Mitt Can Pander To Any Audience
Watching the Republicans struggling to agree on a presidential candidate, one wonders whether the GOP shouldn't just sit this election out - just give 2012 a pass.
You know how in Scrabble sometimes you look at your seven letters and you've got only vowels that spell nothing? What do you do? You go back to the pile. You throw your letters back and hope to pick up better ones to work with. That's what Republican primary voters seem to be doing. They just keep going back to the pile but still coming up with only vowels that spell nothing.
There's a reason for that: Their pile is out of date. The party has let itself become the captive of conflicting ideological bases: anti-abortion advocates, anti-immigration activists, social conservatives worried about the sanctity of marriage, libertarians who want to shrink government, and anti-tax advocates who want to drown government in a bathtub.
Sorry, but you can't address the great challenges America faces today with that incoherent mix of hardened positions. I've argued that maybe we need a third party to break open our political system. But that's a long shot. What we definitely and urgently need is a second party - a coherent Republican opposition that is offering constructive conservative proposals on the key issues and is ready for strategic compromises to advance its interests and those of the country.
Without that, the best of the Democrats - who have been willing to compromise - have no partners and the worst have a free pass for their own magical thinking. Since such a transformed Republican Party is highly unlikely, maybe the best thing would be for it to get crushed in this election and forced into a fundamental rethink.
Because when I look at America's three greatest challenges today, I don't see the Republican candidates offering realistic answers to any of them.
The first is responding to the challenges and opportunities of an era in which globalization and the information technology revolution have dramatically intensified, creating a hyperconnected world.
This is a world in which education, innovation and talent will be rewarded more than ever. This is a world in which there will be no more "developed" and "developing countries," but only HIEs (high-imagination-enabling countries) and LIEs (low-imagination-enabling countries).
The second of our great long-term challenges are our huge debt and entitlement obligations. They can't be fixed without raising and reforming taxes and trimming entitlements and defense. We absolutely cannot just cut entitlements and defense. That would imperil the personal security and national security of every American. We must also reform taxes to raise more revenues.
But when all the Republican candidates last year said they would not accept a deal with Democrats that involved even $1 in tax increases in return for $10 in spending cuts, the GOP cut itself off from reality. It became a radical party, not a conservative one. And for the candidates to wrap themselves in a cartoon version of Ronald Reagan is fraudulent.
Our third great challenge is how we power our future - without dangerously polluting and warming the earth - as the global population grows from 7 billion to 9 billion people by 2050, and more and more of them want to drive, eat and live like Americans.
Two billion more people who want to live like us? We can't drill our way out of that challenge, which is why energy efficiency and clean power will be the next great global industry. Real conservatives - like Richard Nixon, the father of the Environmental Protection Agency, and George H.W. Bush, the author of the first cap-and-trade deal to curb acid rain - believe in conserving. The current Republican candidates are so captured by the oil and coal lobbies that they can't think seriously about this huge opportunity for energy innovation.
Until the GOP stops being radical and returns to being conservative, it won't provide what the country needs most now - competition - competition with Democrats on the issues that will determine whether we thrive in the 21st century. We need to hear conservative fiscal policies, energy policies, immigration policies and public-private partnership concepts - not radical ones. Would somebody please restore our second party? The country is starved for a grown-up debate.
Friedman is a columnist for the New York Times and a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner.
What do you call a Republican who makes their money honestly?
Broke.
You might be a Republican if...
You'll spend $20 billion guarding a bridge against the possibility of a terrorist attack, but won't spend 20 cents to keep it from falling down on its own.
Where can you find a Republican politician who's not currently taking bribes?
The cemetery.
ROVER
What's the most common name for the smartest member of a Republican household?
Rover.
RushBo
Rush Limbaugh was riding down a country road in his limo, when his driver accidentally hit and killed a pig. Limbaugh told the chauffeur to drive up to the farm and apologize to the farmer. They drove up to the farm, and the chauffeur got out. He knocked on the front door and was let in, but remained inside for a surprisingly long time. When the chauffeur returned, Limbaugh asked what had taken so long.
"Well," the driver explained, "when I went in, the farmer shook my hand and offered me a beer. Then his wife brought me some cookies, and his daughter showered me with kisses."
"What did you tell the farmer?" Limbaugh asked. The chauffeur replied, "I told him that I was Rush Limbaugh's driver and I'd just killed the pig."
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The Road To Nowhere
The bill would spend $260 billion — roughly $51 billion a year — on highways, bridges and other transit programs over the next five years. That’s a mountain of money, but it doesn’t come close to meeting the needs on the ground. In 2011, a group led by former U.S. transportation secretaries concluded that federal government should be spending $262 billion a year to repair and improve the nation’s infrastructure.
Yes, these are lean times for the nation and for the federal government, and transportation must compete with other domestic priorities. But the nation’s roads, bridges and transit systems are in desperate need of repair and replacement after decades of disinvestment by Congress.
The bill’s flaws go far beyond a lack of funding. For example, it would radically change the method of funding public transit, which since the Reagan administration has been funded by a dedicated portion — 2.86 cents — of the 18.4-cent per gallon federal gas tax. Under the GOP plan, approved by the House Ways and Means Committee, mass transit would be cut off from its traditional source of revenue of gas taxes and would have to compete for funding with other general fund projects.
That switch would inflict a mortal wound on mass transit in metropolitan areas — not only in big cities such as New York and Chicago, but in communities such as Eugene and Springfield, which rely on federal funding for projects such as the Lane Transit District’s EmX system.
The bill would drastically cut funding for biking and pedestrian projects. It would reduce the allocation for Amtrak by 25 percent. It would curtail important environmental reviews for transportation projects.
It gets worse: In an attempt to hand the nation’s transportation policy to their supporters in the oil and gas industry, GOP lawmakers want to pay for the $260 billion in planned infrastructure improvements by opening to new drilling the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and in long-protected areas off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Then there’s a proposed mandate for oil shale leasing on federal lands, and House Speaker John Boehner wants to add language that would require the permitting of the Keystone XL pipeline.
The GOP strategy is breathtakingly cynical and transparently manipulative. By linking highway construction — which is now primarily funded by gas-tax funding and user fees to oil and gas drilling revenues — lawmakers are trying to make transportation dependent on the fossil fuels industry. Nothing could make Big Oil happier — or richer.
With Republicans in firm control, this measure is likely to pass the House, and it may get even worse before final passage. It will then go to the Senate, which should reject the House bill and make certain that the nation ends up with a sound, workable and adequately funded transportation system.
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MAKE A NOTE
Saturday, March 3, 3:00 – 5:00 PM – Town Hall meeting with Andrew Schmookler in the Community Meeting Room of the Lynchburg Public Library, 2315 Memorial Avenue. There is ample free parking outside the entrance of the Community Meeting Room. Come out and talk with the candidate who is going to defeat Bob Goodlatte in the November election.
AMHERST COUNTY VIRGINIA DEMOCRATIC NEWS
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