POWIP Piece of Work In Progress

This Is Rich

Erstwhile film critic turned NYT culture and politics pundit Frank Rich really steps in it today.

“IT is time to water the tree of liberty” said the sign carried by a gun-toting protester milling outside President Obama’s town-hall meeting in New Hampshire two weeks ago. The Thomas Jefferson quote that inspired this message, of course, said nothing about water: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” That’s the beauty of a gun — you don’t have to spell out the “blood.”

The protester was a nut. America has never had a shortage of them. But what’s Tom Coburn’s excuse? Coburn is a Republican senator from Oklahoma, where 168 people were murdered by right-wing psychopaths who bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Their leader, Timothy McVeigh, had the Jefferson quote on his T-shirt when he committed this act of mass murder. Yet last Sunday, when asked by David Gregory on “Meet the Press” if he was troubled by current threats of “violence against the government,” Coburn blamed not the nuts but the government.

Well, goodness.  Here's that "nut" on Chris Matthews:

Gun Nut on Matthews

Tim McVeigh certainly was a psychopath.  But keep in mind that McVeigh was motivated to do what he did, in part, by the insane way that Janet Reno handled the Branch Davidian incident.  His position was, essentially, that the chickens were coming home to roost.

Reverend Wright on the Government

You won't find Frank Rich getting exercised about Reverend Wright, unless it's an attempt to cast tu quoque at John Hagee.

“Well, I’m troubled any time when we stop having confidence in our government,” the senator said, “but we’ve earned it.”

Coburn is nothing if not consistent. In the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, he was part of a House contingent that helped delay and soften an antiterrorism bill. This cohort even tried to strip out a provision blocking domestic fund-raising by foreign terrorist organizations like Hamas. Why? The far right, in league with the National Rifle Association, was angry at the federal government for aggressively policing America’s self-appointed militias. In a 1996 floor speech, Coburn conceded that “terrorism obviously poses a serious threat,” but then went on to explain that the nation had worse threats to worry about: “There is a far greater fear that is present in this country, and that is fear of our own government.” As his remarks on “Meet the Press” last week demonstrated, the subsequent intervention of 9/11 has not changed his worldview.

Is there something incorrect about what Coburn said?  Certainly, for 8 years Bush did everything he could to prevent terrorism in the US, against the wailing of the left that he was "shredding the Constitution."  Meanwhile, Mistress of Disaster Jamie Gorelick is conducting negotiations for Obama.  Rich is mute about that.  And what about Congress, of which Obama has, at least nominally been a member?  The Won said that he didn't want the people responsible for the fiscal crisis talking.  Since 2006, the Democrats have been in charge of the legislative branch.  Prior to that, Bush very foolishly permitted the budget to get out of control, as the price for pursuing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I have been writing about the simmering undertone of violence in our politics since October, when Sarah Palin, the vice-presidential candidate of a major political party, said nothing to condemn Obama haters shrieking “Treason!,” “Terrorist!” and “Off with his head!” at her rallies. As vacation beckons, I’d like to drop the subject, but the atmosphere keeps getting darker.

Interesting that you weren't talking about those simmering undertones before, when people were making snuff fantasy films about Bush and burning him in effigy.  Were you aware that some of these reports seem to be ginned up, Mr. Rich?  There's another side to the story, as well, to say nothing of the beating of Mr. Gladney at the hands of SEIU thugs.  That was violence.  And President Obama's "punch back twice as hard" formulation, whatever the intentions were, were received as an incitement to violence by his goons.

Coburn’s implicit rationalization for far-right fanatics bearing arms at presidential events — the government makes them do it! — cannot stand. He’s not a radio or Fox News bloviator paid a fortune to be outrageous; he’s a card-carrying member of the United States Senate. On Monday — the day after he gave a pass to those threatening violence —a dozen provocateurs with guns, at least two of them bearing assault weapons, showed up for Obama’s V.F.W. speech in Phoenix. Within hours, another member of Congress — Phil Gingrey of Georgia — was telling Chris Matthews on MSNBC that as long as brandishing guns is legal, he, too, saw no reason to discourage Americans from showing up armed at public meetings.

"[C]annot stand"?  How very imperial of you, Mr. Rich.  These people have the right to bear arms.  They are exercising that right for the reasons that they've articulated, and not for the ones foisted on them by the likes of Contessa Brewer.  It's amazing to me that you have the gall to bring this up, when you haven't given a breath's consideration to the libel imposed upon demonstrators---a libel that required some expert editing to undergird---by MSNBC.  This displays a sad indisposition toward the facts.  And considering the government's treatment of New Black Panthers at polling places brandishing night sticks and actually threatening people with racist language thrown in for good measure, it seems to me that you must be either an idiot, or deliberately discarding part of the picture.  Like MSNBC, you don't find it convenient to mention that one of the men carrying an "assault rifle" was black.  I wouldn't mention this, except that I've read your article and know where you're headed.

