Via Digby, there’s a link to Brian Beutler laying out the case that:
New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait has taken issue with me and a few other liberals who argue that certain conservative and Republican elites have intentionally subverted recovery from the pandemic to undermine President Biden…
...Normally I’d let my short-form responses to his article stand on their own, but there’s more at stake in this disagreement than scorekeeping between columnists. If liberals don’t understand the contours of the right-wing elite’s value system they will be unable to anticipate conservative efforts to engineer Democratic governing failures, and their efforts to govern successfully despite that opposition will falter.
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Beutler is making the case that there is no point in expecting Republican elites to deal in good faith on anything. The problem for a writer, he notes, is that there are so many examples to choose from that prove the point he’s making.
He looks at Republicans pushing anti-vaxx policies and concludes that the whole point of the exercise is to make Biden and the Democrats fail at controlling the pandemic. Quite simply, it’s more important for them to make Democrats lose than it is for America to win. Pick any issue and that's what their dynamic is.
To grasp that Republicans encouraged COVID spread to harm Biden, you don’t have to believe, in a conspiracy-addled way, that they convened in secret and built a playbook for maximizing infections. You simply need to observe that a critical mass of conservative elites view undercutting Biden and Democrats as a political lodestar, and make immensely consequential governing and broadcast decisions on that basis alone. They inhabit a political culture that embraces and even prizes bad faith as a means to acquiring power. I wrote about this value system, and what to do about it, before the election, and believe it remains the cardinal fact of American politics.
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Beutler calls it reflexive demagoguery.
If you can engage in reflexive demagoguery as a thought experiment, you don’t see the point in harping on the obvious contradiction when Kevin McCarthy attacks Biden both for not getting all Americans out of Afghanistan quickly enough but also for not maintaining a permanent force at Bagram Air Base; you aren’t puzzled by the fact that Trump now claims to support re-invading Afghanistan; you know that they know these positions don’t meet any test of principle or consistency—and also that they don’t care. You just want other people to see what you see.
Had Democrats undertaken these kinds of thought experiments last November or December—or ideally years before that—and acted to neutralize the outputs preemptively, the country would be in better shape today, the filibuster would be gone, the democracy protected, and the party and economy on stronger footing ahead of next year’s midterms. That would’ve been the best time to reckon with GOP bad faith under Trump; the next best time is now.
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Read the whole thing. Beutler makes a compelling case that there is no point in trying to deal in good faith with the Republican Party.
Beutler links to an October 2020 piece that supplies additional arguments on this topic: What to Do About GOP Bad Faith After Trump. (Written, it should be noted, before January 6, 2021. That event and those that have followed should end any claims to good faith on the part of the GOP.)
As the leader of the Democratic Party, Joe Biden awoke late to the nature of this opposition, and remains of two minds about it. He has adopted strategically wise negotiating positions on the kinds of reforms that would bring American citizens greater political equality, and force Republicans to compete for votes, rather than suppress them. At the same time, he remains committed, at least in public, to the view that Republicans can be persuaded to be loyal opponents. “What I learned a long time ago is that it’s always appropriate to question another man or woman’s judgment,” he said at a recent town hall event. “It’s never appropriate to question their motive.”
Before Donald Trump’s presidency, this kind of boilerplate was bipartisan, the sort of thing even the most strident members of both parties repeated robotically to convey a largeness of spirit. But what if it’s wrong?
The Republican Party’s core rottenness—its dishonesty, corruption, pettiness, racism—is the defining political fact of our time. Whatever we say about it, confronting all of us in the weeks and months ahead is the more important question of what we do about it. What do the rest of us—most importantly elected Democrats, but also journalists, political elites, and regular citizens—need to change about public life to account for the fact that one of the two major parties has embraced bad faith as an organizing principle?
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Read that whole thing as well.
The prospect of gaining legitimate power in a modern, humane world strikes them as impossible, because they can’t imagine reconciling themselves to such a world and the desires of its free people. Confronted with fair House maps, automatic voter registration, a representative judiciary, and an adversarial press, they may recede further into the fringes.
But the choice should be theirs. Their recalcitrance brought the country to the brink of destruction and it should not now compel the rest of us to let bygones be bygones. If in the name of unearned and unreciprocated comity we grant Republicans a seat at the table and a voice in governing, they’ll learn only one thing: that cheaters prosper. If we do nothing but elect Joe Biden and close the book on the past, things will only get better until the pendulum inevitably swings back again, and Republicans come roaring back to power unchastened.
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The late science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein had a quote via one of his characters — Lazarus Long IIRC: “Never appeal to a man’s better nature. He may not have one.”
I rather think I can agree with Beutler that that applies to the Republican Party and how we should deal with them.
Monday, Sep 20, 2021 · 6:19:11 AM +00:00 · xaxnar
UPDATE: The NY Times has a story on how Jill Biden is trying to reach out:
Jill Biden Is Chasing the President’s Most Elusive Campaign Promise: Unity As the president tries to prove that bipartisanship is still possible, the first lady is not standing on the sidelines.
Katie Rogers hints around how the chase is going:
Eight months into Mr. Biden’s presidency, both husband and wife are finding that winning the “battle for the soul of the nation” is perhaps his most elusive campaign promise. In Washington, an outrage-driven approach to politics has replaced Mr. Biden’s rose-colored belief that bipartisan deal making can be an art form. As he tries to prove that this is still possible, his wife is not a bystander.
Beutler would probably have something to say about “rose-colored”. Lucy and the football comes to mind.
The Bidens have grown accustomed to seeing obscenity-laden signs along both of their motorcade routes. When the first lady visited a school in Erie County, Pa., early in the administration, a crowd had gathered outside with a large Biden sign that had been defaced with an expletive.
“They think it makes sense for us to be in this kind of thing, where you ride down the street and someone has a sign?” Mr. Biden complained last week during a visit to Shanksville, Pa. “It’s not who we are.”
Except it is who some of us are…
...(In a Rorschach test for the current state of politics, when he picked a dandelion for her on the South Lawn in April, it was greeted with equal parts derision and delight.)...
Kevin Drum is still right.
Monday, Sep 20, 2021 · 7:08:53 PM +00:00 · xaxnar
UPDATE: To follow up with the anti-vaxx madness being pushed by the right, Tom Sullivan reports on the latest plot twist — it’s all the Lefties fault. He finds this at Breitbart via Christian Vanderbrouk via Michelle Goldberg:
“The organized left is deliberately putting unvaccinated Trump supporters in an impossible position where they can either NOT get a life-saving vaccine or CAN feel like cucks caving to the ugliest, smuggest bullies in the world.”
And then there’s the CBS Sunday Morning piece on what Will Bunch notices in: “Americans in love with the fictional idea of a Southern town with no Black people have thoughts” as Ted Koppel asks them what they think about January 6 and the press.
But don’t call it a cult...