Today's Stories

April 24-26, 2009

Marjorie Cohn
Torture Used to Try to Link Saddam with 9/11

April 23, 2009

Eamonn Fingleton
How the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times Buried the Madoff Scandal for at Least Four Years

Ray McGovern
Obama Plays Hamlet on Torture

Michael Ratner
The Torture Commission Trap

Alan Farago
The Quicksand Economy

Rob Larson
Business Gets Carded

Nadia Hijab
The Real Heroes of Durban

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Deconstructing the Taliban

Dave Lindorff
Are Members of Congress Being Blackmailed?

Helen Redmond
Selling Out Single-Payer: the "Public Option" Con

Niranjan Ramakrishnan The Financial Experts: Malgudi on the Mississippi?

Adam Federman
The Battle Over New York's Marcellus Shale

Website of the Day
An Interactive Map of Vanishing Employment Across the Country

April 22, 2009

Chris Floyd
The Fatal Thread: Torture, War and the Imperial Project

Joanne Mariner
Torture Evidence and Terror Blacklists

Vijay Prashad
Obama's Afghan Plan: Fracturing the Antiwar Movement

Gareth Porter
U.S. Lacks Capacity to Win Over Afghans

Dean Baker
The Tyranny of Bad Economics

Peter Morici
Housing Sales and Fixing the Economy

Winslow T. Wheeler
Eliminating Bad Pentagon Habits

Barucha Calamity Peller
The Battle to Take Back the New School

Harvey Wasserman
Chernobyl Could Happen Here

Aisha Brown /
Dedrick Muhammad
White Privilege in the Americas

Teo Ballvé
Obama's Feel Good Meeting with Colombia's Uribe

Website of the Day
Ahmedinejad's Durban Speech: What He Actually Said

April 21, 2009

Randy Rowland
Lindy Blake's Great Escape

Dave Lindorff
Jay Bybee's Conspiracy to Torture

Fidel Castro
The Secret Summit

George McGovern
Pull Out of Iraq This Year

Greg Moses
The Unemployment Channel

Benjamin Dangl
Argentina Remembers

Sonia Nettnin
Saving Lives in Gaza

Frank Barat
The Death of Bassem: a Shooting at the Wall in Bil'n

Binoy Kampmark
Legal Purgatory and John Demjanjuk

John V. Walsh
Code Red for Single Payer

David Macaray
SAG Should be Praised, Not Assailed

Website of the Day
Bonus Man: For Executive Assholes Everywhere

April 20, 2009

Mike Whitney
Housing Bust Comes Roaring Back, Worse Than Ever

Andrea Peacock
Histrionics and Legalisms in Missoula

Henry A. Giroux
Ten Years After Columbine: the Tragedy of Youth Deepens

Liaquat Ali Khan
Drone Attacks on Pakistan's Indigenous Tribes

Fred Gardner
Obama's DoJ Backs Prosecution of Medical Marijuana Providers

Stephen Soldz
Obama, Blair, Panetta and the Torture Memos: Praising Moral Cowards, Ignoring Real Heroes

Nadia Hijab
Obama's Multi-Polar Middle East

Dave Lindorff
The Meeting in Trinidad

P. Sainath
India's Press Nixes "R" Word

Nelson P Valdés
A Modest (Transition) Proposal to Obama

Mark Engler
American Empire Foreclosed?

Belén Fernández
The FARC Can't Dance

Website of the Day
Dear Mr. Buffett...

April 17-19, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Thin Ice From Here to the Horizon

Saul Landau
Infiltrating Alpha 66: a Conversation with Gerardo Hernandez, Leader of the Cuba Five

Franklin Lamb
Persia Rising

Ralph Nader
The Greedsters Are Back!

Fred Gardner
Obama's Chimerical Marijuana Policy: a Guide for the Perplexed

Dean Baker
A Win-Win Solution: Tax the Rich!

