Back in September 2000, David Schippers, who had prosecuted the impeachment case against Bill Clinton during the Senate trial, went on CNN and complained that he had not been allowed to present all his evidence because the Senate Republicans were not interested.
ROGER COSSACK: You used the word “Sell Out,” and you also said this trial was rigged. Why do you say that?
DAVID SCHIPPERS: Well, it was. In Chicago, we refer to it as a first ward election. The outcome was decided before we ever went over to the Senate. Apparently, they had all agreed, one, the Republicans didn’t want to be bothered with this; two, the Democrats were going to vote not guilty. So it was a foregone conclusion. We didn’t know it at the time but…
When I look at the current situation in Congress, I see the same dynamics. The House decided to prosecute ObamaCare and, in the furtherance of that plan, decided to shut down the government and threaten a default on our debt despite the fact that no objective observer could see how they could possibly win.
In 1999, the Senate Republicans were scared of upsetting the base of the party, so they pretended to go along with the plan, but they could read the polls and they knew the political realities. They felt that they had to allow the trial, but they were just going through the motions. They thought the House Republicans were deeply misguided and when it came time for the Senate to take over the show, they couldn’t get the show over fast enough.
I think that’s where we are right now with the government shutdown.
“The president has got to be open to working with us,” [Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill.] said. “Democrats have got to understand we have a seat the table and we have a right to be involved in negotiations.”
Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, said House GOP lawmakers are looking to Senate Republicans to hold the line for they party. “It’s now up to the Senate Republicans to hold firm,” the Idaho Republican said.
House Republicans had been looking for the president to sign a debt limit increase while the government remained shuttered and negotiations continued on a spending deal. Several GOP Senators, however, have largely rejected that approach, saying Congress needs to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling before the government runs out of borrowing authority on Oct. 17.
But even as House lawmakers seemed to be throwing the ball into the Senate’s court, there was deep suspicion of the Senate Republicans’ willingness to cut an acceptable deal with the White House and Senate Democrats.
If Henry Hyde is looking down on this, he probably isn’t smiling.
…and we have a right to be involved in negotiations.
Oh, now they want to talk about their rights? Screw that. They made it clear when they started this mess that it isn’t about “rights” at all. It’s about what you can get away with.
Holy Crap, this isn’t parity?
Wierd. I question Shaftan’s sexuality rather than Booker’s. Shaftan is just creepy. He sounds like a rapist.
Absolutely hilarious. The New Jersey setup with the honeypot didn’t work. And so they try the “He must be gay.” gambit to try to gin up a scandal.
And it torpedoes Lonegan instead.
Is Mark Penn hanging around the Lonegan campaign somewhere?
I forgot about that interview from 2000.
However, as I’ve noted before I do hold to the view that more often than not the Congressional/White House negotiation events that are displayed for our consumption are just theater and that the outcome was pre-negotiated. So if that’s his perception of what’s happening now, so be it.
Back to the Clinton impeachment, it’s interested to look at that again with 15 years of historical perspective. You may recall that initially the House did not have the numbers to impeach but Gingrich severely put the screws on all GOP house members, threatening the loss of district funds and to back primary challenges of those who didn’t vote for impeachment. Eventually they did get the impeachment with a bare majority.
The Democrats reacted by holding a support-the-Pres conference on the White House lawn. By the time the Senate trial was arranged it was clear that the 2/3rds majority needed for conviction was far out of reach – only Byrd and Feingold made even a show of considering the evidence. In addition, Clinton’s popularity rating was sky high, showing that the GOP had mis-read the public mood. As such the few remaining moderate GOP senators had no appetite for a big fight on an unpopular issue.
So, yes, in that context some GOP people may well have told the trial prosecutor to keep it brief and get it over with as quick as possible.
But you can see in that description the earliest hints of what the GOP has become. First, the echo chamber that convinced them that the sex scandal would bring down the President. Even then, with Fox News and Drudge still in there early years, the wingnuts (a term not even used at that time) were already out of touch with the general public.
Second, the culture Gingrich created of no-dissent-allowed – which Hassert later reinforced with his Hassert Rule – allowed the Tea Party of today to gain effective control of the House GOP even though they technically do not have the leadership positions or even a majority of the party seats. That’s because the GOP as a whole has adapted to the no dissent environment.
It’s important to note that the no-dissent-allowed culture was NOT a feature of Congress before Gingrich, with the exception of a very few moments in time around very specific issues.
These two features – media balloon and the no-dissent-allowed – are the primary drivers of the conservative movement. It is worth noting that these two features are also common with almost all authoritarian movements that have emerged out of democracies, including all fascist movements.
The Tea Party and Republicans are classic authoritarians, no doubt, with Rush, Limbaugh, Beck, et. al serving as their enablers/propagandists.
