As if in response to my challenge to name a reasonable Congressional Republican, David Corn profiles Rep. Bob Inglis of South Carolina, a Gingrich Revolutionary apparently reborn as a sane (e.g., pro-carbon-tax) conservative. The bad news: Â the profile follows Inglis’s shellacking by a tea-party candidate in a Republican primary.
Inglis says what some of the rest of us have been saying: Â These people are freakin’ whacko, and it’s not good for the country, or even, in the long run, for the GOP. Inglis on a meeting with some teabaggers:
I sat down, and they said on the back of your Social Security card, there’s a number. That number indicates the bank that bought you when you were born based on a projection of your life’s earnings, and you are collateral. We are all collateral for the banks. I have this look like, “What the heck are you talking about?” I’m trying to hide that look and look clueless. I figured clueless was better than argumentative. So they said, “You don’t know this?! You are a member of Congress, and you don’t know this?!” And I said, “Please forgive me. I’m just ignorant of these things.” And then of course, it turned into something about the Federal Reserve and the Bilderbergers and all that stuff. And now you have the feeling of anti-Semitism here coming in, mixing in. Wow.
Inglis gives a charming little sermon about why he wouldn’t call the President a socialist to please the base:
I refused to use the word because I have this view that the Ninth Commandment must mean something. I remember one year Bill Clinton—the guy I was out to get [when serving on the House judiciary committee in the 1990s]—at the National Prayer Breakfast said something that was one of the most profound things I’ve ever heard from anybody at a gathering like that. He said, “The most violated commandment in Washington, DC”—everybody leaned in; do tell, Mr. President—”is, ‘Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor.'” I thought, “He’s right. That is the most violated commandment in Washington.” For me to go around saying that Barack Obama is a socialist is a violation of the Ninth Commandment. He is a liberal fellow. I’m conservative. We disagree…But I don’t need to call him a socialist, and I hurt the country by doing so. The country has to come together to find a solution to these challenges or else we go over the cliff.
It turns out that Inglis was interested in working with Obama toward bipartisan solutions. He lost his primary 71-29. Who else do you think is going to walk down that path? Â If the Republicans take control of either house in November, we’re on track for gridlock. I’ve had sensible people explain to me that the shutdown of 1996 was such a disaster for Gingrich & Co. that the Republican leadership wouldn’t try it again. But that assumes that the leadership, and the rank-and-file, will have the nerve to defy the tea party crowd and Grover Norquist and the Club for Growth. I see no reason to expect that to be the case.
The lunatic fringe is now fully in control of the Republican Party. The people now sitting on their wallets and complaining about Obama and the Democrats being a “disappointment” Â are playing with fire. And so are the libertarians.
"I’ve had sensible people explain to me that the shutdown of 1996 was such a disaster for Gingrich & Co. that the Republican leadership wouldn’t try it again."
There were two lessons to be learned from that shutdown.
1. (The lesson the GOP leadership actually learned.) Don't try to be principled, it costs you at the polls. Just kick back and rent seek. It's easier and more profitable.
2. (The lesson they should have learned.) Never trust Bob Dole. He'll betray you at the worst moment every time.
Do you know, there were actually jokes during the shutdown about hiring a PI firm to tail Dole, and alert everybody if he headed back to the Capitol during a break? (Because he had an established record of showing up during breaks to get together with the Democratic leadership for a bit of unscheduled mischief.) History might have been quite different if they'd stopped joking, and actually done it.
As for Inglis, he's quite principled, which is a point in his favor. Voters are, however, understandably inclined to prefer representatives whose principles agree with their own. If they must be ruled by people who disagree with them, they often prefer it to be by people who don't have the courage of those contrary convictions.
Oh, and socialism? Small "s", it's a continuum. Obama is further along that continuum than Inglis, but not far enough away that Inglis will admit the "s" word could be honestly used. This suggests that Inglis, himself, is further along that continuum, in private, than his base was comfortable with.
Let's see, Brett.
You think there is something wrong with the GOP leader meeting informally with the Democratic leader to try to get some things accomplished? I don't see why. Looks like a good idea to me. The assumption that it implies "betrayal" makes no sense.
Someone at Goldman Sachs is probably reading the Inglis interview right now:
and thinking, "hey, not such a bad idea! It would fit well with the dead peasant insurance products we already recommend to clients …"
I'm reminded of the August Bebel line: "anti-semitism is the socialism of idiots". The idiot knows he's being exploited, but insists on believing it's "the jews" (or "the government" these days) doing the exploiting.
Lindsay Graham's sole sorry occupation for the next 4 years will be to see if he can avoid a similar fate. (One of the Party county committees that recently rebuked him is in Inglis' district.) Picking at the 14th Amendment is a strong opening, but what does he have for a second act?
I don't like to admit it, but when the party that panders to the "lunatic fringe" could potentially gain a majority in the House in the next election, the word "fringe" is inapt. You can argue that the beliefs are lunatic, but it's hard to argue that they're not mainstream.
"You think there is something wrong with the GOP leader meeting informally with the Democratic leader to try to get some things accomplished? I don’t see why. Looks like a good idea to me. The assumption that it implies “betrayal” makes no sense."
Yes, I think there's something wrong when a GOP leader sneaks back into Washington during a break, without telling anybody else in his own party, for the purpose of joining in a no-quorum vote to reverse his own party's position. That's pretty much definitionally a "betrayal".
Hell, I find the practice of unscheduled no-quorum votes by the leadership objectionable no matter WHO is being screwed over by them. The Senate has 100 members, not two or three, and the requirement for quorum to conduct business is both constitutionally mandated, and perfectly reasonable. 2-3 members should not be making policy for a body of 100 people. Holding voice votes in order to conduct business while keeping the gross absence of a quorum off the Congressional Record is a constitutional abomination no matter who's doing it. There's really no excuse for it, and with the voting being conducted electronically now, there's no excuse anymore for voice votes, period, except to allow the leadership to pretend they prevailed in a vote where they didn't, and to hide the absence of a quorum. They ought to be abolished.
And, you know what? I think your party would never, for an instant, tolerate anybody in it's leadership doing that, were the situation reversed. And yet Dole didn't do it just once. Major pieces of legislation contrary to the GOP platform, and voted against by almost the entire GOP caucus, got to be law because of that habit of his, and the GOP kept him on as a leader anyway. I don't think there's any clearer evidence that the GOP did not actually hold many of the positions it claimed to.
Do you have a principled defense for 2-3 Senators getting together during an official break, convening the Senate, and holding voice votes to conduct business while keeping the fact that there were only 3 of them off the record? I'd love to hear it.