Rannie Amiri
The Curious Case of Benjamin Netanyahu

George Wuerthner
The War on Predators

Dave Lindorff
No Amnesty for Torturers

David Swanson
Personal Torture Laws

Jim Goodman
The Control of Food

Kathy Sanborn
Economic Fallout Hits Families Hard

Don Monkerud
Economic Recovery for Whom?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The People's Money

David Michael Green
Home of the Barricaded, Land of the 'Fraid

Nelson P Valdés
The OAS Charter, Cuba and the United States

Manuel Gomez
From the Bay of Pigs to Trinadad and Tobago

Dr. Susan Block
On Sex Addiction: the Deadliest Sin?

Ramzy Baroud
Non-Violence in Palestine?

Christopher Brauchli
Banning Barbie

Stephen Martin
Statelessness: the Final Frontier

Ron Jacobs
Tearing the Whole Building Down: the Dead in Greensboro

David Yearsley
Monkey Music

Lorenzo Wolff
A Song for the End of the World

Poets' Basement
Moser, McTeer and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
New England Journal of Medicine Report on Civilian Deaths in Iraq

April 16, 2009

Mike Whitney
A Bulletin From the Captain of the Titantic

Russell Mokhiber
The Top 10 Enemies of Single-Payer

Ronald Teska
From Iraq to Appalachia

Gareth Porter
Predator Blowback

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Thinking Like an Afghan

Benjamin Dangl
Latin America Changes

Kevin Pina
Haiti: Obama's First Foreign Policy Disaster?

Robert Bryce
Another Ethanol Producer Goes Bust

George Wuerthner
See the Forest: the Value of Dead Trees

Paul Garon, David Roediger and Kate Khatib The Surreal Life of Franklin Rosemont

Website of the Day
Socialism and the Facebook Generation

April 15, 2009

Kathleen and Bill Christison
Solving Palestine While Israel Destroys It

Ray McGovern
W, the Torture Decider

Robert Sandels
Is There a Latin American Policy?

Heather Williams /
Paul Baker
Carbon Cap and Trade: How Wall Street will Game the Regs and Trash the Planet

Jack Willoughby
The Lessons of the S & L Crisis

David Swanson
Habeas at Bagram?

Paul Craig Roberts
94 Years of Serfdom

Sara Mann
Norman Rockwell and the Perils of Nostalgia

Kenneth Couesbouc
John Maynard's Martingale: How Keynes Got Rich

Binoy Kampmark
Tax Haven Hypocrisies

Kekuni Blaisdell, Lynette Hi'llani Cruz, George Kahumoku Flores, et al.: An Urgent Letter to Obama on the Rights of Native Hawaiians

Website of the Day
Taxa: the Paintings of Isabella Kirkland

April 14, 2009

Conn Hallinan
The Afghan Rubik's Cube

Mike Whitney
Why is Goldman Sachs So Scared of Mike Morgan?

Peter Morici
Taxing Grandma to Subsidize Goldman Sachs

Greg Moses
Economic Curveballs: the Laffer Posse

Fidel Castro
Obama's Cuba Policy: Not a Word About the Blockade

Robert Weissman
No Blank Check for the IMF

Rebecca Macaux /
Philip Primeau
Somali Piracy and American Foreign Policy

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
The Dubious Revoution: Biofuels, the Next Generation

Dave Lindorff
Snatch-and-Jail Justice: the Ugly War on Immigrants

Walter Brasch
The Resurrection of Intolerance

Benjamin Day
Why Has the Press Failed Us in Reporting on Health Care Reform?

Website of the Day
The Appraisal Bubble

April 13, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi Militia Fear Reprisals After US Exit

Uri Avnery
Our Dissonance

Jeremy Scahill
A Test Case for Habeas Corpus: Will Obama Prosecute the Somali Pirate in a US Court?

Martha Rosenberg
Suicide Syndrome: Are VA Protocols Behind Iraq Vet Suicides?

