capitol Hill. (And if you think I'm being unfair in categorizing the GOP, I'm not. John Boehner said there is "no daylight" between him and the Tea Party on the budget.)

A government shutdown could be damaging to the country. And yet, my message to the Democrats is simple and straight-forward: Hold the line, and do not fold. The Republican budget, not just the massive cuts (which would disproportionally impact the poor, working class and middle class), but the ideologically-driven, far-right agenda embedded in it, is completely unacceptable. As bad as a shutdown would be, allowing the Republicans to win would be far worse for the country.

There are two main reasons why I think this is a worthy battle for the Democrats to fight, one political and one substantive.

Politically, it is unreasonable for the Republicans, who control only one of the three institutions that have to agree to any deal (barring a veto override), to dictate the terms of the budget. In 2009 the Democrats controlled the White House, the Senate (eventually with 60 votes) and the House, and yet the Republicans fought tooth and nail, deploying every delay tactic at their disposal, to prevent the Democrats from enacting any legislation, even though the Democrats' legislative plan closely followed the proposals President Obama laid out as a candidate.

The Democrats need to equal the Republicans' resolve. If the Democrats didn't have a mandate in 2009 (according to the Republicans, anyway), then the Republicans certainly don't have one now. There is no political reason to cave in to the GOP/Tea Party, especially as two new polls find that Americans would blame the Tea Party for a shutdown, and another reveals that Americans would blame the Republicans in Congress more than the Democrats or the president.

As important as the political aspect of the budget battle is, it is even more vital that the Democrats prevent the substance of the Republicans' budget proposals from making it into the final legislation. Certainly, the Democrats may have no choice but to accept some spending reductions in the final budget. But there are two key points on which the Democrats have to hold the line: First, they have to ensure that important programs that serve the poor, working class and middle class are spared. With unemployment still high (caused by a near financial system collapse), and with the Bush tax cuts for the rich in place, it is patently immoral to address the federal budget deficit solely on the backs of the middle and lower classes, while allowing the wealthy, the only group to prosper financially in the 2000s, to take on none of the burden.

Second, the Democrats have to prevent the Republicans from using the false hysteria over debt and deficits to push through the laundry list of traditional far-right items the GOP budget contains (e.g. attacks on abortion, Planned Parenthood, NPR, etc.). (And make no mistake, the hysteria is false. If Republicans were truly concerned with the deficit, the party wouldn't have insisted on the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, which will cost the country more revenue than the amount of the spending cuts in the Republican budget proposal.)

The Republican budget, the brainchild of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), seeks, essentially, to do two things: Benefit the top one percent of earners in the country at the expense of everyone else, and turn the country back to 1929, with little or no protection for working Americans and a free hand to the wealthy and corporations to do what they please. (I've written before about Ryan's propensity to use wholly false numbers when pushing his draconian budget proposals.)

If Ryan's plan had a sound basis, at least there could be a rational discussion as to whether it would be worth the catastrophic cuts for long-term security. But as Ryan based his economic growth projections on numbers from the far-right Heritage Foundation, the benefits he touts are pure fantasy. Paul Krugman simply and clearly explains how Ryan's numbers on unemployment, Medicaid and government spending are complete works of fiction (or as Krugman puts it, depend "an awful lot on unicorn sightings").

So what do we get for buying into Ryan's work of fiction? Essentially, the conservative wish list dating back to 1929: Defunding the new health care law, cuts to Medicare and Medicaid (even the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that costs would significantly increase for senior citizens and the poor), cuts in education (including Pell grants), deep spending cuts on programs that benefit the poor, working class and middle class (like Head Start), cuts to consumer and environmental protection, cuts to veteran benefits (unthinkably immoral given the way the military has been stretched and abused in two wars over the last decade) and lower taxes for the wealthy and corporations, along with a culture war wish list of defunding NPR and Planned Parenthood, looking to limit environmental and consumer protection, and attacking abortion (like by redefining rape and authorizing IRS audits of abortions).

This budget is just the first step. Republicans want to repeal last year's financial regulation law, Dodd-Frank (which, to me, is unbelievable in light of the 2008 near financial collapse, but, again, we're talking about right-wing wish lists here, not anything with a basis in what is best for most Americans). And it's not just financial regulation. Rand Paul said that mining regulation is too expensive for companies (again, unthinkable in light of all the miner-related incidents in the last year).

The Republicans are pushing a far-right, Tea Party agenda. And we've seen in the last month how unpopular such an extreme approach was in Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida.

In short, the policies pushed by the current crop of Tea Party-owned Republicans seek to benefit the wealthiest Americans at the expense of everyone else. They want to push traditional conservative policies on taxation and regulation that led to a near financial collapse and a deep recession just two and a half years ago (not to mention income and wealth disparities that haven't been this bad since the 1920s), they want to attach culture war social policies that a majority of Americans oppose to the budget, and they are willing to shut down the government to get what they want.