In April the Department of Homeland Security issued a report, originally commissioned by the Bush administration, on the rising threat of violent right-wing extremism. It was ridiculed by conservatives, including the Republican chairman, Michael Steele, who called it “the height of insult.” Since then, a neo-Nazi who subscribed to the anti-Obama “birther” movement has murdered a guard at the Holocaust museum in Washington, andan anti-abortion zealot has gunned down a doctor in a church in Wichita, Kan.

Here are some of the facts about the Holocaust museum murderer that you've found inconvenient to include:

* He hates Bush.
* He hates the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
* Hates Jews and blacks.
* Holocaust denier.
* Hates Christians, especially Catholics.
* Doesn’t think Hitler went far enough.
* He is a 9-11 Troother.
* Anti-Illuminati.
* Eugenicist.
* Perhaps most importantly, ex-military.
* Alternately, perhaps most importantly, is a Nirther.

So, he really does bear as much resemblance to left-wing as right-wing kooks.  As far as the anti-abortion zealot, I think he's a nut as well, and I hope he goes away for a long, long time.  But isn't it interesting that the media made much less of the shootings of the two young military (and murder of one) at the recruitment center?  No?  Apparently, it didn't interest Obama much, either, given that he didn't speak to it for a couple of days.  And don't forget that The Weekly Standard may have been on his extended list.

This month the Southern Poverty Law Center, the same organization that warned of the alarming rise in extremist groups before the Oklahoma City bombing, issued its own report. A federal law enforcement agent told the center that he hadn’t seen growth this steep among such groups in 10 to 12 years. “All it’s lacking is a spark,” he said.

The Southern Poverty Law Center was also, though you fail to mention it, the source for much of the information in the right-wing hate group assessment that Napolitano gave out.  And it may be that there are extremist groups out there that bear watching, and racist groups, too, such as . . . well, such as the New Black Panthers, which is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, much to their credit.  Do you realize that one of those guys is a Democratic poll watcher, and that his privileges have been reinstated?  Now, if the races had been reversed, you can bet that would have been regarded as a spark.  The point is, a guy like the one at the New Hampshire rally isn't a fringe lunatic, though doubtless they're out there, and as much as you'd like to make him out to be one.

This uptick in the radical right predates the health care debate that is supposedly inspiring all the gun waving. Nor can this movement be attributed to a stepped-up attack by Democrats on this crowd’s holy Second Amendment. Since taking office, Obama hasdisappointed gun-control advocates by relegating his campaign pledge to reinstate the ban on assault weapons to the down-low.

Really?  Do you want to know what the right is angry about, Mr. Rich?  I suggest you read this.  And then I want you to show me some examples of "gun waving" that predate the health care debate.  It's just because I don't trust you any more than I do Nancy Pelosi when she says the CIA misinformed her, or that right-wingers are wearing swastikas to rallies.

No, the biggest contributor to this resurgence of radicalism remains panic in some precincts about a new era of cultural and demographic change. As the sociologist Daniel Bell put it, “What the right as a whole fears is the erosion of its own social position, the collapse of its power, the increasing incomprehensibility of a world — now overwhelmingly technical and complex — that has changed so drastically within a lifetime.”

Sorry, Mr. Rich.  You may be a white guy, for all I know, but you're still an asshole, and not because you're a white guy.  By the way, you're a race-baiting asshole.  Some of the people who don't understand the "overwhelmingly technical and complex" nature of the world are liberals of Mr. Obama's stripe, which is why they are continually surprised by the unintended consequences of misguided policies such as Cash for Clunkers.

Bell’s analysis appeared in his essay “The Dispossessed,” published in 1962, between John Kennedy’s election and assassination. J.F.K., no more a leftist than Obama, was the first Roman Catholic in the White House and the tribune of a new liberal order. Bell could have also written his diagnosis in 1992, between Bill Clinton’s election and the Oklahoma City bombing. Clinton, like Kennedy and Obama, brought liberals back into power after a conservative reign and represented a generational turnover that stoked the fears of the dispossessed.

Kennedy was killed by a Soviet sympathizer, and was far less liberal than Barack Obama.  Bell could have written his analysis about the loss to Nixon of McGovern, for that matter, given the bit you cite.  But it's really impossible for you to see that, isn't it?

While Bell’s essay remains relevant in 2009, he could not have imagined in 1962 that major politicians, from a vice-presidential candidate down, would either enable or endorse a radical and armed fringe. Nor could he have imagined that so many conservative intellectuals would remain silent. William F. Buckley did make an effort to distance National Review from the John Birch Society. The only major conservative writer to repeatedly and forthrightly take on the radical right this year is David Frum. He ended a recent column for The Week, titled “The Reckless Right Courts Violence,” with a plea that the president “be met and bested on the field of reason,” not with guns.

Having misdiagnosed the reason that people are displaying guns, which is a way of stating that they feel that their rights are being taken away from them by a rapidly expanding federal government, you go on to repeat the canard that the "tea party protesters," very civilly designated "tea baggers" by the left, are a bunch of wild-eyed radicals.  They are not.  They are people who don't care much for the enormous federal power grab that Obama's attempting to foist on them.  And they're pissed about being lied about by liars, such as you.