Karl Grossman
A Radioactive Extension for Aging Nuclear Plants

Nadia Hijab
Still Waiting: Obama and American Muslims

Sam Smith
America's Cultural Bear Market

James McEnteer
Peru's Shining Example

Sean McMahon
Globalizing Politicide: Israel's Strikes on Sudan

Namihei Odaira
Makota's "Campaign Against Poverty"

John V. Walsh
Bossnapping

Website of the Day
Declining IRS Audits for Big Financial Houses

April 10 / 12, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Resurrection and Revenge

Chris Floyd
Hope Abandoned: Obama Protects CIA Torture Memos

Mike Whitney
"Liquidate the Banks; Fire the Executives!" Warren's Devastating Report to Congress

Saul Landau
How the Media Bought the Surge

M. Reza Pirbhai
Obama's Afghanistan Plan and India-Pakistan Relations

Franklin Spinney
The Art of the Scam: Wall Street and the Pentagon

Rannie Amiri
Iran's Elections: Why Arab Leaders Want Ahmadinejad to Win

William Blum
The Ideology of Barack Obama

Matt Vidal
Why Card Check Would Help the Economy

Jeff Howison
Death of the Square Deal

Jeff Leys
Resisting the Af-Pak War: the Creech Air Base Arrests

Dave Lindorff
America's Imperial Wars: Why We Need to See the Horrors

Ramzy Baroud
Israel Investigated: But Will It Repent?

Missy Beattie
The Grateful Dead, Wounded and Displaced

Fred Gardner
Fakes Left, Goes Right: Obama's Crossover Dribble on Marijuana Policy

Harvey Wasserman Another $50 Billion for Rust Bucket Nukes?

Suzan Mazur
A Revolution in Biology: an Interview with Nobel Laureate Paul Nurse

Bernard Umbrecht
German Capitalists Take Fire

David Macaray
A Word Clooney, Hanks and Baldwin Should Learn: Solidarity

Janet Kauffman
How to Starve (or Feed) a River

Ron Jacobs
Daring to Struggle, Failing to Win

Norman Solomon
Getting a Death Grip on Memory

Michael Winship
Let the Railsplitter Awake!

Richard Rhames
Empire, Ennui and Extra Cheese

Wanda Fucha
Brother, Can You Spare a Million Bucks?

David Yearsley
My Journey to the Heart of Rahman

Lorenzo Wolff
Getting Beyond the Black-and-White: Jason Isbell's Challenging New Album

Ben Sonnenberg
Rossellini's Louis XIV: "Neither the Sun Nor Death Can be Gazed Upon Fixedly"

Jeffrey St. Clair
Savage Incongruities: the Photographic Life of Lee Miller

Poets' Basement
Corseri and Corzett

Website of the Weekend
The Palestine Chronicle Needs Your Help!

April 9, 2009

Mike Whitney
The Decade of Darkness

Patrick Cockburn
What It Would Take to Mend Fences with Islam

Stephen Soldz
Caught on Tape: Diagnostic Abuse of Veterans

P. Sainath
The Rise of the Shoe-cide Bomber

Ellen Cantarow
Israel's Master Plan for Transfer

Gareth Porter /
Jim Lobe
Obama and Israel's Threat to Strike Iran

Jeremy Scahill
How Many Democrats Will Stand Up Against Obama's Bloated Military Budget?

Jerry Kroth
Saving GM From Bankruptcy--With the Stroke of a Pen

Binoy Kampmark
Fujimori Convicted: A Measure of Justice in Latin America

Fidel Castro
My Meeting with the Black Caucus

Website of the Day
Bird Song Radio

April 8, 2009

John Prados
The Af-Pak Paradox

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
Changing the Rules of the Blame Game

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Tooth Fairy and the Defense Budget

Russell Mokhiber
PBS Lashes Back

Kathy Sanborn
Depression Fury

Rev. William E. Alberts
If the Shoe Fits: Bush and Al-Zaidi

James McEnteer Rashomon and the Binghamton Shooter: the Rush to Interpret Jiverly Wong's "Statement"

Nadia Hijab
Olmert's Nightmare

Adam Turl
Card Check on the Ropes

Kevin Zeese
Escaping the Drug War Quagmire

Website of the Day
Walk Score Your Neighborhood

April 7, 2009

David Price
Counterinsurgency's Free Ride

Uri Avnery
Who's the Boss?