American Fascism doesn’t look like German, Spanish or Italian Fascism, but it is fascism none-the-less.
You’re absolutely correct – a media that has stopped informing the public with truth and instead always provides cover for the Fascist party, paired with Fascists who are unable to disagree less they be forcibly removed from power by power, is a fascist movement in full bloom.
Luckily the Republicans aren’t nearly as clever as other fascists throughout history. I’d argue that our luck with the Republicans being incompetent idiots originates with their fealty to the religious right, which forces Republicans to deny objective reality on almost all fronts.
If you can’t adapt, you die.
The Republican party needs to die. It’s a cancer on the US.
Once the cancer is dead, the Democrats can take their rightful place as the right-wing party (that Democrats would fit into in every other western country) with a new, progressive party slowly emerging from the uneasy coalition of social liberals/economic neo-liberals, and the actual progressives who have teamed up to at least try to keep the abject hatred of “others” under wraps.
I actively want the debt ceiling to be bumped against with Obama citing the 14th Amendment to satisfy all US debts as a requirement. I want the House Fascists to attempt to impeach Obama.
If Obama pays the debts, the world markets become unsettled for a week or so, probably less, as it becomes clear that the US fucking pays its debts.
The Republican party, by impeaching Obama in the ramp-up of 2014 is simply sticking its head through the noose it has been slowly tying the last 5+ years.
The 2014 election will be millions of levers finally opening the trap door and beginning the end of the disastrous Reagan era.
I’m young enough and desensitized enough to actively hope for a little Constitutional crisis if it means saving the country from the party of sedition.
Republicans are committing sedition by any definition of the word by threatening default. Let them realize their sedition. Please.
It WILL end the Reagan era.
I’d argue that our luck with the Republicans being incompetent idiots originates with their fealty to the religious right, which forces Republicans to deny objective reality on almost all fronts.
That’s an interesting point. One unusual feature of the American RWA movement has been the universal anti-knowledge, anti-science thread throughout. Oh sure, you can find anti-intellectualism in every RWA movement, but I don’t think any one I’ve studied is so anti-knowledge, anti-facts as this one is. And yes, the fact that this RWA movement started with the fundamentalists (they now call themselves evangelicals because “fundamentalist” gained negative connotations in the late 1970s, but they used to call themselves that when the movement started) probably has a lot to do with anti-science. Add to that the fact that an early financial backer of the RWA movement was the tobacco industry, then later in a big way the fossil fuel industries. Throw in the military factor (trying to get funding for Star Wars in the 1980s) and you can see the root causes.
The problem now is that no only are RWAs low in terms of knowledge, they also have the inability to deal with inconvenient facts. A simple survey of what passes for economics in the right wing over the last 15 years bears this out … any rational groups of social scientists would have forced themselves to completely rethink and revise their theories after supply-side economics and austerity theory have been proven totally wrong in terms of all of their predictions, but their so-called economists just burrow in deeper and accuse Krugman of being mean.
Of course this does create a huge disadvantage for the right wing. The problem is, how much damage will they do (a la 2008 crash) before they are finally beaten?
Some Republican members of the House are still going to have to vote to re-open the government and increase the debt ceiling.
And the Senate Democrats who are working on this supposed deal seem to not be interested in removing the ability of the Republicans to hold the government hostage again. It another Gang of…kick the can down the road to save the GOP’s face operation as far as I can determine.
I see the Senate Republicans filibustered the Senate Democrats bill to lift the debt ceiling until the end of 2014 this morning.
I found this part from a TPM story on this to be interesting…and confirms most Democrats fears: “Meanwhile, Democrats are leaking concerns of their own that Obama may back down on his refusal to grant the GOP concessions before they agree to end the government shutdown and avert default. “I do fear the White House is up to something bad,” a Democratic leadership aide told the Huffington Post. “[Obama] says over and over, ‘I won’t negotiate’, but we know he loves to cave.”
Reid has been the enforcer of the steely Democratic resolve against Republican hostage-taking during the shutdown and coming debt limit breach.
Gramm Leach Bliley in 1999 and Commodity Futures Modernization in 2000. And for “fun,” there was a hundred days of bombing Iraq.
Be very afraid of a sequel to a disaster for masses.
It wasn’t Clinton that was held hostage in the impeachment — he was fully on board with gutting Glass Steagall — it was the public that needed to be distracted from noticing that the era of regulated banking and financial services was to end.
Who knows what backroom deals resulted from the 1995-96 government shutdown. What can be known is that welfare “reform,” media and energy deregulation, and a capital gains tax cut followed.
Adam Kinzinger is a Tea Crazy who pushed aside long term very conservative (old style) Don Manzullo and was embraced by the House leadership and pole-vaulted over not only other freshman but established Congressmen. He is as dangerous as a rattlesnake. Obama shouldn’t give him anything but a bullet in the head.