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SIGNE WILKINSON/PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS

Politix Update: Campaigning Against Evils Of Capitalism Leaves GOP Vulnerable

Among the marble busts arrayed around the statue of Ronald Reagan in the Temple of the Great Conservative God are those of James A. Baker, Michael Deaver, Edwin Meese, Alexander Haig, David Stockman and Arthur Laffer, who while not exactly a household name is the only one of Reagan's advisers whose views still deeply influence the Republican Party some 30 years on.

Laffer is the father of supply-side economics and his grandchildren are today's Republican worthies, who remain slavishly -- even obsessively -- devoted to his long discredited views that there is a "sweet spot" between extremely high tax rates and extremely low rates, that overall the best way to raise revenue is to cut taxes, and that wealth trickles down from the rich to everyone else, so the rich should be rewarded before anyone else.

The Republicans' decades-long obeisance to Laffer's capitalist doctrine is easy to understand.  It fits hand in glove with their worldview that taxes are always to be cut, Wall Street is always to be coddled, regulations are always to be shredded, and government is always to be made smaller, primarily by eliminating the social programs that they say are choking capitalism.  But thanks to an ever widening gap between the rich and everyone else and especially the travails of a middle class being passed by despite the slo-mo recovery from the Bush Recession, the Democratic presidential candidates are scoring points by campaigning on the need to curb the excesses of capitalism, which are doing another kind of choking: Choking Americans of hope. 

This campaign is important not just because unmasking capitalism's dark side makes sense, they explain, but because doing so is a moral imperative. This is a potent strategy since Republican economic policy is as outdated as the party's social policy, and Americans who are struggling to get by but undecided about whom to vote for in 2016 may just notice the disparity. 

Hillary Clinton said it best in making the case for a more progressive sort of capitalism, although Bernie Sanders said it first. 

"It's always the Republicans or their sympathizers who say, 'You can't have paid leave, you can't provide health care,' " she declared during the first Democratic presidential debate. "They don't mind having big government to interfere with a woman's right to choose and to try to take down Planned Parenthood.  We should not be paralyzed by the Republicans and their constant refrain, 'Big Government this, Big Government that.' " 

Sanders has campaigned against capitalism run amok for years.  It's just that few people were paying attention until the Vermont socialist took his show on the road.  The enthusiasm he is generating and huge crowds he is attracting are misleading insofar that his base is small when compared to Clinton's, but he has almost singlehandedly shifted the debate, and perhaps even reshaped the Democratic Party, and that may well turn out to be a watershed event in modern American political history.  I also certainly never thought I'd live to see the day when people finally understood that socialism -- in Sanders' case the democratic socialism embraced in Sweden and Denmark and to an extent in Canada and Australia -- is a benevolent system of governance where stuff like health care and a college education is a right of citizenship and far cry from the jackbooted Sieg Heil brand of socialism with which Republicans, and recently Ron Paul in particular, have tried to tar Sanders and Barack Obama. 

What people still may not understand so well is the interplay between markets and government in a healthy economy.  It's necessary. 

While Wall Street is the biggest capitalistic villain, it is not the only villain, and Republicans will dig deep into their scare-tactic playbook to protect their bankster benefactors, the rich and other special interests by painting the Democrats as being anti-capitalistic.  Clinton had a ready reply for that line of attack at the debate, saying "We would be making a grave mistake to turn our backs on what built the greatest middle class, [but] what we have to do every so often is to save capitalism from itself. . . .  It's our job to rein in the excesses of capitalism so that it doesn't run amok and doesn't cause the kind of inequities we're seeing." 

The lynchpin of the Democratic economic plan is making Wall Street accountable and, cleverly in my view, turning it into a kind of revenue stream.  The Democratic candidates believe that Wall Street owes Main Street, and they're right since we bailed out the banksters, who are once again flying high in this new Gilded Age.  Sanders proposes the creation of a universal college education fund through a financial transaction tax on Wall Street speculation, while Jim Webb (who is a former Republican) advocates a windfall profits tax on the executives of companies that got more than $5 billion in the 2008 bailout. All the candidates support a federal family leave law for mothers of newborns, with wealthy Americans footing the bill. 

Clinton, Sanders and Martin O'Malley accuse Wall Street of "casino capitalism," a catchy phrase since the debate was held in Las Vegas, and chastised the financial markets during the debate for high-risk trading and reckless speculative behavior.  O'Malley noted that no one went to prison for the Wall Street crash and said that when banksters run afoul of the law they should be treated like "street criminals" and not white-collar crminals.  "We have a criminal justice system that lets CEOs on Wall Street walk away," Sanders noted, "And yet we are imprisoning or giving jail sentences to young people who are smoking marijuana." 

Sanders goes even further, saying that only government can check the excesses of Wall Street, but financial institutions wield so much political clout that "Congress does not regulate Wall Street. Wall Street regulates Congress."  You gotta love him, but limiting the corporate influence in politics would be like holding back the sea with a spoon. 

