Here is what former Republican Senator John Danforth says about Republican criticism of Richard Lugar (Lugar is being criticized by teatards for supporting ratification of the START treaty):
“If Dick Lugar,” said John C. Danforth, a former Republican senator from Missouri, “having served five terms in the U.S. Senate and being the most respected person in the Senate and the leading authority on foreign policy, is seriously challenged by anybody in the Republican Party, we have gone so far overboard that we are beyond redemption.”
Here is what the official Village line (David Broder) on the START treaty is:
The president has said it is a high priority for him to see the New START treaty with Russia ratified during this lame-duck session of Congress.
Jon Kyl, the Republican No. 2 in the Senate and its lead voice on nuclear policy, has raised a number of issues he says must be resolved before such approval is given. Kyl and Obama have been negotiating through intermediaries and have satisfied each other on most but not all points.
The Republicans could ask Obama to sit down directly with Kyl and see if they can compromise on the rest. That would be a fair first test of Obama’s sincerity.
Liberals like Henry A. Kissinger, James A. Baker III and Brent Scowcroft also strongly support ratification of the START treaty.
So that’s where things stand right now: virtually every old-school Republican foreign policy person you can think of favors ratification of START, David Broder thinks Jon Kyl should be allowed to weaken it or kill it.
It’s going to get worse when the government shutdown comes. I don’t doubt that a lot of old-school Republicans will come out against shutting down the government, but the Village will side with the teatard barbarians on it anyway.
Yutsano
Yep. Cuz a shutdown is gonna work for them RIGHT this time you betcha! It’ll run that darkie right outta Washington on the midnight train to Chicago! Plus the drama will SELL SELL SELL!! So they will back it to the hilt and mourn it when it ends. And all will be regarded as yet another Obama failure.
@Admiral_Komack: This. Also. Too.
Admiral_Komack
Fuck David Broder.
suzanne
I’m really sorry ’bout that whole Mr.-Kyl-Goes-to-Washington thing. I didn’t vote for the dude. Swear.
“Fair first test of Obama’s sincerity” my ass.
Corner Stone
Maybe Obama could cook him some vittles and chop some wood while he’s at it too. Or whatever menial tasks would designate him as the supplicant to Kyl and the R’s.
Fucking disgusting. The President has to go on bended knee to one damn Senator to seal a deal everyone in the world is for signing off on? This is what would prove Obama is “sincere”?
Steeplejack
__
Why is it always, always, always that Obama is the one with something to prove?! This closet racism (or Republican obstructionism, or whatever it is) is unbelievable.
And a first test of Obama’s sincerity?! God, Broder is such a senile douchebag.
General Stuck
Yea, the shutdown to come, or at least brinksmanship with it, will bring some old bull goopers out on Obama’s side. And the Village will continue being it’s vacuous self.
But all that will be childs play if some federal judge somewhere rules the mandate in the new HCR law is unconstitutional, AND refuses to stay that decision until the appeals process plays out. I fully expect some wingnut judge to strike down the mandate, at least. Then to avoid the obvious chaos that would ensue in the process of implementing the new law, Obama would almost certainly ask for an expedited opinion from the SCOTUS.
And given a hundred years of precedent on usage of the Commerce Clause for a whole bunch of federal legislative interventions, I truly fear the Supreme’s to make an ideological decision declaring the mandate as unconstitutional. And If they were to do that, it would put into question many many previous laws, that the wingnuts will no doubt pursue to unravel The New Deal, and a host of other progressive laws.
No less the equivalent to opening the American Pandora’s Box that would most likely put afterburners on our current death spiral as a nation. If you own a Musket, clean that fucker good.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Jesus Fucking Christ. Obama has to defuse the stupid in that mouth-breathing marble-headed third-rate ward-heeler to prove his ‘sincerity’. How does this man even think up sentences like this? What’s the step beyond self-parody?
Nick
and gee after Obama used the bully pulpit and everything
mcclatchydc.com/2010/11/18/104001/obama-warns-gop-delay-on-start.html
politico.com/news/stories/1110/45437.html
cbsnews.com/stories/2010/11/20/politics/main7073401.shtml
huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/20/obama-chides-gop-over-nuc_n_786365.html
Nick
@Steeplejack:
Because he’s a Democrat, and there’s a double standard.
