Afflict The Comfortable (The Mind of Bob Buzzanco)

Liberals love to sound the alarums about the “religious right” and its influence over the Republican Party.  For a few decades now, since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, Democrats and liberals have used evangelical Xians and other conservative churches as a bogey man to frighten their constituencies into donating money to their campaigns and getting out the vote.  If you don’t stop Jerry Falwell/Pat Robertson/etc. the country will turn into a right-wing theocracy.

To be clear, the GOP definitely used the religious right as an important tool to win elections.  It raised fears about abortion, equal rights for women, and gay rights/gay marriage to mobilize fundamentalist voters on “moral” issues.  And to be just as clear, it worked, and helped Reagan and George W. Bush in particular get elected, as well as to pass referenda on issues like gay rights.   More importantly, religion has proven a critical weapon for Supreme Court justices like the undearly-departed Nino Scalia, Clarence “Where’d Nino Go?” Thomas, and Joseph “I’m Too Uptight To Be Italian” Alito.  Even in 2016, in certain circumstances, like Ted Cruz’s evangelical-directed campaign in Iowa, religious fanatics can show their muscle.

However, the religious right has always been like the Wizard behind the curtain as well–a seemingly omnipotent and frightening visage with preternatural powers to destroy liberty and freedom.  But since the 2d Bush election, the power of fundamentalists to win elections has been exposed, and even its ability to undermine women’s right and gay rights has slipped as “business Republicans” have realized that women and Gays have money and buy a lot of stuff.

More to the point, Pew Research recently came out with a survey on “U.S. Political Groups and Their Political Leanings” which is a much-needed corrective to liberal hysteria about right-wing religions.  As the graphic below shows, there are indeed more religions that trend Democratic than to the GOP.  And if you look at the groups most strongly associated with each party, you see a clear Democratic advantage.  The most Republican-leaning group is the Mormons, with about 3.9 million members. Southern Baptists, probably the religious sect most closely associated with conservative issues, claims about 15 million members, of whom about 2/3 vote Republican, and with overall membership in decline. Continue reading →

It’s been a full month without Ginsberg today, and I still see him everywhere, often with Kelsey, like I have since the day he rescued me. It’s like the day I took him to see ice. His water bowl is still out and the food I made him is still in the refrigerator. I walk the neighborhood and everyone misses him, misses the way he plodded down the streets walking like a baby hippo with suspicion in his eyes, giving the canine malocchio to those he distrusted. Passing by the trees he watered, the bushes he sniffed, the animals he tried to eat . . . But I’m lucky to have years of good memories of him. He was a curmudgeon, a wartime consigliere. He wasn’t a friendly puppy, well to anyone but me. He’d lunge at passing dogs and bicyclists, bark at anyone who even looked at the house, try to maul every cat he saw, and he did it to protect me—he was my Genco. He was a dog’s dog, a rat-pack dog, a Sinatra dog, my dog. He ate well—sirloin, chicken, turkey, yogurt. If dogs drank scotch, he’d favor Macallan 25. He was the chairman of the board. I had to spoil him for a million reasons. We never fought, he never lied, never betrayed, never took a shiv to anyone’s back. He offered, and expected, loyalty and comfort, and we simply gave that to each other. He lived outside the law honestly. Dogs have some kind of preternatural, instinctual intelligence that we all underestimate and probably don’t understand, and he was at the top of the pyramid, “A-Number One.”

And the world isn’t the same without him. When he left this life, everything changed. As he took his last breath, birds stopped in mid-air, simply hanging there without motion. Ants decolonized in honor of his struggles for liberation. Leaves began falling off trees with vertiginous speed, only to halt and turn back to the limbs they had just left. The sun and moon got confused and caused a global flickering effect, offering the greatest fireworks show ever. A Chicago alderman told the truth. A Sicilian released a grudge. Essence briefly preceded existence, and being and nothingness were as one, as they should be. People realized the bible was dyslexic and they shouldn’t have worshiped God all these eons. Drones turned into butterflies. Televisions turned off spontaneously and books opened themselves. Position and momentum could be equally discerned. Working people of all countries united. Paul Robeson saw Joe Hill. Frogs sang gloriously. The elderly got younger as they walked backwards. Schrodinger did Est and found himself.  Free Bubble-Up and Rainbow Stew were plentiful. Dogs offered a 21-Bark salute in honor of their alpha comrade. Cats took a moment of silence, in the most stirring display of gallantry and sportsmanship since Mountbatten gave India back to the Punjabs, to honor such a formidable rival whose dominance was never questioned, and to breathe a sigh of relief that they could go back to their duplicitous ways without him to keep the peace among the families.

And then, once his energy broke apart in a Vesuvial eruption and he became part of the cosmic stuff that creates all of us, bouncing with Kelsey’s and Langston’s atoms, things returned to what they had been, but they would never be the same.