Chris Floyd
Talking Peace in Prague, Dropping Bombs in Pakistan

Winslow T. Wheeler Defense Cuts: Gates and the System

Marjorie Cohn
Prosecuting the Bush Torture Team: Spain Leads the Way

Dean Baker
Hands Off Social Security

Diana Johnstone
NATO, Strasbourg and the Black Block

Dave Lindorff
Politicizing Accounting

Martha Rosenberg
Life on HBO's Factory Hog Farm

Evelyn Pringle
Motherhood and the Psycho-Pharmaceutical Complex

Website of the Day
Gaza: Closed Zone

April 6, 2009

Michael Hudson
The IMF Rules the World

Andy Worthington Bagram: Guantánamo's Dark Mirror

Ray McGovern
Profiles in Cowardice: Eric Holder and Colin Powell

Deepak Tripathi
The Pakistan Enigma

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Financial Rescue Plan: a Glide-Path to Destitution

Norman Solomon
Meet the New Escalators: the Democrats and the Afghan War

Jonathan Cook
Israel Railways Accused of Racism in Firing of Arab Workers

Judith Bello
Justice for the Developmentally Disabled

Deena Metzger Blackwater in Liberia

Dr. M. Kamiar
"There's No 'Eye' in Iran:" Obama's Pronunciation Problem

Website of the Day
Prison Talk

April 3-5, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
From Twin Towers to Twin Camelots

Kathy Kelly /
Brian Terrall
Getting a Closer Look at the Killer Drones

Sue Sturgis
Fooling with Disaster? Startling Revelations About Three Mile Island Raise New Doubts Over Nuclear Plant Safety

Peter Morici
Girding for a Depression

Kathy Sanborn
Homeless in Tent City, USA

Andy Worthington
Britain's Guantánamo: Fact or Fiction?

Rob Larson
Subprime Supreme Court: The Roberts Court Has Become a Powerful New Tool for Business

Saul Landau
Biden and Nixon: a Tale of Two Latin American Experiences

Steve Early
An Evening with Andy Stern

John Goekler
Was Gaza Israel's Waterloo?

Rannie Amiri
Arab League Reconciliation Summit a Bust

Dave Lindorff
Hooray for Juries! A Courtroom Victory for Ward Churchill and Academic Free Speech

Lee Ballinger
Sound Garden: Tom Morello at the Grammy Museum

Ron Jacobs
Artifacts for Survival

David Macaray
AIG Plays the Sympathy Card

John Wight
G20: Capital's New World Symphony

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Race in the Obama Era

Mychal Bell
Surviving Jena Six

Missy Beattie
Hoop Hopes, War and Peace

Reza Fiyouzat
The Iran/US Rapproachment Dance

Michael Boldin
The War on Drugs is a War on You

Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Batting 50-50

Charles R. Larson
Too Much Stuff

Susie Day
Bernie Breakout Shocker!!

Stephen Martin
Gordon Brown's Chicken Run at the G20

Kim Nicolini
"Last House on the Left:" Vigilantes of the Bourgeoisie

David Yearsley
Homage to Moog and Mallards

Phyllis Pollack
An Interview with Legendary Rock Producer Chris Kimsey on Working with the Stones, Ronnie Wood, Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh and Saint Jude

Poets' Basement
Foley, Valentine and Kozak

Website of the Day
The Corner Store

April 2, 2009

Robert Weissman
What If Obama Had Treated Detroit Like Wall Street?

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
A G20 Meeting for Naught

George Bisharat
Israel's Impunity Must End

Russell Mokhiber
Something is Rotten at PBS

Franklin Lamb
Has Washington Lost Lebanon?

Gareth Porter
Settling Scores in Iraq: Maliki Draws US Troops into Crackdown on Sunni Rivals

David Macaray
Obama and the Ruling Class: "Only the Little People Pay Taxes"

Chris Genovali
B.C.'s Bloody Grizzly Hunt

Sam Smith
The Politics of Adulation

Suzan Mazur
Is Neo-Darwinism Dead?

Website of the Day
Fighting for Change in St. Louis

April 1, 2009

Chris Floyd
Surging Further Into the Afghan Abyss

Stanley Heller
Israeli War Crimes: Thank God, It Was Only Rumors

Mark Brenner, Mischa Gaus and Jane Slaughter Obama's Perilous Plan for Detroit: Restructure the Big 3, But Not With Bankruptcy

Jonathan Cook
The Slow Demise of Ehud Olmert

Eric Walberg
EU in Tatters: Only the Protesters Have Any Vision

Richard Morse
Why Haiti Can't Forget Its Past

Don Fitz
Guess Who Came to Dinner with a Match? Green Mayoral Candidate's Van Firebombed in St. Louis

Laray Polk
Texas and Evolution

Belén Fernández
12 Años de Soledad?

