GOP can turn the tables on Democrats

"Mr. Speaker, the president of the United States." When we hear those words from the House sergeant at arms, we know what's coming.

Words, and the thoughts they convey, matter. They can be consequential and profound or dissembling and craven. And when those words are linked to public policy and legislation, the nation either prospers or languishes.

A few examples serve to remind us of that reality:

In his first inaugural speech on March 4, 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, "The only thing we have to fear is ... fear itself." He said it to a nation gripped in fear. The nation heard him and believed him.

Harry Truman had that sign on his desk in the Oval Office that read, "The Buck Stops Here." And when Gen. Douglas MacArthur defied the president, Harry ignored the beating he would take in the polls and fired him.

In his farewell address on Jan. 17, 1961, Dwight Eisenhower said, "You and I must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow." Ike knew then the truth we perilously deny today.

On June 12, 1987, Ronald Reagan, speaking at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." It fell, and with it the Soviet Empire.

On the other hand, in August 1967, Lyndon Johnson enunciated a policy of "guns and butter." It didn't work, and less than a year later, LBJ announced he would not seek re-election.

On Nov. 17, 1973, Richard Nixon said, "I am not a crook. In all of my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice." This from a man who graduated third in his class at Duke Law School, but who missed the lecture that the rule of law applies to everyone, not everyone else. On Aug. 9, 1974, Nixon resigned.

George W. Bush stood in front of the "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banner on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, and proclaimed the end of major operations in Iraq. The Iraq War was Bush's burial shroud. It was instrumental in bringing Barack Obama to power.

And last Tuesday night, President Obama called upon the nation and Congress to put aside their differences and come together to rebuild the nation's economy. The centerpiece of his address was the middle class. He mentioned it eight times. He called it the North Star that must guide our efforts to create good middle-class jobs.

But he did not tell us the middle class is an endangered species. It is. Here's a sampler from a post by Michael Snyder on Business Insider last Tuesday: Only 140 million of 240 million working-age people are working. Since 2000, America has lost 10 percent of its middle-class jobs. Since 1971, consumer debt has increased by 1,700 percent. In 1980, less than 30 percent of all jobs were low-income jobs. Today it's more than 40 percent. Today the wealthiest 1 percent have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.

The president's political calculation is obvious. He doesn't believe House Republicans will come to the negotiating table in any meaningful way. Thus, he has used his inaugural and State of the Union addresses to go over the heads of Congress to the people.

His game plan is to win back the House in 2014 and then run the legislative table during his last two years in office.

The question is whether Republicans are dumb enough to get mousetrapped. Based on responses to the president by Sens. Marco Rubio and Rand Paul last Tuesday night, it looks like they are. Rubio, speaking for the GOP, was as unprepared as Bobby Jindal was when he delivered the GOP response in 2009. Paul, speaking for the Tea Party Express, said, "What America needs is not Robin Hood but Adam Smith." Mercy!

But the two most compelling points in the president's speech have received little attention and could enable Republicans to turn the tables on the Democrats.

The president said, "Indeed, much of this newfound energy (oil and natural gas) is drawn from lands and waters that we, the public, own together. So tonight, I propose we use some of our oil and gas revenues to found an Energy Security Trust."

And he said, "Tonight I propose a Fix-It-Fund program to put people to work as soon as possible on our most urgent repairs, like the nearly 70,000 structurally deficient bridges across the country. I am also proposing a Partnership to Rebuild America."

In columns published last August and September, this is what The Shadow advocated. He called for the creation of a public-private partnership, the American Economic Renaissance, that would take control of and manage the approximately $37 trillion of federal non-tax revenues from royalties that are reliably estimated to exist in the nation's oil and gas shale plays in the Green River and Marcellus formations.

If Republicans got their act together and seized this initiative, it would change everything! That $37 trillion over the next half-century does it all. It fixes the entitlements, the tax code, the crumbling infrastructure and the national debt. It makes us energy independent. It enhances our national security. It restores the middle class. It secures our pre-eminence in an otherwise unstable and dangerous world.

Are there any Republicans bold enough and brilliant enough to figure this out?

The Shadow's saying, "I told you so," but Goldman can be reached at:  Email Me

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A requiem for the bankrupt GOP

LeRoy Goldman
The Shadow Knows

Published: Sunday, February 10, 2013 at 4:30 a.m.

