{"id":535668,"date":"2010-04-20T16:37:26","date_gmt":"2010-04-20T20:37:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/climateprogress.org\/?p=23241"},"modified":"2010-04-20T16:37:26","modified_gmt":"2010-04-20T20:37:26","slug":"joe-conason-%e2%80%9cthere-is-nothing-subtle-about-the-republican-approach-to-frustrating-reform-whether-in-healthcare-banking-regulation-or-climate-change-%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/535668","title":{"rendered":"Joe Conason: \u201cThere is nothing subtle about the Republican approach to frustrating reform, whether in healthcare, banking regulation or climate change.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The underlying agenda on the Republican side<\/a>, from the top down, is to frustrate and humiliate the president and the Democratic majority — and to ensure that no legislation passes. They typically begin with a memo from Frank Luntz, outlining rhetorical tricks that will be used to mislead and anger voters, while obscuring the true content of any proposal that Democrats might consider.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Next week, Graham, Kerry, and Lieberman will launch the bipartisan climate and clean energy jobs bill.\u00a0 Every other Senate Republican but Graham will attempt to kill the bill because their entire strategy is predicated on convincing the public that Obama isn’t a different kind of politician, isn’t a pragmatist who can reach across the aisle.<\/p>\n

McConnell told the NY Times<\/em> last month<\/a>, \u201cIt was absolutely critical that everybody be together because if the proponents of the bill were able to say it was bipartisan, it tended to convey to the public that this is O.K., they must have figured it out.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so the GOP is quite willing to destroy the Republic to advance their extremist agenda, as long as their shamelessly superior messaging (which is to say, disinforming) means they won’t be punished at the polls and indeed will actually make gains.\u00a0 A (very) few journalists have woken up to this reality (see Joe Klein on the GOP: \u201cHow can you sustain a democracy if one of the two major political parties has been overrun by nihilists? \u2026 How can you maintain the illusion of journalistic impartiality when one of the political parties has jumped the shark?\u201d<\/a>).<\/p>\n

<\/span>Joe Conason at Salon spells out in detail how this applies to financial reform in his article (quoted above), “Republican senator hints ‘bailout’ charge is false<\/a>:\u00a0 The GOP says it opposes ‘perpetual taxpayer bailouts’ in financial reform bill. But then Bob Corker told the truth.”\u00a0 The analysis is worth reading since it pretty much applies to every major piece of legislation now and for the foreseeable future, including energy and climate.\u00a0 Conason continues:<\/p>\n

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Republicans on the relevant committees simulate bargaining over matters of substance with their Democratic counterparts, which is what the civics books tell us they are supposed to do, of course. But when a bill emerges and debate is scheduled to begin, McConnell stalls the process by threatening a filibuster, due to allegedly unacceptable features of the legislation or an alleged refusal by the Democrats to consult with Republicans. His false claims are aimed at a single objective: to justify the filibuster threat.<\/p>\n

Now this strategy is easy to implement at almost no political cost, because the public is distracted, confused and distrusting of both political parties as well as the media. The outlines of reality are not as clear-cut as the crisp phrasing of Luntzian propaganda, which relies on tropes of three or four words to crystallize opposition framing.<\/p>\n

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