Where Sanders and Clinton disagree is on how to reign in the excessive greed of Wall Street. 

Sanders would break up the biggest banks and restore the Depression Era Glass-Steagall Act, which barred commercial banks from investing in the speculative financial deals which contributed significantly to the 2008 meltdown. Clinton said that she would not restore Glass-Steagall, but instead would better regulate speculators, and is vulnerable on the issue. 

Clinton's husband supported the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which overturned Glass-Steagal and let banks run roughshod, and many of her top donors have been Too Big to Fail financial institutions, although that is changing as Wall Street panics over the prospect of a President Hillary and throws its support behind Republicans like Jeb Bush, who pledges to reverse even the modest financial reforms enacted in 2010 by a president who is vilified even if he did name Goldman Sachs alumni to his key economic positions.  As Paul Krugman of The New York Times puts it, "Financiers bitterly resent any constraints on their ability to gamble with other people’s money, and they are voting with their checkbooks."

Most importantly, for me anyway, is that the Democrats believe the economy should be measured by the welfare of society and not growth, which is a shot to the wheelhouse of the Republican flagship SS Laffler.

"You can have all of the growth that you want," says Sanders, who like his colleagues is disdainful of using aggregate statistics to judge the economy, "and it doesn't mean anything if all of the new income and wealth is going to the top 1 percent."

But while all this economic bully pulpiting is just great, it will collide with reality with a big thud even if Clinton is elected, which I believe she will be, and the Democrats retake the Senate, which is a possibility.  That is something called the Republican House of Representatives, which has trouble even funding the government, let alone wiping its collective ass.  A President Clinton would have to be prepared to use her executive power early and often if any of these kinder, gentler and fairer policies are to become reality.  

Politix Update is an irregular compendium written by veteran journalist Shaun Mullen, for whom the 2016 presidential campaign is his (gasp!) 12th since 1968.  Click here  for an index of previous Politix Updates.

IMAGE FROM DONKEYHOTEY/FLICKR.  USED WITH PERMISSION.

Remembering The Three Great Composers Who Died At Auschwitz On This Date

(FROM LEFT) HANS KRASA, PAVEL HAAS, VIKTOR ULLMAN

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Politix Update: 'Experience' Becomes A Four-Letter Word In The GOP Vocabulary

It's like watching a 300-pound woman trying to wiggle into her prom gown: She insists she can wear something that hasn't fit for years, and by golly she's going to convince people she can.  So it is with Republican presidential wannabes faced with the foul mood of the anti-establishment voters who have flocked to Donald Trump, Dr. Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina.  It's not for nothing that this unholy trinity lead in the polls because they have no public-office experience, which has led to the farcical efforts of candidates tainted with electoral success to somehow convince people that they are outsiders. 

A Pew Research Center poll paints the mood of the GOP electorate in painfully stark relief for candidates who actually have been around the block, or in this case the Beltway:

The poll found that by a 65 percent to 29 percent margin, Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters say it is more important for a candidate to have new ideas than "experience and a proven record." When Pew asked the same question in March, the figures were nearly reversed -- 57 percent to 36 percent.  Lest there be any doubt, what changed since then is the candidacy of Donald Trump, who has upset this particular apple cart, among many others, although it should be noted that there are signs that Trump's big balloon of a campaign may finally be losing air as the news media's fascination with him wanes, his talking-smack shtick becomes tiresome, and he struggles to keep up with the expectations game. 

There has long been a defensive insularity about the Republican Party, but the root of the anger -- and sometimes outright rage -- that is the gasoline powering the Trump, Carson and Fiorina machines boil down to the inability of the party establishment to win presidential elections, let alone stop the winners in their tracks. 

Voters have elected Democrats in four of the last five presidential elections, not including the one thrown by the Supreme Court, prevailing by a 2-1 electoral vote margin (1,446 to 706).  Many Republicans believed that President Obama would lose in a landslide in 2012, and it was an enormous psychological blow when the president was re-elected easily.  Remember Karl Rove's election night meltdown on Fox News over his disbelief that Obama had carried Ohio despite that call by his own network? 

As conservative pundit Peter Wehner writes:

"The way this has worked itself out is in rage directed at Republican lawmakers. Many on the right refuse to recognize the institutional constraints that prevent lawmakers from doing what they want them to do, which is use their majority status in Congress to reverse the early achievements of the Obama presidency. . . . The fact that it could not be undone created fury.  Since elected politicians have failed so miserably, why not look to outsiders to shake things up?"

Scott Walker, who it seems had been running for public office since he was in kindergarten (playmates bitterly recall those annoying stump speeches during Nap Time), flamed out early because, in part, he was utterly unconvincing in promoting his supposed anti-establishment cred.  This has not deterred other contenders from trying to wiggle into their own figurative prom dresses, chief among them Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. 