Harvey Wasserman
Cracking the Media Silence on Three Mile Island

Website of the Day
Pentagon Fraud Investigations Fell, While Contracts Soared

March 31, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Deception Tango

Peter Lee
Ghosts in the Machine: the World's Hottest Cyberwar Battlefield

Nicholas Dearden
A New Global Debt Crisis

Dave Lindorff
The Obama Betrayal

Joanne Mariner
"We'll Make You See Death"

Ron Jacobs
Obama's Pakistan Gambit

Wiliam S. Lind
Another Lost War

David Michael Green
Who Says the GOP Doesn't Have a Plan?

Benjamin Dangl
Beyond Elections in the Americas

Johnny Barber
Meditation in Orange

Dedrick Muhammad
Economic Inequality: the Foundation of the Racial Divide

Website of the Day
How the Obama Dems Took Over the Peace Movement

March 30, 2009

Michael Hudson
Financing the Empire: Do US Face G20 Mutiny?

Patrick Cockburn
What Next in Afghanistan?

Henry A. Giroux
Hard Lessons

Mike Whitney
Where's Eliot Spitzer Now That We Need Him?

Ralph Nader
Where's All the Money Coming From?

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's War on the (Upper) Middle Class

Jeremy Scahill
The Logistical Nightmare in Iraq

Robert Bryce
The Cellulosic Ethanol Delusion

Jonathan Cook
Remembering Land Day in Palestine

Ray McGovern
Obama Bombs

Website of the Day
Hersh: Syria Calling

April 24-26, 2009

Political Cognitive Dissonance

Of Tea Parties and Teleprompters

By DAVID MICHAEL GREEN

Is it possible that the regressive right has, given its electoral unraveling of late, decided to swap the whole politics thing for vaudeville?

‘Cause if it hasn’t, I’m really having a hell of a hard time explaining what’s going on with these guys.

I mean, I’ve seen circus acts that were less hilarious.  So I’m assuming that the right has simply decided to become a sort of public service provider in this most depressing at times.  Presumably, they got together and concluded that if they couldn’t win elections, at least they could make themselves useful by treating the public to a hearty laugh.  Or six.

What else can you make of last week’s tea party hysteria, for example?  I suppose you could find a less spontaneous, less authentic expression of public sentiment if you looked really hard – perhaps by going to the latest Hannah Montana movie, for example – but I don’t think it would be very easy.  Fox (Hardly Any) News literally ran about a hundred segments on the tea parties in advance of the magical date, a promotional tsunami masquerading as news reporting that would’ve made any Soviet minister of propaganda blush.

I suppose you could also find political elements more incoherent and less grounded in reality if you tried really hard – perhaps by attending services at some new age mega-church, for example – but that would also be pretty difficult.  If the low rent, low IQ, low on laundry detergent (non) masses attending these events looked familiar, it was because we saw them on the campaign trail last year, angrily spouting utter fabrications and fulminating their vaguely anti-government screeds at Sarah Palin rallies.  What they lack in quality dental care or concern about the health effects of obesity, they fully make up for in sheer gullibility and lumpen selfishness masquerading as vulgar capitalism.

My favorite bit from the coverage of the tea parties was the inadvertent reality intrusion episode, where some smart-ass got up at one of the rallies, got the crowd all excited about taxes and deficits, and then asked them to applaud Barack Obama for cutting their taxes.  That little bit of cognitive dissonance produced a long, pregnant, troubled pause, and you could almost hear the rusty gears in their brains jamming into one another, screeching like a subway train, and ultimately shattering from sheer lack of prior use, as the attendees decided to stick with their advance programming after all, booing the mention of the shifty Negro in the White House despite the fact that he is cutting their taxes, just like they claim to want him to.

