I Don't Understand Republicans
There's always been a schism in the Republican party between its activists and partisan rabble-rousers (Limbaugh, Hannity, Malkin etc.) and its Big Business worshiping political leaders. The activists are primarily driven by partisanship and by their superficial understanding of a few supposedly core conservative "principles." They don't generally take their marching orders from the business lobby, so they occasionally veer off in a distinctly populist direction. Then there are the GOP political leaders, who are entirely beholden to Big Business and generally devote 99% of their legislative agenda to doing what special interest lobbyists want them to do.
This schism was never more apparent than during last fall's debate over the initial bailout bill. The activists railed against the proposed bailout, encouraging Republicans to stage protests and harass their Congressional representatives to vote against it. At the same time, the business lobby was very much in favor of the bailout, fearing that without it the entire financial system would implode. Republican politicians were therefore pulled in two very different directions. Despite the intense anger within their activist base, many GOP leaders (including John McCain and John Boehner) ended up voting for the bailout.
With respect to the AIG bonus controversy, however, Republican intra-party dynamics are, seemingly, completely reversed. I would have guessed that the leaders of the pitch-fork brigades would be railing against the bonuses and that GOP leaders would be talking about the sanctity of contract and the danger of allowing government to interfere with business. But the exact opposite is true. GOP politicians are feigning outrage over the AIG bonuses (despite having opposed all restrictions on such compensation), and the Glenn Becks, Rush Limbaughs, and Michelle Malkins of the world are actually defending the bonuses.
It's bizarro world. Just when you think you understand the Republican party, Republicans start acting in ways that make no sense.
This schism was never more apparent than during last fall's debate over the initial bailout bill. The activists railed against the proposed bailout, encouraging Republicans to stage protests and harass their Congressional representatives to vote against it. At the same time, the business lobby was very much in favor of the bailout, fearing that without it the entire financial system would implode. Republican politicians were therefore pulled in two very different directions. Despite the intense anger within their activist base, many GOP leaders (including John McCain and John Boehner) ended up voting for the bailout.
With respect to the AIG bonus controversy, however, Republican intra-party dynamics are, seemingly, completely reversed. I would have guessed that the leaders of the pitch-fork brigades would be railing against the bonuses and that GOP leaders would be talking about the sanctity of contract and the danger of allowing government to interfere with business. But the exact opposite is true. GOP politicians are feigning outrage over the AIG bonuses (despite having opposed all restrictions on such compensation), and the Glenn Becks, Rush Limbaughs, and Michelle Malkins of the world are actually defending the bonuses.
It's bizarro world. Just when you think you understand the Republican party, Republicans start acting in ways that make no sense.
posted by A.L. at 11:19 AM
14 Comments:
A.L., you forget that the recipients of the AIG bonuses are RICH people. Malkin and her cultists worhip at the loins of the rich (most believing that if they remain good little cultists, they too will be blessed with wealth).
If congress was threating to take money from UAW workers, you can bet they would be more than happy about it.
I find that thinking of Limbaugh, Beck, et al as defending "liberty" against "collectivism", where "liberty" is construed largely in terms of (a) economic liberty and (b) not being taken over by Islamofascists or the threatening foreigners du jour, and "collectivism" includes basically any government action, makes it all make sense.
I mean, if you imagine Ayn Rand's response to capping bonuses, you've got theirs.
Well, do you really need to understand Republicans so long as you can explain whatever they do as based on stupidity, corruption or both?
I haven’t heard what Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh (who I wouldn’t call a “populist” in any event) have to say about this, but the Michele Malkin post you linked to is not “supporting the bonuses.” She is opposing a punitive tax on the bonuses, which is a very different thing.
Personally, I understand the outrage about the AIG bonuses, but I have two concerns. The first is the bonuses are a distraction from the real issue, which is the enormous amount of taxpayer money which is going to subsidize bad business behavior and socialize private losses. I accept that the government has to provide some backstop for the CDS market, but the way that it is going about it seems very poorly thought through. There appears to be no mechanism to require AIG shareholders, bondholders, counterparties and employees to share in the losses as a condition of taxpayer support. There appears to be little or no oversight of what AIG is doing with the money, such as the massive sums going out the door to foreign banks and other counterparties. (If Congress is so concerned about bonuses, is it going to start to scrutinize the bonuses that these counterparties are paying?)