Rubio's shtick is particularly disingenuous: I'm barely a senator, he tells people, and fell off the turnip truck just the other day.

"Yes, I've worked in the Senate for four years . . . (throat clearing) . . . but I'm not of the Senate," he told Sean Hannity on Fox News.  Rubio, who has been the GOP's linchpin on immigration, used to brag that "I’ve done more [on] immigration than Hillary Clinton ever did" and advocated a form of amnesty for illegals, lines he has since dropped because they paint him as an insider soft on illegals. 

Paul, whose campaign is sinking faster than John Galt in concrete boots, argues that he has "only" been a senator since 2011. 

He peddles himself as a humble eye doctor who supports term limits, while failing to note that he went to great lengths and expense ($250,000) to convince the Kentucky GOP to write a loophole into state party rules allowing him to keep his Senate seat while running for president.  Good thing, because that Alex Jones endorsement sure ain't gonna help. 

Cruz knows that he can't paper over his Senate career, so he's selling himself as a guy who stands on principle. 

In saying that he fights for voters' "values," Cruz presumably refers to the endlessly meaningless procedural floor fights he provokes, which have earned him the enmity of senators from even his own party.  How then can he be considered a part of the establishment when everyone in the establishment hates him?

Even Fiorina, who probably could fit into her prom dress, is stretching reality in claiming she's not just an outsider, but is taking on the "male establishment."

She not only was a big supporter of career GOP insiders John McCain and Mitt Romney, but once you get beyond her angry declarations, her view that government is anti-big business isn't exactly a rebel yell and merely reflective of what her critics say about when she was CEO at Hewlett-Packard: She was terrific at marketing herself but sucked at running things. 

These candidates also have something in common that puts a stake through the heart of their I'm An Outsider arguments: All support tax cuts for the rich.  What, I ask you, could be more typical of a Republican establishmentarian? 

Wehner again:

"The struggle within the Republican Party right now centers on those who, figuratively speaking, want to rebuild the village and those who want to burn it down, those who want to fight irresistible demographic changes and those who want to responsibly embrace them, those who think they can win over new Americans and those who want to turn them away. There are a number of Republican presidential candidates -- senators, governors and former governors-- who, if given the chance, can make the Republican Party the party of aspiration instead of resentment, the party for this era instead of one seeking to reclaim a lost era." 

I'm not holding my breath, nor should Wehner.

BUSHWHACKED

Jeb Bush's experience was supposed to be his major selling point as he coasted to the Republican nomination, but of course has become an albatross around his neck, although only one of several. 

The campaign of Mr. Stuff Happens is so off track and his poll numbers so dismal, a pathetic 7 percent in an average of national polls and 9 percent in New Hampshire, which puts him in sixth place in an early primary state that he must win, that his "stratergy" (as his big brother would say) of scaring off other candidates has quietly been replaced by waiting for other candidates to implode.  Money, of which Bush once had buckets, is not going to secure him the nomination, and there are signs that his fundraising prowess is flagging as he slashes staff salaries and flies Coach (okay, figuratively speaking).  Nor is a sense of excitement, since he is an incurable wallflower who is incapable of saying or doing anything remotely dynamic. 

That Bush's campaign is said to be considering pushing the panic button by bringing George W. aboard is . . . just pathetic.  Earth to Planet Jeb!: Aside from the relatively few sycophantic Republican amnesiacs who still worship Dubya, the former president remains hugely unpopular because of two failed wars and a ginormous recession. And he was a gift to Democrats, giving them control of Congress and helping elect Barack Obama, who rammed through the Affordable Care Act, which Republicans loath with righteous intensity. 

Perhaps, as one pundit half seriously suggested, Mr. Stuff Happens needs to get new eye glasses.  After all, that worked out well for Rick . . . oh, forget it.

Politix Update is an irregular compendium written by veteran journalist Shaun Mullen, for whom the 2016 presidential campaign is his (gasp!) 12th since 1968.  Click here  for an index of previous Politix Updates.

IMAGE: "DAY AND NIGHT" BY M.C. ESCHER, 1938  WOODCUT IN BLACK AND GRAY

Cartoon du Jour

JEN SORENSON

HAT TIP TO FRANK AT FROM PINE VIEW FARM

Politix Update: Is The Presidential Race Over Bar The Shouting? Probably.

After enduring months negative publicity over an email controversy that is all smoke and a deeply partisan congressional investigation that is all smokescreen, Hillary Clinton sent a message with her commanding performance in the first Democratic debate: You can throw dirt at me all day, but at the end of the day I am still head and shoulders above each and every challenger, Democrats and Republicans alike . . . and will be the next president of the United States. 

And she probably will be.