The GOP has been in a death spiral for a decade.

It started in 2003 when President George W. Bush turned the focus of our invasion of Afghanistan, aimed at the destruction of al-Qaida and its use of that forsaken land as its training ground for international terrorism, to his unwise and unnecessary war of choice against Iraq.

Since then, the GOP has been in a state of denial that has precluded its ability to win national elections and to present a governing strategy that could come anywhere close to commanding the support of most Americans.

The Wednesday before the election in 2008, my wife and I attended a dinner in Hendersonville. At our table the conversation turned to politics, and I was asked whether Barack Obama or John McCain was going to win. I said that Obama would win and it would be a landslide for him in the Electoral College, including North Carolina.

The man seated next to me, a well-educated man with a professional degree, said I was wrong and that McCain would win handily. He said the American people would never elect a man who was not an American citizen and who was a Muslim. Over the course of the next few minutes, virtually everyone else at our table agreed with him.

My wife kicked me under the table and gave me that look that said, "Don't say a word, stupid." I kept my mouth shut. A week later, McCain went down in flames, and four years later so did Mitt Romney.

In retrospect, the elections of 2008 and 2012 remind me of the reaction I encountered way back in 1964 as Republicans could not comprehend how Barry Goldwater had been annihilated by President Lyndon Johnson. Sen. Goldwater had boldly offered the nation a choice, not an echo. Only 38 percent of the American people voted for that choice.

When all the votes were counted, the Democrats had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, 68 seats, and more than a 2-to-1 majority in the House, 295-140. The stage was set for the enactment of the Great Society, including the war on poverty, Medicare, Medicaid, the Voting Rights Act and Johnson's escalation of the war in Vietnam.

All of this was the inevitable consequence of doctrinal overreach coupled with delusional expectations by the GOP.

Today the Republicans are in a deeper hole of their own digging than they were following their debacle in 1964. To survive, they must first stop digging and then come up with a new governing paradigm. The first is relatively easy. The second is not.

At the Republican National Committee meeting last month in Charlotte, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said, "We've got to stop being the stupid party." And he didn't stop there. He also said, "Today's conservatism is completely wrapped up in the hideous mess that is the federal budget, the burgeoning deficits, the mammoth federal debt, the shortfall in our entitlement programs. We seem to have an obsession with bookkeeping. This is a rigged game, and it's the wrong game for us to play."

Jindal's scathing critique of the GOP is not a voice in the wilderness. Former RNC Chairman and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour hammered the GOP for nominating Senate candidates like Richard Mourdock in Indiana and Todd Akin in Missouri. Both lost badly in states where the GOP should have won easily. Barbour attributed their defeat to their inflammatory comments on rape and pregnancy that he said hurt the party nationally.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told the party, "A lot of Republicans, frankly, spent the last two years saying, ‘Oh, gee, we don't have to do much because after Obama loses, we'll work with the new Republican president.' Well, that world ain't there."

But knowing you're sick doesn't guarantee that you'll correctly diagnose the illness. For example, Reince Priebus, the chairman of the RNC, is trumpeting the soon-to-be-released RNC Growth and Opportunity Project that will focus on "party rules and messaging." The extent that the GOP deludes itself into believing that adjusting its message and/or its rules will put it back on the governing path is nonsense. The problems the GOP faces go much deeper.

The bankruptcy the party faces is a bankruptcy of ideas. It no longer has a foundational base of conservative thought that gives rise to a host of policy and legislative proposals that appeal to a sustainable majority of the American electorate. If the GOP doesn't get that point, it has no future, and doesn't deserve one.

Trading in the likes of William Buckley and Milton Friedman for Jim DeMint, the newly appointed head of The Heritage Foundation, is an ominous sign for curing what ails the GOP. It suggests that Heritage will pivot from its role as a scholarly think tank to that of an action arm of the tea party.

The Shadow's founding a third party, the Republican Party. But Goldman can be reached at: Email Me

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Could we get a revolution in the House?  BlueRidgeNow.com

LeRoy Goldman
The Shadow Knows

Published: Sunday, February 3, 2013 at 4:30 a.m.

We all know that most Americans have nothing but contempt for the way Washington doesn't work, and we know that there's plenty of blame that belongs on the shoulders of both parties.