Yutsano
@suzanne: I’m trying to remember if we have the Mormons or the old folk to blame for Kyl. Fuck him regardless.
hilzoy
Mark Thoma, certified reasonable person, thinks this is relevant to the sabotage debate:
“I have been hesitant to embrace the idea that the GOP is intentionally trying to keep the economy from recovering in order to make political gains. Instead, I have taken the more charitable route of assuming the policies they are pushing arise from honestly held ideological differences. But if members of the GOP are willing to take positions that undermine national defense just to make political gains, why shouldn’t I assume they’d be willing to do something similar to the economy?”
I agree.
It’s not just a treaty that all sorts of people are for. It’s the treaty that allows us to verify what the Russians are doing with their nuclear arsenal. It’s truly shameful that people are playing political games with this, and ludicrous that David Broder is saying that they need a test of Obama’s sincerity. Kyl had one major demand: modernizing our nuclear arsenal. Obama gave him more than what he asked for. Then Kyl pulled the football away.
It’s pretty clear to me who’s bargaining in good faith and who isn’t.
Nick
@suzanne:
yes but 53% of your crazy ass xenophobic fascist Bavaria-in-the-sand state did.
Bernard
lol. this is the game the Villagers play, face saving Kabuki.
losing “face” is the only crime in the Village. reality be damned.
wars started and children killed and starved, warships built, and cities destroyed. but… Face must be saved. BUT Never lose FACE!!
DougJ
@hilzoy:
Who is Mark Thoma again? I know I should know but I don’t.
General Stuck
@hilzoy:
Mitch McConnell has come right out and said it, several times. That the intention of the republicans, and those in the senate, is to make Obama a one term president. That means few, and only, and maybe not even then, must pass spending bills to keep the government running get passed. They will give Obama no victories, even if it makes the world a little safer. And I take him at his word.
Bob Loblaw
I’m not sure why anybody is even surprised by this behavior. If there’s two things in this world that Republicans despise above all else, it’s Democrats and Russians. Because they’re both commies, you see? This is just a clever way to poke both of them in the eye simultaneously.
Although if we’re on the subject of Village orthodoxy, that whopper about Lugar being the most credible expert on national security we have is right up there with everything in Broder’s excerpt…
Comrade Luke
Why doesn’t Broder get called out on this crap by the mainstream media?
Instead we’ll have David Fucking Gregory on Meet the Press quoting from the article and asking Newt Gingrich for his thoughts.
Quiddity
Broder is truly beyond belief. It’s as if he has no particular interest in the policy just as long as the two parties can come together for a bipartisan accord. That’s all that matters to him.
Hunter Gathers
Shorter David Broder : get out your shine box, boy.
Bob Loblaw
@DougJ:
Thoma. Not Thomas. And he’s a left leaning economist. Teaches at Oregon or Washington maybe, I forget.
economistsview.typepad.com
Comrade Luke
@Bob Loblaw: He teaches at Oregon.
Comrade Luke
@Quiddity: Where “bipartisan” is whatever the fuck Republicans decide it is.
suzanne
@Yutsano:
Both of the above. And McCain, who campaigned for Kyl heavily.
@Nick:
I’m really sorry ’bout that. It certainly wasn’t due to my lack of effort.
Dude in Princeton
Shorter David Broder: Bomb Iran.
BGK
@General Stuck:
With respect to HCR, is my recollection wrong that states are charged with implementing the exchanges and disbursing the subsidies under federal aegis? So, on the off chance HCR makes it relatively unscathed through the courts, couldn’t the new crop of Teatard governors kill HCR in its crib by refusing to implement the exchanges? Pull a Kasich and refuse (heh) the federal funds? I could certainly our soon-to-be governor Rick Scott doing that. His veto-override-proof legislature is already doing that for redistricting: we passed two state constitutional amendments, by wide margins (go figure), requiring fair and geographically sane districts for state and federal offices. The Republican legislature is proceeding is if the amendments don’t exist, and are telling the amendment supporters to pound sand and/or sue if they don’t like it.
Bernard
the Republican party: bomb everybody, especially Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, lol.
fill in the blanks……
just bomb the whole world till everyone else is dead. We Win.
hoorah!!!!
Nick
@suzanne:
It’s not your fault. I grew up in a red area of a blue state. I get it.
Nick
@Comrade Luke:
the mainstream media calling out Broder would be like the Pope calling out homophobes in the Catholic Church.
DFer
@BGK:
What the holy hell was Florida thinking?
General Stuck
@BGK:
There is an opt out clause for any state that wants and can establish it’s own version of HCR, but the regs apply to all states, and I don’t think they can opt out of that.