It would have taken an epic gaffe for Clinton not to emerge from the debate, a format where she always has been at her strongest, as not just the prohibitive favorite to win her party's nomination, but to increase the likelihood of becoming the first woman to sit on the business side of the desk in the Oval Office. 

She did not disappoint and was . . . well, spectacular as she stayed determinedly on topic, swept the floor with Bernie Sanders, so completely marginalized Martin O'Malley, Lincoln Chafee and Jim Webb that they seemed to be the same guy by the end of the night, and showed a depth of character, breadth of knowledge and command of policy, as well as a pretty wicked sense of humor, that no one can begin to match.  This most notably includes the Republican wannabes watching from their Barcaloungers home.

Clinton's greatest vulnerability is a rather dismal foreign policy record (coddling Wall Street interests is a close second), but she even managed to turn that to her benefit in defending her vote to invade Iraq, while evading the question, by noting that President Obama had asked her to serve in his cabinet. 

It is way too early for Clinton's supporters to think about getting fitted for inaugural ball gowns.  The dirt slingers will intensity their efforts.  Sanders is hugely popular among liberals and will try to walk back the damage Clinton did in revealing a gaping hole in an otherwise meritorious platform that includes a ringing endorsement of all that the Black Lives Matter movement stands for.  That hole is Sanders' gun debate tone deafness and embrace of gun manufacturers. 

While Sanders took it on the chin on guns, he yet again revealed himself to be the rare politician who prefers nobility over pragmatism in refusing to exploit Clinton's greatest perceived vulnerability -- her emails as secretary of state.  After Clinton said she made a "mistake" using a private email server and defended her judgment, moderator Anderson Cooper of CNN turned to Sanders.

"Let me say something that may not be great politics," Sanders replied to a standing ovation, "But I think the secretary is right -- and that is that the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails."

"Thank you!" Clinton said, reaching out and shaking Sanders' hand. "Me, too! Me, too!" 

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE BASE

It is not too early to marvel at how broad and strong Clinton's base has remained, and once you cut through the fog of conflicting polls and ebb and flow of campaign news, as well as the hyperbole over emails and Benghazi, the much talked-about erosion of support for Clinton has been relatively small.

According to a YouGov survey, 25 percent of Clinton supporters interviewed in May after she announced her candidacy abandoned her over the summer, and some of that loss may have reflected the possibility that some women initially supported her in higher-than-usual numbers because of the prospect of electing the first woman to the White House.  But Clinton also picked up nearly half that many voters from her rivals, and most importantly for her, 75 percent of her supporters stood by her despite the negative publicity, the free ride Sanders has gotten from the news media while drawning the largest and most enthusiastic crowds, and noises that Vice President Joe Biden might enter the race.

The voters interviewed by YouGov who left Clinton tended to be young, white, female and college-educated, and of the 25 percent who did so, 15 percent switched their support to Sanders, 6 percent to Biden, and 4 percent went with other candidates or had become undecided. Clinton's greatest strength remains her popularity among blacks and Latinos, and 57 percent of the voters who moved into her camp over the summer were nonwhite.

Beyond Clinton's bravura performance, which was watched by a record number of viewers for a Democratic debate, it was a prime-time opportunity to distance the Democratic Party from the foaming beasts in the Republican sandbox, and all five debaters helped in this collective cause.  

Clinton's love of country, although tinged with theatrics, seems genuine, while Republican candidates repeatedly tear the country down.  While there certainly are plenty of voters for whom the Democrats' kinder-and-gentler moderate-liberal message is a turnoff, the Democrats talk about real-life issues could not be more different than the Republicans' unwelcoming embrace of divisiveness (blacks, other minorities and especially immigrants need not apply) and extremism (we'll keep shutting down the government because we can).  Then there was the general air of comity, if not outright we're-all-in-this-together community during the Democratic debate and the stench of animosity and rampant lying that stank up the first two Republican debates.  And will stink up the party's future debates, as well.

INTRIGUE BECOMES FATIGUE

There apparently were people who expected Vice President Biden Jr. to descend deus ex machina onto the stage in Las Vegas, stride over to the extra lectern that CNN had helpfully set aside for him just in case, declare that he is a candidate for president and poof! vanquish the fears of jittery Dems.

In a carefully orchestrated series of leaks said to emanate from Biden's inner circle, it was reported -- first by Maureen Dowd of The New York Times some 75 days ago and then by a widening circle of news media heavyweights -- that when the vice president's beloved son, Beau, realized that he would not survive his cancer, he sat down with his father and urged him to wage one more campaign for the White House.

This is what I wrote way back on August 19 in urging Biden, who was a childhood friend, to not run:

"There is no delicate way to put this, so I'll come right out and say it: Joe's prolonged grief has been heart rending, but it may be that some of those advisers are using his grief to advance their own agendas."

Since then, reports of Biden's struggle to decide whether to honor Beau's wishes have emanated from his Delaware home, his South Carolina vacation home and even the White House with numbing regularity, and suspense has been replaced by farce.