In fact, the problem is growing worse. Recent polling by Public Policy Polling, a national survey company, tells us that the American people have a more favorable view of root canals, head lice, used car salespeople and cockroaches than they do of Congress. Congress still outpolls Lindsay Lohan, but it's close (45 percent to 41 percent).

The hard fact of the matter is that the epicenter of the gridlock in Washington is the House of Representatives. It isn't a House of Representatives. It's a police state!

Every member of Congress shares the same priority, getting re-elected. And House members figured out long ago that the best way to get re-elected is to have a district that the other party can never win. It's called gerrymandering.

It's become an art form that both parties employ with the use of sophisticated software that enables them to draw district lines so that they win and your vote makes no real difference.

Of the 435 House districts, well over 300 of them are gerrymandered in this way. Both parties do it, and neither is willing to cry out, "Stop me before I kill again."

In most states, the 10-year reconfiguration of congressional district lines is done by the state legislatures. Look what happened here in North Carolina two years ago when the GOP took control of the General Assembly for the first time in over a century. At that time, the N.C. congressional delegation had seven Democrats and six Republicans. After redistricting, it now has nine Republicans and four Democrats.

Our own district here in the mountains is a perfect example. The good ol' boys in Raleigh sliced out the heavily Democratic precincts in Asheville and moved them to an adjoining heavily Republican district, where their addition made no material difference, and voila, Mark Meadows wins going away!

But once all these gerrymandered congressmen (and women) get to the Hill, the story gets worse — a lot worse. One of the most powerful committees in the House is one that you've never heard of — the House Rules Committee. No bill can reach the House floor without first passing through the Rules Committee. There it gets a rule that dictates what can happen to it on the House floor.

Virtually every bill of significance is given a "closed rule." That means when the bill reaches the House floor, the minority party is precluded from offering any amendments that would change the bill. There's the sharp end of the stick in the police state.

Speaker John Boehner appoints all the Republican members of the committee, and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi appoints all the Democratic members. All of them are their respective leader's puppets. Think of them as Don Corleone's Luca Brasis and Clemenzas — thugs.

And with the rise of the tea party zealots since 2010, a bad situation has become immeasurably worse. They control the House Republican Caucus. They will not compromise. Their rallying cry is the defeat or humiliation of the president of the United States. They have become the House organ grinder and Boehner is their dancing monkey.

None of us should be surprised at this tawdry tale. I'll bet many of you have seen private or public organizations right here in Hendersonville that get into trouble because their elected leaders fail to do their jobs and then focus their energy on saving their collective hides. Too frequently when this happens, the members of the organization are either ignorant of what's going on, cognitively challenged, or lack the courage to demand change. If that occurs in our backyard, why should we be surprised that it happens in Washington?

But what's the point? Is all of this hopeless? Maybe not. The Republicans only control the House by 17 votes. Think what would happen if 17 or more Republicans chose to break ranks on crucial procedural and substantive votes. It would change everything. Not only would the GOP have lost control of the House and the shape of legislation, but the power of the tea party would be profoundly undercut.

And there's more. If a band of Republicans defied party discipline, it's likely that moderate Democrats would soon begin to do the same thing. And most importantly, it would not be long before President Barack Obama realized that, by negotiating with this growing block of moderates from both parties in the House, he could make progress on a host of issues that otherwise were out of reach.

Forget it, you say. It will never happen. It has happened! David Rogers in a post on POLITICO.com last month reported that in 1981 House Minority Leader Bob Michel seized control of the House with the help of 29 Democrat defections. The bold move made possible the enactment of billions of budget cuts supported by President Ronald Reagan.

Plotting a successful revolution requires careful planning, brilliance and courage. A man who could put all of this into play is Republican Congressman Peter King of New York. Initially elected from a district in central Long Island in 1992, King is now the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. He is a moderate conservative and recently blasted Boehner for delaying the vote on aid for the victims of Superstorm Sandy.

King has the moxie and the connections to put all of this together. Maybe The Shadow can help him plot a revolution.

Although the Shadow’s whereabouts remain unknown, readers can reach Goldman at:  Email Me

Please Visit:  Citizens Against Politics As Usual

Please Visit:  Mike Tower Political Opinions