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Since Nino Scalia’s demise on Saturday, the Republicans have been adamant that Barack Obama should not nominate someone to succeed him, and that if he did they would simply not hold hearings for the candidate, thus leaving the seat open until a new president is inaugurated next January.  While this is on the surface ridiculous–Obama’s the president until noon on January 20th, 2017 and has every right and duty to fill a Supreme Court seat until then–it’s also the first time such intense political pressure was brought to the issue of a Supreme Court vacancy itself rather than over the qualifications of a nominee.

While nominees have been rejected before (See Bork, Robert), they were given hearings and grilled on their legal views.  What the GOP is promising here is a preemptive nuke against the very idea that the president has the right to nominate someone to the court–which is as fundamental a rejection of the constitution as you can get.

But there’s a precedent here.  In November 1987, after the failed nominations of Robert Bork (defeated 58-42 in the senate) and Douglas Ginsburg (withdrawn after admitting he smoked marijuana–it was a simpler time back then), Ronald Reagan nominated Anthony Kennedy to the court.  In his announcement, Reagan stressed that he hoped for confirmation quickly in a bipartisan manner, and added that Kennedy “seems to be popular with many senators of various political persuasions.”

Linda Greenhouse, the longtime New York Times Supreme Court reporter, immediately wrote that there was a strong expectation that Kennedy would be approved, “as well as collective relief that another bruising battle could probably be avoided.”

The opposing party, the Democrats, generally agreed.  Joe Biden, then chair of the Judiciary Committee, admitted at once, “quite frankly, unless something happens that I’m not aware of, we will be able to move pretty swiftly.”  Laurence Tribe, liberal judicial icon and Biden’s advisor on court matters, was relieved to see Kennedy nominated–“his opinions are more sensitive than strident.  He replaces the dogmatism of Robert Bork with a sense of decency and moderation.” Continue reading →

It’s not surprising that the GOP senate and candidates for president are demanding that Obama forestall appointing a successor for Antonin Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court.  Increasingly the court has been the most important line of defense in protecting conservative causes and Scalia was downright medieval in his votes on women’s issues, race, and labor, inter alia.   And with a senate firmly in Republican hands, the chance of Obama getting an appointment approved in this election year are about as good as the Cleveland Browns winning the Super Bowl next year, or maybe even in the 21st century.

But Obama can still get a new justice on the court and gain political capital in doing so, and Dwight Eisenhower showed him the way.  In October 1956, William Brennan, who’d go on to be one of the more liberal Supreme Court judges in the 20th century, took his seat without a senate vote.  Using powers established in Article II of the Constitution  Eisenhower appointed Brennan during a senate recess, a period when the senate isn’t in session but the president can make appointments that last until the end of that session.

So Brennan took his seat in October, 1956, served as a justice and was then confirmed by the senate in 1957, with only Senator Joe McCarthy voting against him.  Politically Eisenhower was able to shore up his election strength (the election was a month away, not, as in today’s case, almost a year off) by appointing a Northeast Catholic.

Obama’s never show the desire or guts to take on the GOP in this manner but now that he’s on his way out perhaps he’ll have some backbone.  It would be harder, though not inconceivable, for the GOP to oppose a justice already on the court, and if the Dems hold the White House, they’d essentially have to confirm the recess appointment because they’d get another nominee that didn’t fit their medieval ideology.  Politically, it would finally give credence to the liberal scare tactic of invoking the Supreme Court to justify going to the polls for such flawed candidates (Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry, etc.)–I can’t count how many times I’ve heard some Democrat say “but you have to vote, think of the Supreme Court.”

Now there’s something to that–reproductive health, the environment, and labor rights are actually at stake and having a justice who understands this is the 21st Century, and not some papal barony from 12th Century Europe, may actually matter.

After Carly Fiorino took a swipe at Hillary Clinton’s record in a debate last fall–“if you want to stump a Democrat, ask them [sic] to name an accomplishment of Hillary Clinton”–Politico asked about 20 well-known Democrats to give their opinions on what Clinton’s most notable achievements had been.  There were comments about her role in health care, her commitment to women in the 1995 Beijing speech, and helping the victims of 911.

But as persistent as any theme to the responses was that Hillary was tough and U.S. foreign policy was strong.

Some of the responses:

Bill Burton, head of a Democratic Super PAC: “Her role in killing Osama bin Laden.”

Howard Dean, presidential candidate 2004 and head of DNC: “The sanction on Iran that brought them to the table.”

Paul Begala, Clinton crony and CNN analyst: “crippling sanctions against Iran.”

Donna Brazile, Democratic strategist: “As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was instrumental in building an international coalition around the toughest regime of sanctions against Iran in history.”

Harry Reid, Senate Democratic leader: “American foreign policy was stronger when Hillary Clinton left the State Department than when she arrived.”

Chuck Schumer, NY Senator and Israel BFF: “She negotiated the cease-fire in Gaza that stopped the Hamas from firing rocket after rocket into Israel.”