Beau Biden reportedly told his father that America would be better served by a president with his values.  Perhaps, but at this ludicrously late date, we all would be better served by Biden making it clear that he will not be a candidate.  He should understand that after watching the debate, because he was the biggest loser of the night.

THE DAUNTING ELECTORAL MATH

Beyond Hillary Clinton's slam-dunk performance and the probability that her road to the Democratic nomination will be straight, if plenty bumpy, from here on out, there is something very big lurking in the shadows that Republican challengers should fear beyond the inevitable rough and tumble nature of the general election campaign: Voter demographics make it nearly impossible for the Republican nominee, no matter who it is, to beat her.

Not even Republican voter suppression efforts are likely to be adequate because there simply aren't enough white males voting Republican to counterbalance the number of black, Latino and other minority voters who will reliably vote Democratic. Clinton, meanwhile, stands an above-average chance of attracting a significant majority of white women, as well as Independents in general.

These demographics mean that Clinton will have secured 246 of the 270 electoral votes needed to become president.

Here is how those 246 electoral votes break down: California (55), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), District of Columbia (3), Hawaii (4), New Hampshire (4), Illinois (20), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (11), Maine (4), Minnesota (10), Michigan (16), New York (29), New Jersey (14), Oregon (7), Pennsylvania (20), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Wisconsin (10) and Washington (12).

That total does not include several swing states, Colorado, Florida and Ohio chief among them. If the Republican nominee wins all three of these states, then all bets are off. But the fact remains that the Democrats' traditional political base remains as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar and although the eventual Republican nominee will be a conservative in moderate drag, the hardcore right-wing tail wagging this flea-infested dog helps to substantially increase the chances that their retaking the Oval Office will be illusory.

Politix Update is an irregular compendium written by veteran journalist Shaun Mullen, for whom the 2016 presidential campaign is his (gasp!) 12th since 1968.  Click here  for an index of previous Politix Updates.

IMAGE FROM DONKEYHOTEY/FLICKR.  USED WITH PERMISSION.

'Wow! A Tort Law Museum. I Can't Wait To Take The Family.'

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PHOTOGRAPH BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Politix Update: Treasonous Repubs Find Despicable New Ways To Define Chaos

PLEASE DON’T DOMINATE THE RAP, JACK / IF YOU’VE GOT NOTHING NEW TO SAY / IF YOU PLEASE, DON’T BACK UP THE TRACK / THIS TRAIN’S GOT TO RUN TODAY ~ THE GRATEFUL DEAD

A grave question must now be asked in the wake of a Republican meltdown in the House of Representatives that in the short term threatens the fiscal stability of the U.S. and world markets, as well as the ability of government to function, and in the longer term calls into question whether the Republican Party is still capable of governing, let alone whether its prospects for the 2016 presidential election have been further damaged: Have the Gang of 40 lurched from their patented brand of despicable politics into treason? 

Why, yes they have.

The Gang of 40 is, of course, the cannibalistic Tea Party-inoculated congressfolk who, although they represent barely 3 percent of the population, have brought the Republican Party's House caucus to its knees because of a fanaticism not seen in national politics since the run up to the Civil War.  In this context, the question of whether these men (and lone woman) are traitors is not knee-jerk liberal nattering or a pushback in support of a threadbare status quo.  The definition of a traitor is someone who betrays their country, and there can be no doubt that the fevered labors of the Gang of 40, who are the spawn of years of conspiring to destroy the established order, have been traitorous. 

What, you may ask, is the established order and why is it wrong, let alone traitorous, to try to overthrow a political system that is sodden with corruption and in the thrall of big money?  Actually, that sounds like a pretty good idea, and one that is long overdue. 

The reality is, in fact, really bad.  This is because the Gang of 40 is on a mission to rebuild government in its own harshly hard-right image: Less inclusive, intolerant of the differences in a multi-cultural society, and hungry for armed conflict abroad.  The gang is committed to an integration of church and state, so long as the church is white and Christian, and believes that women are inferior, gays are aberrant, immigrants are criminals, access to health care is a privilege and not a right, and are determined to rip to shreds a social safety net that for this writer and many millions of other people is the difference between sufficiency and penury.

Beyond all the parliamentary machinations that are dominating coverage, this gang seeks replace the status quo, as screwed up as it is, with a system that is just as sodden with corruption and in the thrall of big money but infinitely worse and deeply un-American when you examine the fine print.

Some conservative moderators, including Ross Douthat of The New York Times, suggest in trying to make sense of the inchoate that the new speaker be "an ambassador from the right wing to the establishment." This is an amazingly naïve idea that willfully ignores the true intent of the gang, and something you would except to topple out of a 1950s civics class time capsule, since this gang would bring Molotov cocktails and not tea and crumpets to any party. 

BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE

As I noted the other day, if there has been a moment in contemporary American politics when its abjectly debauched state was revealed, this is it.

"How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Whatever the number is," writes Andrew O'Hehir in Salon, "it's infinitely larger than the number of Republicans who want to pick up John Boehner's poisoned gavel."

No matter, because we shouldn't give a rat's ass about what happens next as the Republicans scramble to mitigate the damage wrought by the withdrawal of Kevin McCarthy to replace Speaker Boehner because he suffered an outburst of honesty about the real reason for the Benghazi Select Committee witch hunt, speaking the truth being a blasphemy in the Republican temple.

It matters not if the Gang of 40 -- which ironically calls itself the Freedom Caucus -- backs Daniel Webster of Florida, who declared in sunnier times that "we would have the opportunity for turning this country around" if Republicans recaptured congressional majorities, which they did if you consider a flaming downward trajectory a positive direction.  It matters not if Paul Ryan rides to the rescue.  You'll recall Ryan's star turn as Mitt Romney's 2012 running mate, which was sullied by the inconvenient reality that his Reverse Robin Hood economic plan was a gift to the rich, but left only scraps for the poor.  It matters not if David Brat, a freshman backbencher and Gang of 40 darling, gets his way and as he indelicately puts it, the gang's non-negotiable demands "are put on paper ahead of time" to be agreed to by anyone wanting to be the new speaker.  Or they need not bother to apply for the job.  Beyond stripping the post of speaker of much of its power, which in the abstract may not be a bad idea, these demands include a laundry list of draconian funding cuts in return for agreeing to the fiscal measures that keep the engine of government fueled and running.   

(Little known fact: The preordained line of succession can and perhaps should be broken.  A House speaker, who happens to be second in line to the presidency, need not be a sitting member of Congress, so why not draft Newt Gingrich, who was taken down because of the Clinton impeachment fiasco but after 15 years now seems like a voice of reason?  Or somebody.  Anybody.  The gulf between moderates and the gang is so great that there even are whispers among a few moderates about joining with Democrats to elect a new speaker, a once unthinkable idea that is within the bounds of House rules.) 

What matters is that the darkness has to end. 

The Gang of 40's addiction to spite, hate, deceit and lie after lie after bloody lie, and embracing Twilight Zone crackpots like Louie Gohmert, who warned earlier this year about a possible Barack Obama-orchestrated military takeover of Texas, has resulted in cycle after cycle of brinksmanship.  It also has bequeathed us Donald Trump, Dr. Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina, who despite having not one day of government experience between them and an astounding array of bad policy ideas, are the Republican presidential frontrunners.  This is because they are saying what a disillusioned base -- betrayed by a party establishment adept only at rhetorical flourishes and empty promises -- wants to hear.  The biggest betrayal of all, lest we forget, was the promise that Mitt Romney would ride a tsunami of conservative outrage and crush Obama in 2012, which looked like a sure bet if you viewed reality from the depths of the Fox News echo chamber. 

DYSFUNCTION JUNCTION

Chaos is not a winning formula for the Republican Party to take back the White House.  If the U.S. can't have several strong political parties as do many European countries, which won't happen because of how the deck is stacked, we need two capable of governing if only because the Democrats aren't appreciably less corrupt or addicted to big money.  They merely look good by comparison. 

The fallout from the dysfunction in the House will not have much of a direct effect on the Republican presidential scrum, although the dance of the Freedom Caucus zombies will be a distraction at a time when marginal candidates like (yes) Jeb Bush are desperate for face time.

As it is, none of the Republican presidential wannabes are capable of beating Hillary Clinton at this juncture because of daunting electoral math not likely to be altered given the Freedom Caucus's geographic and demographic isolation, much of it a result of gerrymandering, and the party's drift in general, and don't expect any seismic shifts -- or for that matter any appreciable shifts at all -- after the first Democratic debate on Tuesday night.  How many disgusted Republicans will stay home on Election Day?  And does anyone really believe Ted Cruz, who is the flavor of the moment, could be elected president?

It occurs to me that not even the Republican Party likes itself these days.  The divide between the promise-breaking party establishment and the promise-making renegades is unbridgeable, and the condition of the Stuff Happens Party is so parlous that just getting through the primaries without suffering additional self-inflicted wounds seems unlikely.  This is entirely a consequence of the party discarding conservatism and embracing radicalism in the service of short-term electoral gains rather than building for a more robust, long-term future. 

Then there is the looming November 5 deadline for the debt ceiling to be raised lest the government default and risk an economic meltdown, but the gang says it will approve such a move only if deep cuts are made to social safety net standbys.  Meanwhile, the continuing resolution that passed the House prior to McCarthy's implosion only funds the government through December 11, meaning that it will be the extremists who are waging a War on Christmas, not the usual heathen liberal suspects, as federal workers' paychecks are threatened by a shutdown. 