So with those stakes at hand, the Democrats have only one choice: Hold the line and don't let the Republican budget proposals, which would be so damaging to so many Americans, become law. A government shutdown would be awful. Letting the Republicans harm the country would be worse.

GOP Buyer's Remorse Is Nice, but It Only Matters If It Leads to Votes

[This article also appears on Huffingtonpost.com. You can access it from my author page here.]

There seems to be a growing tide of GOP buyer's remorse sweeping the country.

Republicans campaigned in 2010 on creating jobs and cutting spending and the deficit. But once in power, both in the U.S. House of Representatives and in numerous states, all those promises went out the window. Instead they've offered a steady stream of items from the traditional far-right wish list: union busting, blocking abortion, redefining rape, limiting voting rights, going after public radio, etc. Even their budget priorities were not in tune with their campaign promises, as unpopular tax cuts for the rich will outpace their proposed budget cuts. (Not not to mention the petty-seeming far-right initiatives, like going after a mural supporting labor in Maine and reversing environmentally friendly cafeteria policies in the House, while spending money to add signs to federal buildings mentioning God.)

Unsurprisingly, voters have been unhappy.

In Wisconsin, a governor, Scott Walker, who never campaigned on union busting, offered as one of his first proposals the virtual gutting of public sector unions (except for police and firefighters who, not coincidentally, supported his campaign; to their credit, police officers and firefighters nevertheless joined in protesting Walker's union-busting bill). He followed that up with a proposed budget that offered tax cuts for the wealthy but cut programs for the middle class, most notably hundreds of millions of dollars in education cuts (paired with rules that would prevent local school districts from doing anything to raise education funds locally).

So in addition to nearly a month of protests at the Capitol (the largest in Madison since Vietnam), polls show overwhelming disapproval of Walker's far-right initiatives, and one survey found that if the November election were held again, Walker would be handily defeated. Some Republicans are speaking out against Walker, regretting their votes for him. And the disapproval is not just poll-based. The governor's opponents have begun recall drives against eight Republican senators (several with good chances of actually leading to recall elections), as well as shining unprecedented attention on April's Wisconsin Supreme Court justice election, with Walker ally and incumbent David Prosser being targeted by angry anti-Walker constituents.

Wisconsin is not unique in this regard, either. A poll revealed that voters in Ohio would not vote for their governor again if they had the chance. Even Republican legislators in Florida are not happy with Governor Rick Scott's ideologically based rejection of federal high-speed rail funds. And there is national discontent with what the Republicans have done since taking over the House (based on Speaker John Boehner's priorities since January, you would think that Planned Parenthood and NPR were destroying the economy).

One would think this wave of buyer's remorse, coming less than three months after Republicans rose to power, would make someone like me happy. After all, I believe that the GOP's economic agenda is to protect the interests of wealthy and corporate interests at the expense of the other 98 percent of Americans, while pushing for far-right social programs that go well beyond what most citizens want. So yes, part of me is enjoying the realization sweeping the country that the Republicans are not looking out for their interests.

But I can't get too happy about the discontent at Republican overreaching, because it's meaningless if people don't learn from what has happened in 2011. And based on 2010, I'm not convinced the lesson of 2011 will stick.

The story is pretty simple: The Republicans controlled the White House and Congress for most of the Bush administration. During that time, their policies of deregulation, tax cuts for the rich and reckless foreign intervention plunged the country into debt and war, nearly brought down the financial system, and sent the economy spiraling into recession, accompanied by 10 percent unemployment. We are currently paying the price of nearly a decade of the Republicans' disastrous policies.

In the midst of the near financial collapse, Americans sent a message at the polls in 2008, electing Democrats to the White House, as well as large Democratic majorities in the Senate and House.

Whether you support or oppose President Obama's policies, he pretty much did exactly what he said he would in his campaign. He promised a stimulus bill to help get the economy re-started, a health care law to cover all Americans, a tightening of financial regulation, a drawing down of troops in Iraq and renewed focus on Afghanistan. And that's exactly what he did.

And yet, in 2010, boosted by lower turnout and a sea of lies demonizing and mischaracterizing the president's policies, especially health care (socialism! death panels!), Republicans regained a majority in the House and won state-based elections across the country. The lesson of the Bush years was forgotten.

Which makes 2011 a case of "here we go again." Americans are angry that Republicans have ignored their campaign promises and prioritized a far-right agenda voters do not support. But for how long will this anger last? Is this a hiccup, one that will go away in 2012 when the Republicans tell some more lies and demonize the president further (watching Republicans flip-flop on Libya, led by Newt Gingrich, just to stay on the opposite side of the president, has been truly entertaining)? Or is the anger the beginning of a movement, a realization that Republicans are not looking out for most Americans, and that the party's campaign rhetoric has no basis in reality?

That is the key question to come from the first three months of 2011. If GOP buyer's remorse has no lasting impact, it's meaningless now. Let's hope that the American people have finally learned their lesson and translate this anger into votes, this spring in Wisconsin, and then nationally in 2012.