With its first public hearings set to begin next week, the House select
committee on Benghazi will take a major step towards achieving its mission. Of course, that mission is not to seek the truth about what actually happened before, during, and after the attack on the U.S. consulate that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. After all, the
State Department, the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and most recently the
House Intelligence Committee have already found no evidence of Obama administration wrongdoing, no cover-up and no "stand down" order from the White House, Foggy Bottom, or the Pentagon in what each of the assessments lamented was a preventable tragedy.
No, the panel’s chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) gave the game away when he suggested his committee's work could extend well into the 2016 presidential election year, a span of time far exceeding the House probes of Hurricane Katrina and the 9/11 attacks. That slow walk is designed to slow down Democrat Hillary Clinton’s march to the White House. And at the forefront of that quest to degrade and destroy the Democratic frontrunner is Kentucky senator and GOP White House hopeful Rand Paul. For the last two years, the man who would be Clinton’s rival has insisted she should be disqualified from becoming president of the United States. As he described the Benghazi tragedy to Iowa Republicans in June:
It’s something that should preclude Hillary Clinton from every being considered as commander in chief.
Follow below the fold for more.
Of course, by that standard, FDR would have been rejected after Pearl Harbor and Ronald Reagan sent packing in 1984 after the Beirut barracks bombing killed 241 U.S. Marines in Lebanon. And George W. Bush, who a month before the 9/11 slaughter of 3,000 people on American soil responded to the legendary August 6, 2001, Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S” by telling his CIA briefer, "You’ve covered your ass now," should have handed the White House keys to John Kerry on January 20, 2005.
No, de facto disqualification from the pursuit of the presidency should require words and/or deeds so damaging to America’s security and prosperity, so at odds with fundamental American values and laws, or so at war with basic facts and demonstrable truths as to lead a reasonable observer to question the candidate’s patriotism, intelligence or even sanity. And by that yardstick, most of the 2016 Republican presidential field should just quit now.
Below are just some of the reasons why most of the GOP’s White House wannabes have already disqualified themselves.
Causing the United States to Default: Starting in late 2007, the United States set off the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression. But in 2011 and again in 2013, Republicans almost produced what their own leaders admitted would be "financial collapse and calamity throughout the world" by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.
Politicians of both parties, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and then-Sen. Barack Obama, have cast symbolic votes to oppose debt ceiling increases when they lacked the numbers to block the extension of Uncle Sam’s borrowing authority. But until 2011, no party ever had both the intent and the votes to block a debt limit increase. And for default deniers like Texas freshman Sen. Ted Cruz, triggering a global economic meltdown is just politics as usual. After leading a government shutdown and threatening a default unless Obamacare was defunded in the fall of 2013, Cruz once again wanted to filibuster a debt ceiling hike earlier this year:
In my view, every Senate Republican should have stood together and said what every one of us tells our constituents back home, which is that we will not go along with raising the debt ceiling while doing nothing to address the underlying spending problem.
As S&P director Joydeep Mukherji put it after its Tea Party Downgrade of 2011, "That a country even has such voices, albeit a minority, is something notable," adding. "This kind of rhetoric is not common amongst AAA sovereigns." Former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill had a different term for anyone like Cruz:
The people who are threatening not to pass the debt ceiling are our version of al Qaeda terrorists. Really. They're really putting our whole society at risk by threatening to round up 50 percent of the members of the Congress, who are loony, who would put our credit at risk.
A resume that includes "Al Qaeda terrorist" sounds disqualifying to me.
Slashing the Federal Budget by 40 Percent in One Year: There’s more than one way to inflict catastrophic damage on the American economy. As it turns out, Rand Paul has advocated many of them. He hasn’t just proposed balancing the budget in five years. In January 2011, he demanded it be done in one year as a condition of securing his vote to bless a hike in the debt ceiling:
I think an ironclad rule that we will balance the budget from here on after, and that’s what it’s going to take.
At that time, Paul was proposing a 44 percent reduction in federal spending in a single year. At
roughly $1.2 trillion, Paul’s cuts represented about 8 percent of the entire gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States.