And so the traitors march on, immune to the  imprecations of the impotent Republican Party elite as pundits struggle to find new synonyms for chaos and the whole kit and kaboodle, government and all, is dragged further and further down.

Politix Update is an irregular compendium written by veteran journalist Shaun Mullen, for whom the 2016 presidential campaign is his (gasp!) 12th since 1968.  Click here  for an index of previous Politix Updates.

IMAGE FROM DONKEYHOTEY/FLICKR.  USED WITH PERMISSION.

Cartoon du Jour

DAVID HORSEY/LOS ANGELES TIMES

Happy White Conquerer's Day: 'Hate Was Just a Legend And War Never Known'

CORTEZ THE CONQUEROR

By Neil Young

He came dancing across the water
With his galleons and guns
Looking for the new world
In that palace in the sun.

On the shore lay Montezuma
With his coca leaves and pearls
In his halls he often wondered
With the secrets of the worlds.

And his subjects gathered round him
Like the leaves around a tree
In their clothes of many colors
For the angry gods to see.
And the women all were beautiful
And the men stood straight and strong
They offered life in sacrifice
So that others could go on.

Hate was just a legend
And war was never known
The people worked together
And they lifted many stones.

They carried them to the flatlands
And they died along the way
But they built up with their bare hands
What we still can't do today.

And I know shes living there
And she loves me to this day
I still cant remember when
Or how I lost my way.

He came dancing across the water
Cortez, Cortez
What a killer.

IMAGE: "THE ARRIVAL OF CORTEZ" By DIEGO RIVERA (1951)

Larry Rosen (May 25,1940 ~ October 9, 2015)

A DEAR FRIEND OF OURS PASSES.  MORE HERE.

A Cute Pic & Heartwarming Story To Take Your Mind Off Of The World's Ills

MORE HERE.

PHOTOGRAPH © KYLIE ELLIOTT

Politix Update: Democracy, Truth & Lives All Devalued In Benghazi Probe Fallout

Isn't it just a hoot that Representative Kevin McCarthy's bid to replace John Boehner as House speaker came under withering attack and eventually collapsed because he told the truth?  

In fact, it's hard to wring much humor out of this semi-shocker of a farce because it was an open secret that the Select Committee on Benghazi, which has spent $4.5 million of your money in conducting one of the longest congressional probes since the Pearl Harbor attack, had no intention of getting to the bottom of the September 2012 incursion by Islamic militants that took the life of J. Christopher Stevens, who was the U.S. ambassador to Libya, and three others, and was solely a witch hunt custom made to sabotage Hillary Clinton's campaign and provide Republican presidential wannabes with a steady supply of ammo.

(A little perspective with your morning coffee: Congress also investigated President Bush's handling of Hurricane Katrina, which took 1,800 American lives.  The five months of hearings cost a mere $90,000.  Then there were the congressional hearings into Bush's $2 trillion Iraq war, which cost nearly 4,500 American lives . . . Oh, wait!  There never were any hearings.)

When it comes to Benghazi, there are no more revelations to be revelated.  The well is dry.  Several other congressional committees and a panel of outside experts commissioned by the State Department investigated the attack and  government’s response.  They all concluded that the tragedy was preventable, condemned systemic failures at senior levels of the State Department, but found no evidence that Clinton, then secretary of state, was specifically to blame. 

"Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?" McCarthy boasted on (where else?) Fox News. "But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee, what are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping, why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened." 

McCarthy came under attack from even some of his closest allies not because he lied.  After all, politicians of all stripes lie with numbing regularity. It's hard to top the whopper told by Clinton's husband when he was president that "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky," while Carly Fiorina has unashamedly made lying a hallmark of her presidential campaign (and how about her weird assertion that the undergraduate degree in medieval history she got at Stanford 40 years ago qualifies her to lead the fight against ISIS?). 

But to utilize that rarest of political commodities -- the truth -- is a blasphemy in the Republican temple, and the last thing the GOP needs is a House speaker who isn't capable of lying through his teeth on cue.  If there has been a moment in contemporary American politics when its abjectly corrupt state was revealed, this is it. 

McCarthy's attempts to walk back his remarks were  feeble: "It was never my intention to ever imply that this committee was political," he said in a grammatically-challenged statement earlier this week. "Because we all know it is not. And it has one sole purpose, let's find the truth wherever the truth takes us.  And you know what? Sometimes truth comes out, and other manners, and let's not let politics hold that back." 

FLIGHT OF THE CANDOR

Alas, the fallout from McCarthy's attack of truthiness will be transitory.  Hillary Clinton will get to run TV ads decrying the Benghazi committee charade, which she already is doing ("The Republicans have spent millions attacking Hillary because she’s fighting for everything they oppose!"), her poll numbers will not change appreciably, and we'll be treated to a retro revival version of The Bickersons, the 1940s radio comedy show in which the protagonists engaged in an endless verbal war. 