But the current opt out isn’t available until like 2017, I think. Though Widen and a wingnut, I forget which, have proposed making that date much sooner, so states won’t have to start out with the mandate, and can opt out sooner. Those states will still have to cover as many folks as the federal plan though.
The thinking is, I suspect, that maybe such an amendment would defuse the legal and political passions and motives to repeal, or gut the new law. I personally think that is pie in the sky, as the wingnuts view the whole bill and concept of universal health as an ideological and electoral waterloo for them, and added to their long term woes of demographics against them, now with a grateful nation for the bennies of HCR, once they take effect and folks learn that the GOP was feeding them a shit sandwich on how awful it is, and they are full metal to kill HCR dead as a doornail.
asiangrrlMN
David Broder, Hack #4 on THE LIST. ‘Nough said. Fuck him, and fuck Kyl, and fuck all the batshitcrazy Republicans. With a rusty pitchfork.
BGK
@DFer:
Heh. “Thinking.” I see what you did there!
Nick
@DFer:
“There’s a negro in the White House and Glenn Beck tells me to be mad.”
Sentient Puddle
@BGK: To add to what Stuck just replied with, if the states refuse to set them up, then HHS comes in and does it their way. So really, it’s in their best interest to set it up themselves so that they at least get some say in how they work come 2014.
Not that anyone’s accusing Republicans of thinking long term, of course.
Rock
Obama is the one needing to prove his sincerity? Either Broder can no longer think coherently or he is a mendacious hack that is cloaking party-above-nation politics in a screen of legitimacy. Either way, it’s sad if he is in fact still considered influential…
Yutsano
@Rock:
He is in fact regarded as a highly important and Serious Villager. (note the capitals, those are important.) Therefore his word is beyond circumspect and he should be treated with the status he deserves.
Quiddity
@Dude in Princeton: No. It’s Bipartisan-ly Bomb Iran.
J. Michael Neal
Note that the Broder quote, and what it represents, is exactly why Obama doesn’t do what the left wants him to do (and I fantasize about him doing) and play absolute hardball with the Republicans. He’d get destroyed. Look, they’re saying he needs to compromise about something as straightforward as the START treaty. If he starts trying to govern based upon standing on principles and drawing a contrast between the two parties, we’re going to get crucified. It isn’t fair. Hell, it’s completely nonsensical. But it’s the world we live in.
handy
@J. Michael Neal:
That poor lil’ Obama against all those big bad Republicans and their Village Idiot enablers. It’s just so unfair, whatever can he do, precious?!
Nick
@handy:
you’re free to help him out anytime, you know.
Nick
@J. Michael Neal:
And the left wouldn’t be there to defend him, that’s a major reason why he gets destroyed. If he “fights” then they complain he isn’t delivering. then if he fights and wins, they won’t defend what he did because they’re unhappy with his performance on a completely unrelated issue.
They want him to jump into rip current and then when he does, they leave him to drown while they critique his swimming abilities. And they wonder why he doesn’t put them first.
J. Michael Neal
@handy: One of the problems is that the voters have to decide to believe him. You don’t help with that problem.
trizzlor
THIS is how you move the Overton window. Obama passed Bob Dole’s health-care bill and wants to pass Kissingers nukes-policy but he needs to genuflect before John Kyl first. How the fuck did we get here?
Bob Loblaw
@trizzlor:
Easy, you buy the nation’s media properties. He who controls the flow of information, controls everything. And right-wing corporatists control everything.
Murc
On a possibly unrelated matter… am I the only one uncomfortable with invoking Dick Lugar, Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, and James Baker as legitimate authorities whose opinions we ought to care about?
I mean, Jesus H. Christmas, that list by ITSELF is a rogues gallery of some of the greatest scumbags of the Cold War/early nineties. Kissinger is a war criminal and a traitor. (I’m not using either word hyperbolically; I really feel the historical record backs me up there.) I don’t care what they think. And many of the other people endorsing it are WORSE. In fact, my default response for them endorsing New START is to wonder what’s wrong with it. I don’t think there is, because people who have foreign policy chops I actually trust endorse it as well, but the point remains.
Is there a reason we’re legitimating them, again?
Triassic Sands
Bingo.
These are the guys who used to pass as our resident war-mongers. Not the most extreme wingers, but also not shy about spilling American military blood (or anyone else’s, including civilians).
Today, in Wingerland, they pass for apologists, appeasers, and weaklings.
Beyond Redemption.
bob h
Danforth is free to be candid because he is out of office and out of reach of the Republican knee-cappers. You will not see such candor from any sitting Republican.