Authoring a blueprint for the "Paul Depression" should be sufficient to preclude the Kentucky ophthalmologist from ever seeing himself in the Oval Office.
Having a Crazy Father by Your Side: For some conservatives like convicted felon Dinesh D’Souza, Barack Obama’s late, absentee father from Kenya was reason alone to prevent the Illinois senator from ascending to the presidency. (D’Souza may have failed in that quest, but he didn’t fail to get rich peddling the bogus argument that the son inherited his father’s "anti-colonial worldview.") In the absence of his actual dad, right-wingers hyped ersatz father figures like Jeremiah Wright and Frank Marshall Davis to claim that Obama palled around with radicals.
If that’s the case, then Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have even more trouble on their hands.
Ron Paul, after all, wasn’t just the publisher of racist newsletters in the not-too-distant past. He also supported million-dollar tax cheat and domestic terrorist Ed Brown. Being a 9/11 Truther and claiming the Ebola virus outbreak is being hyped by the U.S. government for profit—and can be eradicated with DDT—doesn’t help.
Then, there’s Rafael Cruz. The evangelical pastor didn’t just say that African-American and Hispanic voters are "uninformed" and "deceived." Recently, Ted’s dad (and former undocumented migrant from Cuba) told 600 religious leaders that "the Bible tells you exactly who to vote for." And, apparently, who not to vote for. As he put to Texas Tea Partiers in 2012:
Rafael Cruz had a birther moment last year at a gathering of Texas Tea Partiers. "We have our work cut out for us," he said. "We need to send Barack Obama back to Chicago. I’d like to send him back to Kenya, back to Indonesia." He went on to say, "We have to unmask this man. This is a man that seeks to destroy all concept of God. And I will tell you what, this is classical Marxist philosophy. Karl Marx very clearly said Marxism requires that we destroy God because government must become God."
"I love my father,"
Sen. Cruz said later. "He is a pastor. He is a man of deep integrity. And he made a joke." When Cruz the Elder compared President Obama to
Fidel Castro, Cruz the Younger again came to defense.
In most circumstances, filial piety is a laudable quality for anyone, not just American presidents. But when it comes to Presidents Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, not so much.
Nazis, Communists, and Slaves, Oh My: If Sen. Cruz and Sen. Paul have daddy issues, Ben Carson’s problems with extremism can be found in his own mirror. The neurosurgeon turned Fox News regular may be waiting for the word from God to formally jump in the 2016 race, but he’s already getting positive feedback from Tea Party knuckle-draggers who love his comparisons of Barack Obama to Hitler and Lenin.
After attacking President Obama during the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast (which, Carson claimed, he did because "I serve God and my purpose is to please Him"), Dr. Ben declared that "Obamacare is really I think the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery." Last month, he defended his comparison of Obama’s America to Nazi Germany. "Most people in Germany didn't agree with what Hitler was doing," Carson warned, adding, "Exactly the same thing can happen in this country if we are not willing to stand up for what we believe in."
This week, Carson explained how President Obama is simultaneously following the roads traveled by the fascist Adolf Hitler and the communist V.I. Lenin.
In an interview with Newsmax host J.D. Hayworth today, Ben Carson said that if people want to know the truth about President Obama, they should simply "read 'Mein Kampf' and read the works of Vladimir Lenin." "Mein Kampf," of course, was written by Adolf Hitler and is filled with anti-Communist diatribes.
Whether or not Ben Carson really intends to run for president or just pad his speaking fees before right-wing audiences, the message is the same. Physician, heal thyself.
A Proven Record of Financial Mismanagement: Last year, conservative cheerleaders were touting the Red State Model, the tax-cutting, regulation-slashing policies of GOP governors like Sam Brownback and Chris Christie. But with both Kansas and New Jersey facing staggering budget deficits and credit rating downgrades, no one’s bragging now.