The protagonists are played this time by a House Republican caucus now in a rudderless uproar over its many self-inflicted wounds (many administered by a cabal of congressfolk representing barely 3 percent of the population) and a political party unraveling at the seams not because of blowback from Democrats, let alone the public at large, but because of its own calculated agenda of spite, hate, deceit and lie after lie after bloody lie.  The party that boasted it could govern is now a party in disarray, and it is a beautiful thing. 

Less attractive is the double-barreled shotgun that House Republicans have put to their heads  -- and the entire nation's, as well.

The Treasury Department will exhaust its authority to borrow money to fund the government on November 5 if Congress does not raise or suspend the government's statutory borrowing limit, meaning the government would default on its debt and risk economic chaos.  Then, on December 11, a stopgap spending bill expires, and without congressional action, much of the government will shut down.

The last even vaguely comparable unraveling came in 1998 as the GOP-dominated House was voting to impeach President Clinton when another Republican speaker-in-waiting, Representative Robert Livingston of Louisiana, was forced to withdraw after he acknowledged he was cheating on his wife.

"Even then we knew we could resolve it ourselves,” said Representative Peter King of New York. "But now you have a situation where there are 30 or 40 people in their own party who say they are not going to vote for anyone no matter who it is. We have to end this. We look absolutely crazy."

MEET THE BAD ACID BEARS

McCarthy fell short of the votes he needed to replace Boehner even though he promised the candy store to the cannibals in the so-called Freedom Caucus.  With him out of the picture, two of the leading bone picker-uppers are Jason Chaffetz and Harold Watson "Trey" Gowdy.  Better examples of the caliber of House Republicans in the Age of Limbaugh and Coulter are not to be found, and the suspicion lingers that both did bad acid in college, and we're all paying for it years later.

Chaffetz has been a representative from Utah since 2009.  He is the son of a man once married to Kitty Dukakis, wife of 1988 Democratic presidential nominee. He was a Jewish Democrat, then converted to Mormonism during his last year of college in Utah and joined the GOP when former President Reagan was hired as a motivational speaker for Nu Skin, an Amway-esque marketing company where Chaffetz worked before he entered politics.

A latter-day insurrectionist and Tea Partier who brings new meaning to the term ethically challenged, Chaffetz famously remarked that "politics is way too important to leave to the boors," and has lived up to that as he has lurched further and further to the right, advocating a ban on gay marriage, slashing Social Security and that old right-wing standby, impeaching President Obama. He recently was in the news for being called out by the president of Planned Parenthood for knowingly presenting a falsified chart during a rigged committee hearing and was chastized for shutting down State Department officials at a rigged Benghazi committee hearing when they dared speak the truth. 

Gowdy has been a representative from South Carolina since 2011.  He has a startling resemblance to Draco Malfoy from the Harry Potter series (and is likewise a bully), is chair of the Benghazi committee and made his name as part of the  permanent scandal infrastructure team led by nutcase extraordinaire Darrell "Grand Theft Auto" Issa when he took over the House Government Oversight Committee after the 2010 election and vowed to conduct "seven hearings a week, times 40 weeks" to thwart Obama.

A Tea Partier and neo-Confederate with a Napoleon complex, Gowdy has made his mark by using his subpoena powers like a cattle prod and obstruction as a substitute for lawmaking.  But his forte has been sponsoring bizarre legislation, including a 2014 bill that would allow the House to sue the president if it did not like the way he was enforcing the law.  Gowdy, who has sponsored some 58 bills in all, has the distinction of not one ever being voted out of a House committee despite the overwhelming Republican majority.

A FINAL WORD

Calls for the Benghazi committee to disband will go unheeded because Democratic committee members don't have the votes and Hillary Clinton herself is scheduled to appear before it on October 22. The clash between the witch hunters and their very own witch might be something to relish were it not for the inconvenient reality that the hearings long ago became an insult to the memory of Ambassador Stevens and his three slain colleagues, just as the lack of hearings into the Iraq war insulted the memories of those nearly 5,000 Americans who died in vain.  We can thank cowardly Democrats for that one, and the reliably hapless news media for preferring to become lapdogs to the Benghazi committee than blowing the whistle on it. 

In fact, it seems as if the value of life in this country has become somewhat less than the cost of a bikini waxing.  (What? Another school shooting? How many dead?  Pass the ketchup.) 

I sometimes forget that as I merrily do my own caffeinated shooting in Politix Update, typically Republican fish in the barrel known as Washington, and that is a shame.  I apologize even if no one else in the barrel will.  

Politix Update is an irregular compendium written by veteran journalist Shaun Mullen, for whom the 2016 presidential campaign is his (gasp!) 12th since 1968.  Click here  for an index of previous Politix Updates.

IMAGE FROM DONKEYHOTEY/FLICKR.  USED WITH PERMISSION.