So the bonuses are a part of this problem, but they are a tiny part. I would note that if AIG were in bankruptcy or receivership, there would be a mechanism to reduce these bonuses, which would seem to be the proper outcome here.
The second concern has to do with this ridiculous idea of imposing a discriminatory and punitive tax on bonuses. The only purpose of this tax is to channel popular outrage over the bonuses away from Members of Congress. Charlie Rangel has pretty much admitted as much.
If this legislation passes, there are two possible outcomes. First, it may be struck down as unconstitutional. (That would be my guess if I had to bet right now.) Second, it will serve as a precedent for Congress imposing punitive taxes on unpopular people.
Admit it, if this were a Republican proposal, you would be slamming it mercilessly.
I admit to being surprised by the position of the Limbaugh/Hannity/Beck brigade on the AIG bonuses.
Much of their appeal is based on the carefully cultivated perception that they are a bunch working stiffs just tryin' to make ends meet, just like the Real America-dwellers who watch and listen to them.
Limbaugh, et al, have a vested interest in keeping their fans from truly absorbing the fact that these media personalities are enormously wealthy people whose economic interests bear no resemblance to their own. When Limbaugh rants to his audience about the unfairness of "The Death Tax," most of the people listening to that rant are convinced that the inheritance tax is something that will apply to the assets they leave behind for their loved ones. In reality, 99.999999 percent of Limbaugh's audience has about 0.0000000 percent chance of leaving behind an estate that would be subject to the inheritance tax.
Likewise with the debate over capital gains taxes. Most of the working-class wage earners watching Hannity's Amerika (or whatever the post-Colmes version of that show is called) actually believe that they will benefit from a cut in capital gains taxes. This is because Hannity, Limbaugh, et al, have gone out of their way to create that perception.
The reality, of course, is that the tax policies that benefit Rush Limbaugh are of no benefit at all the vast majority of the people who listen to him. This is because the people who listen to him, with few exceptions, don't live off of investment income and spend their days examining the value of their stock portfolios. And very few people in Limbaugh's audience will ever, in their entire lives, earn enough money to land in the 39.6 percent tax bracket that has him, Hannity, Beck, Malkin, et al, so worked up.
That's why I am so surprised to see them rip the masks off with regard to the AIG bonuses. Do they not realize that their followers are among the very people who are so outraged by the payouts for these Wall Street miscreants? Have they forgotten that their fans are struggling to support their families on what amount in this economy to subsistence level wages? Do they actually expect to find sympathetic ears for a defense of multi-million dollar bonuses for the people who practically destroyed the American financial system?
Maybe they know something that I don't, but taking the side of the robber barons seems a bit more counter-intuitive than a right-wing faux populist can afford to be in this climate.
I know a lot of people think the bonuses are distraction. But I don't think that's correct. The bonuses are a symbol, and that alone makes them very powerful. But they're also much more than that: it comes down to moral hazard.
To oversimplify: Nixon wasn't (legally) punished for Watergate. So that led to Iran-Contra. Which wasn't punished. And that led to the entire Bush/Cheney cabal.
THAT's the AIG bonus key. It's not a distraction, it's an important turning point, potentially, and a real one that also manages to be quite convenient. If we don't go after AIG and its ilk for what seem to be not just incompetence but outright fraud, we'll have this exact same situation again, five or ten or twenty years down the road.
The AIG bonuses aren't a distraction, they're the entire shitpile boiled down to one tidy little, very easily understood and explained and utterly outrageous bundle.
Just imagine if the GOP still contolled Congress and the White House, or if they do then—Great Depression II for real? Or would that force them to behave rationally?
Actually, this all makes perfect sense. Republicans, whether elected politicians or the Rush Limbaugh's o fthe world, don't want any responsibility for getting us to this place, but they will want all the credit when the economy "recovers." They are willing to do and say whatever they need to in order to ensur ethat outcome. Cogniative dissonance is, afterall, a beautiful thing.
the republican part is imploding. i have heard more so-called right wingers suddenly claim to be 'libertarians' lately that i laugh out loud at them. i dont count out the the pubs (masters of p.r., these people can serve up chicken shit and claim its chicken salad, and 62% of people will believe it). glenn beck is a complete looney tune, limbaugh a frothing simpleton, a one-trick pony.
But this is a great plan, and a wonderful precedent.
100% retro-active tax taking your money after you earn it; who could complain?