Oh, and where is the Decider in all this?
WereBear
He’s peddling his book. And ignored by those in power, apparently, because what power does he have, now?
slightly_peeved
@BGK:
Nope. According to the bill, if a state doesn’t implement the exchange as required, the DHHS implements one for them. The states implement HCR, but they don’t get much choice about how they implement it; the standards are all set by the DHHS and they have the right to step in if they aren’t applied.
EDIT:Whoops, see sentient puddle beat me to it.
On the Wyden amendment (that allows states to set up their own system): it requires that the state system implements equal or better coverage, at equal or better price, than the exchanges. It doesn’t work in favour of Republican governors gutting healthcare; it works for Massachusetts keeping their system or, ideally, places like Vermont setting up single-payer.
Redhand
That would be a fair first test of Obama’s sincerity.
Aw Jayzus, is there any bottom to David Broder’s tub of “bipartisan” bullshit? “Sincerity”, f*cking “Sincerity”?!
The irony is overwhelming. The Repubs “sincerely” want to flay Obama alive, and he’s supposed to meet with them?
Broder is such an asshole. I can’t think of a more one-dimensional hack in the entire Village.
El Cid
I am really tired of all these bitter partisan Democrats who care so little about the national interest that they refuse to resign and appoint Republicans to run the entire government in a bipartisan fashion for this center-right nation.
daveinboca
Danforth is the prototypical RINO and is left of about half of the Demonrats in the Senate, including Claire McCaskill from his former state of Missouri. He’s an Episcopal priest and that should amuse the howling atheists on this thread, with their deep liberal respect for the sincere beliefs of others, snort!
The Demonrats gave a lot of inspecting rights away during the negotiations with the Russians and forgot Reagan’s mantra, “Trust, but Verify.”
I don’t trust Lugar with the national security of the US, not because he’s insincere but because he’s gullible.
timb
As a Hoosier, Lugar is now considered so moderate that he will get primaried in the next cycle. This is a guy who in the 70’s was willing to extend the borders of Indianapolis all the way to the edge of the county in order to ensure white folks out-numbered the colored ones. He is so liberal, he was Nixon’s favorite mayor!
What scares me about the Tea Party types is less there incoherent rage than their complete and utter disregard for governance. They only care about partisan wins.
timb
@slightly_peeved: By the way, HCR will make it through the Courts just fine, including SCOTUS. There are crazies on the Court, but there aren’t 5 (current count: 2 with a Chief Justice who is willing to use them however is good for the oligarchy)
wenchacha
Danforth can clutch his pearls all he wants, but he helped us get to this point by enabling that serial sexual harasser, Justice Clarence “Cooz” Thomas. J. Danforth did plenty of pearl-clutching at those hearings, too, also, about how awful it was for anyone to say anything mean about that dear man from Pinpoint GA.
The GOP was already on the path to Teahadism way back then.
tomvox1
The stupid just oozes out of this op-ed. Where the fuck has this trained political observer been for the last two years? Talk about making up your own reality. There’s not enough blood pressure medication in the world to make it through any given Broder column without suffering minor but irreparable brain damage through rage-induced redouts from the negative g’s of his Bizarro World political analysis.
pattonbt
Danforth can keep his trap shut. My family went to the same church with him and as a child I always thought he was a “decent” man. Once I had my political awakening in my early twenties, I realized he, and people like him, are actually the worst of all politicians – they are the enablers of evil.
My mom still sees him once in a while and of course the topic is politics (after churchy discussions of course). She is always saying how he privately doesn’t like the state of the R party and he’s been saying this for many, many years (my mom, fyi, is as flaming liberal as it gets but its weird in the old school Episcopalian world, inside the church walls it is so damned genial – probably Broder’s fantasy land). So when my mom tells me of her latest chat with Danforth and how sad he is I tell her “well, it’s his own damn fault and the fault of those in control for not taking this long brewing religious right tea-tardism head on”. As someone above noted, the “old school republicans” clutch their pearls and they say “oh my!” but they do nothing to stop it and they keep supporting it. Because they know without the far right, they would never win an election again and that means no power, no money, no TV shows, no respect – and they can’t have that now can they?
Heather
It would be a wasted chance if the attempt to ratify the treaty failed because of the political interests of a particular party. How can the US respond properly to the recent attacks in South Korea when our politicians are not able to reach a consensus on one of the most important treaties in the area of nuclear nonproliferation?