In Christie’s case, it’s bad enough that the Garden State has had its credit downgraded eight times during his tenure and that the governor has delayed contributions to the state employee pension fund to help balance the budget. Christie was warned—year after year—by David Rosen of the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services that revenue would fall short of the levels needed to meet New Jersey's requirement of a balanced budget. As Vox reported, Christie greeted those dire predictions by blasting Rosen and calling for the firing of the 30-year budget veteran who had correctly forecast Christie's 2012 and 2013 red ink:
So it was very inconvenient when David Rosen said Christie's projections would come up $145 million short this year, and $392 million short the following year. Christie criticized Rosen immediately, calling his office partisan and saying "they shouldn't be given any credibility." He added, "They're background noise to the New Jersey comeback."
Weeks later, Christie went further, going after Rosen personally in what the Star-Ledger called "a fiery 20-minute tirade." He called Rosen, widely respected among legislators of both parties for years, a "Dr. Kevorkian of the numbers" and asked, "Why would anybody with a functioning brain believe this guy? ... How often do you have to be wrong to finally be dismissed?" Christie went on: "It should be humiliating to him. Nobody in this state believes David Rosen, anymore, nobody. And nobody should. He's so wrong, for so long, that his credibility is now gone."
Now, of course, it is Christie’s credibility that is drying up. But in Kansas,
Sam Brownback’s disappeared long ago. As
Josh Barro aptly put it in the
New York Times in June, "Yes, if you cut taxes, you get less tax revenue":
Kansas has a problem. In April and May, the state planned to collect $651 million from personal income tax. But instead, it received only $369 million.
In 2012, Kansas lawmakers passed a large and rather unusual income tax cut. It was expected to reduce state tax revenue by more than 10 percent, and Gov. Sam Brownback said it would create "tens of thousands of jobs."
As it turns out, Brownback and his GOP allies were wrong on both counts. For starters, as Christopher Ingraham explained in the
Washington Post, "Tax cuts in Kansas have cost the state money—and job creation's been terrible."
The only problem? That job growth hasn't exactly materialized. In fact, as Josh Barro notes in a must-read over at The Upshot today, job growth in Kansas has actually lagged behind the U.S. average, especially in the years following the first round of Brownback tax cuts in 2012.
Brownback’s situation is so dire, he may well lose his reelection bid to Democrat Paul Davis is deep red Kansas. It was only in March that
Chris Moody described Gov. Brownback as "the possible GOP presidential contender no one's talking about." After November, he may just be the ex-governor no one is talking about..
Keeping Secrets about Mystery Tax Breaks: Speaking of budgetary shenanigans ... Paul Ryan.
For four straight years, the supposedly serious chairman of the House Budget Committee to great fanfare announced new versions of his "Path to Prosperity" blueprint. Each claimed to slash federal budget deficits by repealing Obamacare, slashing Medicaid, rationing Medicare, and generally gutting the safety net. But with his tax cut windfall for the wealthy, Rep. Ryan will instead produce oceans of red ink unless he can "broaden the base." That is, to avoid adding $5 trillion in new debt over the next decade, Mitt Romney’s former running mate has to identify which tax loopholes he would close, tax breaks that now cost the U.S. Treasury about $1.3 trillion a year.
So far, Paul Ryan has identified exactly zero.
This is just a case of cowardice, pure and simple. Ending tax breaks inevitably means hitting middle-class Americans hard. That’s why Ryan has repeatedly pleaded the Fifth when asked which "special interest loopholes" he would do away with. Appearing on CBS Face the Nation in March 2012, for example, Ryan claimed that "we're proposing to keep revenues where they are, but to clear up all the special interest loopholes, which are uniquely enjoyed by higher-income earners, in exchange for lower rates for everyone." And which loopholes would those be?
"That's what the Ways & Means Committee is supposed to do. That's not the job of the Budget Committee," Ryan said on Fox News Sunday. "What we're saying is, we want to do this in the light of day, not in some backroom deal. We want to have hearings in the Ways & Means Committee that Chairman Dave Camp has already started that work, to say what tax benefits should go."
Earlier this year,
Congressman Camp did just that. And the House Republican leadership, including Camp’s successor at Ways and Means, Paul Ryan, welcomed the tax reform plan
like an ill-timed fart. So much for the self-proclaimed
courageous 2012 GOP vice-presidential nominee and his pledge that "we won’t duck the tough issues—we will lead."