On the other hand, perhaps the most amazing sight of all was the Republican governor of Texas, successor to George W.  Bush, and would-be successor again in Washington, not so vaguely hinting at the possibility that Texas might secede from the union, and falsely claiming that the state had a special legal right to do so.  Golly, I thought we had settled that matter a century and a half ago, but then I’m one of those odd people who always thought Lincoln got it wrong.  He should have let the backward, racist, theist, regressive South go its own way.

Of course, only if deceit happens to be a moral problem need one worry about the hypocrisy of all these red states bitching about taxes and the oppressive federal government while simultaneously receiving far more dollars from Washington than they kick in.  But if they do check out, I only hope that Obama doesn’t make the same mistake Lincoln did.  Imagine the last several decades without names like Bush, DeLay, Gingrich, McConnell, Armey, Lott and other fine specimens of Southern hospitality running the country into the ground.  Let them have their little experiment in trying to form a more perfect union within their breakaway Confederacy.  Maybe they’ll put Bobby Jindal in charge.  You want to have a good laugh?  Come back a generation later and see what it looks like.  My guess is something like a crystal meth theme park, with nice colored folk to clean up after the revival meetings.  “LeeLand”, perhaps?

You know who else showed up at tea parties, besides Rick Perry, the sesesh governor of Texas?  That’s right!  Joe the Plumber!  And, just to make sure that no political sophistication of any sort whatsoever inadvertently crept into the crowd, Ted Nugent came as well.  With head-liners like this, it’s hard to figure how these guys aren’t winning elections, eh?  On the other hand, I can name at least one guy more clownish and more scary who was president of the United States and leader of the Free World for eight years running.  And just recently too.  Ironically, the explanation for the odd fact that the exact same stuff that seemed so great to Americans in 2002 seemed so awful in 2008 was of course George W. Bush himself.  Yep, politics is truly weird sometimes, but it’s on the right were the weird absolutely turn professional.

All of this is emblematic, of course, of a political movement in utter free fall, and completely lacking any sense whatsoever of what to do about it.  This week it was tea parties.  Before that, he was Obama bowing to the Saudi king.  Before that, it was the president giving the Queen of England an iPod.  Or was it the fact that he uses Teleprompters when he speaks?  Or was it the connection to Rod Blagojevich that was sure to be exposed any minute now?

Seriously, though.  Where’s the outrage?  Is there a surer mark of the end of Western civilization than that the American public is indifferent about the fact that its president – like every modern president – uses a Teleprompter when he gives speeches?  Remember the burning anger on the right, when Ronald Reagan would use his ubiquitous 3 x 5 note cards at every meeting or event, even for small talk about the weather, and sometimes absentmindedly using the wrong set of cards for the wrong gathering of people?  Talk about your Armageddon!  It’s weird, though.  I guess I need to lay off the drugs for a while, because I don’t remember any conservative umbrage about any of that.  You’d almost think they were being ridiculously hypocritical in attacking Obama for using a Teleprompter, given what Reagan did...

And how about that business with the Saudi king?  Doesn’t that represent Obama selling out America?  Or apologizing for something United States did?  He probably didn’t even have a flag pin in his lapel when he bowed to the king.  He probably didn’t even thank Jesus for his falafel, before breaking bread with the monarch.  Not George Bush, though.  He would never do that.  His family would never have close relations with the House of Saud, that’s for sure.  He would never be photographed, say, holding hands with the old man, ‘cause that would disrespectful to America.  And kinda gay, too.  And, for sure, Bush would never inform Prince Bandar, lifetime buddy and Saudi ambassador to the US at the time, that the United States was invading Iraq, before he informed his own Secretary of State.  And you know why?  Because the right wing in America would be outraged if that ever happened.  You can take that one to the bank.

Except, of course, that we don’t really have much in the way of banks anymore, after the right wing’s deregulatory religion got through with them.  Which I guess explains why all those things did happen, and the same people who are now foaming at the mouth over Obama’s simple gesture of courtesy were completely silent during the Bush years.

These antics only prove how deeply sunk into it regressivism now is.  I assure you, if the right had a better way to attack Democrats and the Obama administration then this pathetic garbage, you’d be seeing it.  These guys aren’t exactly famous for playing to lose.  What we’re seeing, instead, is a political movement that is utterly bankrupt, literally and figuratively, and is desperately searching for any sort of remotely plausible line of attack, but only managing to make itself look absurd in the process, at least outside of Appalachia.