Heck, lets go after the oil companies next. Make them work for free if they want that industry to go, then coal. We'll be carbon neutral sooner than you can imagine.
And all with this brilliant retro-active punitive targeted taxation. We can punish anyone we want into bankruptcy easily.
And who doesn't trust the Government to have the power to bankrupt whoever they want whenever they want?
Idiots and Republicans, that's who.
I am not quite as convinced that the bonus issue is either a diversion or even a symbol. For years we have been exposed to a constant stream of justification of obscene compensation for corporate executives, justification based on the “exceptional value” they produce and the consequences they suffer due to failure in their risky careers. I think most of us who didn’t believe in the first place or who were beginning to suspect, have grasped that the AIG bonuses are cold hard evidence that that these were shameless lies. The “value” these executives produced was the wreckage of the world economy, and their personal consequences are none, even unto bonuses at taxpayer expense.
But even more, their obscene salaries may be not just unfair and evidence of the way we have been lied to, not just incidental, but, indeed, a proximate cause of the economic disaster: executives were handsomely rewarded for taking extraordinary risks for short-term gain, ultimately leading to the undoing of businesses and our economy. It is that grip that must somehow be broken. It’s not going to be easy, as we can see: it is a very tight grip. Maybe it starts it with pushing back.
once again, gekko, republican self-awareness=zero
The Republican Party is a monolith. It is at all times controlled by the Church (which is also a monolith). Occasionally something unexpected happens and a momentary vacuum arises, in which it is possible for various spokespersons for the Party to interpret their "standards" differently. This is one of those times. It will not last long. The focus will be shifted back onto some "moral" issue soon enough.
In my opinion, it's all about the ideology.
The partisan rabble-rousers are always drenching themselves in the symbolism of ideological purity. Their reaction to the bailout was populist in tone, but in content it was an ideological populism: their outrage was about this massive form of socialist government intervention, not about its Wall-Street elite beneficiaries. And no doubt several of them sincerely believed (in their ignorance and insouciance) that the free market should have been allowed to do its thing and wipe out all insolvent banks, systemic consequences be damned.
On the other hand, I'm quite sure that among the Republican politicians in Congress spouting the same line, more than a few knew damn well that were their advice actually taken, we'd all be facing a situation like Asimov's Nightfall. But being in a position of zero responsibility for government policy, realising that there was deep public outrage about the issue, and knowing that the bailout package would pass anyway, they felt like they could chant hosannas to the free market and dangle the bailout around the Democrats' necks, all to considerable political benefit.
Contrast this with the AIG controversy. GOP politicians are in the exact same spot as before -- trying to deal with mass public indignation. So it's hardly surprising that they are at least feigning their own (completely hypocritical) outrage. And again, ideology makes sense of the rabble-rousers' response. They're defending the bonuses because (a) unlike the politicians, they face virtually no consequences for doing so, (b) pure ideology states that under capitalism -- God bless it -- the rich are entitled to make as much money as they damn well can, that it is their inherent worth and talent that their "earnings" reflect, that "greed is good" (when typing that I was only thinking about Gordon Gekko / Ivan Boesky, but was amused to find, after a quick Google search, a recent WSJ editorial on Wall-Street bonuses, before the AIG scandal, with exactly the same title), that criticism of the wealthy is "class warfare", etc.; and (c) they probably genuinely believe all of this anyway -- among other things, because they are highly wealthy themselves.
I think it's very important to understand the way that these people perceive themselves, and what they see as the significance of their role/position. They see themselves as having the freedom to speak their mind, to say exactly what they want to say (and, they believe, so many millions want to hear), to cut through the oppressive constraints of "political correctness" to "call a spade a spade". So when their political leaders are too boxed in to say the right thing, in march the Limbaughs and Becks, to openly buck the liberal media's line and get a shock effect from saying what every good Republican, they believe, is privately thinking: that these stars of the financial firmament deserve every penny of compensation they've received, that they've been savagely maligned by the mainstream media looking for a scapegoat for the current economic difficulties, and that deep-down we should be grateful to these guys for generating for years our investment incomes, our tax revenues and even our jobs.
Oh, and did I mention that the Congressional legislation is going to levy a tax?! Nuff said.
I note that in the last couple of days Obama has called the AIG bonuses a distraction and suggested that the House bill might violate the Constitution.
The difference of course is that when Republicans say these things it is for corrupt and self-serving reasons.
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