Those on the right who defend the reckless radicals inevitably argue “The left does it too!” It’s certainly true that both the left and the right traffic in bogus, Holocaust-trivializing Hitler analogies, and, yes, the protesters of the antiwar group Code Pink have disrupted Congressional hearings. But this is a false equivalence. Code Pink doesn’t show up on Capitol Hill with firearms. And, as the 1960s historian Rick Perlstein pointed out on the Washington Post Web site last week, not a single Democratic politician endorsed the Weathermen in the Vietnam era.

I'm sorry.  Did I hear you say something about guys with nightsticks at the polls?  "[N]ot a single Democratic politician endorsed the Weathermen in the Vietnam era" may be true, but I can think of one who sought the endorsement of one, and who blurbed one of his books.  Not Prairie Fire, though, which was in part dedicated to Sirhan Sirhan.

This week the journalist Ronald Kessler’s new behind-the-scenes account of presidential security, “In the President’s Secret Service,” rose to No. 3 on The Times nonfiction best-seller list. No wonder there’s a lot of interest in the subject. We have no reason to believe that these hugely dedicated agents will fail us this time, even as threats against Obama, according to Kessler, are up 400 percent from those against his White House predecessor.

Good.  And I'm sure that's why Mrs. Obama requires 26 Ladies of the Chamber at the cost of $1.75 million per year.  Mind you, nobody's making an assassination porn movie about Obama, at least of which I'm aware.

But as we learned in Oklahoma City 14 years ago — or at the well-protected Holocaust museum just over two months ago — this kind of irrational radicalism has a myriad of targets. And it is impervious to reason. Much as Coburn fought an antiterrorism bill after the carnage of Oklahoma City, so three men from Bagdad, Ariz., drove 2,500 miles in 1964 to testify against a bill tightening federal controls on firearms after the Kennedy assassination. As the historian Richard Hofstadter wrote in his own famous Kennedy-era essay, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” these Arizona gun enthusiasts were convinced that the American government was being taken over by a “subversive power.” Sound familiar?

Even now the radicals are taking a nonviolent toll on the Obama presidency. Obama complains, not without reason, that the news media, led by cable television, exaggerate the ruckus at health care events. But why does he exaggerate the legitimacy and clout of opposition members of Congress who, whether through silence or outright endorsement, are surrendering to the nuts? Even Charles Grassley, the supposedly adult Iowa Republican who is the Senate point man for his party on health care, has now capitulated to the armed fringe by publicly parroting their “pull the plug on grandma” fear-mongering.

Once again, I don't recall your agitation over the 9-11 Truthers, or the Cheney assassination squad people.  One of Obama's problems in selling his health care bill is that he's already lost people's trust by not following through on his promises.  Remember when he was going to read every part of the Spendulus package, going line by line with a red pen?  There are a lot of other reasons presented in my rant from yesterday, and it's demonstrable that he's lying about publicly funded abortion.  Contrary to what you aver, Mr. Rich, it's reasonable to believe that people who have lied to you in the past will continue to lie to you.  It's unreasonable to believe in President Obama's promises.

For all the talk of Obama’s declining poll numbers this summer, he towers over his opponents. In last week’s Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll, only 21 percent approve of how Republicans in Congress are handling health care reform (as opposed to the president’s 41 percent). Should Obama fail to deliver serious reform because his administration treats the pharmaceutical and insurance industries as deferentially as it has the banks, that would be shameful. Should he fail because he in any way catered to a decimated opposition party that has sunk and shrunk to its craziest common denominator, that would be ludicrous.

The G.O.P., whose ranks have now dwindled largely to whites in Dixie and the less-populated West, is not even a paper tiger — it’s a paper muskrat. James Carville is correctwhen he says that if Republicans actually carried out their filibuster threats on health care, it would be a political bonanza for the Democrats.

In last year’s campaign debates, Obama liked to cite his unlikely Senate friendship with Tom Coburn, of all people, as proof that he could work with his adversaries. If the president insists that enemies like this are his friends — and that the nuts they represent can be placated by reason — he will waste his opportunity to effect real change and have no one to blame but himself.

Face it, Mr. Rich: Obama has had a disastrous summer.  The reason isn't George Bush, and the reason isn't a vast right-wing conspiracy.  The reason isn't that Congresspeople have been cowed by folks displaying their firearms.  The reason is himself, and his arrogance, and his impulse to demonize his opponents, much as you do.  And you're quite right: the GOP is a "paper muskrat" (ROFL!  That's why you're a highly paid journalist!).  The Dems have the Congress and the Presidency.  So pass your bloody bill, already, and STFU.

For the record, I don't particularly care for the Arizona guys who were carrying semi-automatics.  Unfortunately, you go after the wrong guy. Then again, maybe you're just saying that President Obama should be tougher on terror.

Headed to Martha's Vineyard, are you?

HOWARDPORTNOY has a not-incompatible take over at the Green Room.