Today’s conservatives remind me of nothing so much as an elderly lab chicken, used in countless undergrad psychology experiments, but now abandoned in its dotage.  Over and over again, it keeps pecking the red bar, even though the last time a food pellet actually appeared was in 2004.  Peck!  Let’s play the race card!  Peck!  Let’s play the taxes card!  Peck!  Let’s play the deficits card!  Peck!  Let’s play the gay card!  Peck!  Let’s play the foreign bogeyman card!  Peck!  Peck!  Peck!

Shit!  No food pellets!  The red bar is in tatters, the chicken’s beak is worn down to a nub, but still it pecks, and still no food pellets.

The frustration and anger you see among regressive politicians and their cheerleaders comes from fifty years of operant conditioning all of a sudden gone massively awry.  It’s like they fell into some parallel universe or something.  Every step forward leaves them two steps backward.  Up is down, down is up.  White is black, and black is now president.  What the hell is going on?

Poor regressives.  For half a century they got an entire country full of people to suspend disbelief, and nod their heads in all the right places whenever they were poked with the appropriate stimulus.  For half a century, they continued to win elections by fooling people into voting against their own interests.  For half a century, they could turn lead into gold.  But the alchemy no longer works.  Suddenly, precipitously, none of the responses appear anymore when all the old stimuli are trotted out.  And it all disappeared so fast.  In 2003 they could sell any kind of bullshit imaginable.  Three years later, they were handing over control of both houses of Congress to the evil, socialist Democrats.

The great news is that, as bad as it now is, these are still the golden days of the regressive movement.  It’s gonna get a lot worse from here.  As they continue their antics, they only look more and more foolish, while President Obama looks more and more statesmanlike, less and less like his predecessor, and better and better in the polls.

The logical move for the Republican Party would be to abandon the insanity of the last three decades and returned to the days of Gerald Ford and Nelson Rockefeller, when people like Ronald Reagan were rightly (very rightly) considered to be the lunatic fringe.  But this is impossible today.  Indeed, the GOP will be lucky if it is able to even stay where it is ideologically, as opposed to being pulled even further to the hysterical right.

Arlen Specter will provide the archetypical case for the Republican conundrum as he runs for reelection to his Pennsylvania US Senate seat this year and next.  As an established, long-standing moderate figure from a swing state, normally someone like Specter should have no problem as an incumbent retaining his seat.  In fact, the opposite is now the case.  Specter is being challenged from his right in the primary election, and there is no indication that the Republican establishment will come to his aid, while every indication suggests that he’s in deep trouble.  One recent poll had him fourteen points down among Republican voters behind his primary challenger.  Specter will have to tack to the hard right to have a prayer of obtaining the nomination.  But even if that make-over can possibly succeed, he will then be stuck in the general election trying to defend the monster he became during the primary in order to placate his party’s voters, in a state that is trending the other direction.

Watch and see if the few remaining moderate Republicans don’t learn from this experience, and abandon the party.  This will leave the GOP in excellent position to succeed everywhere that Jefferson Davis remains a hero, and pretty much nowhere else.  Even the governor of Utah, arguably the reddest of red states, has come out in support of gay marriage.

If Republicans want to form themselves into a permanent minority at the national level, I suppose that’s just fine with me.  But even that isn’t terribly sustainable.  Situations like these tend toward becoming self-reinforcing cycles, in this case far more virtuous than vicious.  Over time, a party that cannot compete at the national level will not attract voters or candidates even within its stronghold.  And a party that cannot bring home the bacon because it has been relegated to a permanent minority status in Congress will also drive away voters.  A party that is unable to change its stripes because of the viciousness and narrow-mindedness of its base is also a party unable to change its electoral fortunes.

When you see the supporters of the GOP saying, as they often do, that they would rather stick to principle than win elections, they’re not kidding.  And when you see them describe the likes of George W. Bush as insufficiently conservative, they’re not kidding either.

Rather, they’re on a suicide mission.

All I can say is:  “Hey, works for me!”

David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York.  He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (dmg@regressiveantidote.net), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. 

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