Shutting Down the Government: Ted Cruz and many of his Republican colleagues weren't content to threaten a sovereign default by the United States. Over Obamacare, immigration enforcement and probably male pattern baldness, Cruz and company would happily shut down the federal government.
But two-and-a-half years before Cruz' shutdown fiasco in the fall of 2013, then Indiana Congressman Mike Pence was leading the charge for big spending cuts—or else. As he told a Tea Party rally in April 2011:
It's time to take a stand. We need to say to liberals, "This far and no further." To borrow a line from another Harry, we've got to say, "The debt stops here." And if liberals in the Senate would rather play political games and force a government shutdown instead of accepting a modest down payment on fiscal discipline and reform, I say, "Shut it down."
Until that rally, Pence was best known for having branded recipients of Title X family planning funding as
Big Abortion, and for claiming that Baghdad in 2007 was "just like any open-air market in Indiana in the summertime." Now governor of Indiana, Pence is considered by
The Hill as one of the
2016 Republican dark horses to lead the government he once sought to shut down.
Plagued by Scandal: Several of the likely Republican contenders will enter the 2016 race with a lot of baggage. For some of them, that baggage may include an indictment.
In Rick Perry’s case, that has already happened. In his defense, the abuse of power charges he faces in Texas may be tough to prove. In any event, a felony conviction may be the roadblock least likely to end Gov. Perry’s drive to the White House. His proven inability to remember a list containing three items is probably still the bigger threat. Oops.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker may find himself in legal hot water, too. He doesn’t just face a tough re-election contest in November. As USA Today reported:
The governor has also faced allegations that he illegally coordinated spending with independent political groups. A federal judge stopped an investigation in May, and the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago is weighing a prosecutors' appeal to allow them to restart their probe. It's unclear whether the 7th Circuit will rule before the Nov. 4 election.
And then there’s New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. While
Christie traveled to Mexico last week to burnish his foreign policy credentials, the controversy over his possible violation of
New Jersey’s "pay to play" laws only deepened. While the fees lavished on Wall Street firms (many of them linked to prominent) Republican donors) tripled to $3.8 billion during Christie’s tenure, the Garden State’s pensions funds have performed well below other states. If you think those questions are going away, I have a bridge to sell you.
The George Washington Bridge.
The Evolution Deniers: During the run-up to the 2008 Republican presidential primaries, CNN debate moderator Wolf Blitzer asked the 10 assembled candidates to raise their hands if they did not believe in evolution. Seven hands went up, including one belonging to former Arkansas governor turned Fox News host Mike Huckabee.
During his failed 2012 White House run, Rick Perry brushed off evolution as "a theory that's out there" and one that's "got some gaps in it." Now Perry will have to fight off Ben Carson as America’s Creationist-in-Chief.
He claimed that "no one has the knowledge" of the age of the earth "based on the Bible," adding that "carbon dating and all of these things really don’t mean anything to a God who has the ability to create anything at any point in time."
Carson pointed to the "complexity of the human brain" as proof that evolution is a myth: "Somebody says that came from a slime pit full of promiscuous biochemicals? I don’t think so."
In his defense, surveys show that almost half of Americans don’t think so, either. That doesn’t mean one of them should be president of the United States in the 21st century.
(Sadly, climate change denial is probably no barrier to the occupying the Oval Office. When Hillary Clinton recently remarked that climate change represents "the most consequential, urgent, sweeping collection of challenges we face," Sen. Rand Paul responded, "I don’t think we really want a commander-in-chief who’s battling climate change instead of terrorism.")
Now, the list of presidential disqualifications should be much longer. Voting to ration Medicare by turning seniors' health care into a voucher program should be beyond the pale. (That’s especially the case as the rate of Medicare’s cost growth has slowed dramatically). Yet 95 percent of congressional Republicans voted three years in a row for the Ryan budget, which would do just that. Flip-flopping on your signature issue, as Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio did with immigration reform, should be an error from which there is no recovery. (In March 2013, Jeb Bush managed to execute that U-turn in a matter of minutes.) And announcing your opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964—as Rand Paul did—should automatically cancel your plans to redecorate the White House.