Frank Rich: Clean the Gulf, Clean House, Clean Their Clock

[babylonsister]

(edited for copyright purposes-proud patriot Moderator Democratic Underground)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/opinion/20rich.html?hp

Clean the Gulf, Clean House, Clean Their Clock
By FRANK RICH
Published: June 18, 2010


snip//

The president’s shake-up of his own governance can’t wait, as tradition often has it, until after the next election. The Tea Party is at the barricades. When Obama said yet again on Tuesday that he would be “happy to look at other ideas and approaches from either party,” you wanted to shout back, Enough already! His energy would be far better spent calling out in no uncertain terms what the other party’s “ideas and approaches” are. The more the Fox-Palin right has strengthened its hold on the G.O.P. during primary season, the sharper and more risky its ideology has become.

When Rand Paul defended BP against Salazar’s (empty) threat to keep a boot on the company’s neck, he was not speaking as some oddball libertarian outlier. His views are mainstream in his conservative cohort. Traditional Republican calls for limited government have given way to radical cries for abolishing many of modern government’s essential tasks. Paul has called for the elimination of the Department of Education, the Federal Reserve and the Americans with Disabilities Act. The newest G.O.P. star — Sharron Angle, the victor in this month’s Republican senatorial primary in Nevada — has also marked the Energy Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Veterans Affairs, Social Security and Medicare for either demolition or privatization.

Pertinently enough, Angle has also called for processing highly radioactive nuclear waste at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. If Americans abhor poorly regulated deepwater oil drilling, wait until they get a load of nuclear waste on land with no regulatory agency in charge at all. The choice between inept government and no government is no choice at all, of course. But there would be a clear alternative if the president could persuade the country that Washington, or at least its executive branch, can be reformed — a process that demands him to own up fully to his own mistakes and decisively correct them.

While the greatest environmental disaster in our history is a trying juncture for Obama, it also provides him with a nearly unparalleled opening to make his and government’s case. The spill’s sole positive benefit has been to unambiguously expose the hard right, for all its populist pandering to the Tea Partiers, as a stalking horse for its most rapacious corporate patrons. If this president can speak lucidly of race to America, he can certainly explain how the antigovernment crusaders are often the paid toadies of bad actors like BP. Such big corporations are only too glad to replace big government with governance of their own, by their own, and for their own profit — while the “small people” are left to eat cake at their tea parties.

(snip)

[quaker bill]

1. The theme for this election is now clear

The Dems should push financial regulation and energy hard. They need, on both, but particularly on energy, to put measures in the bills that make republicans squeal in resistance. The more the republicans talk this "shakedown" stuff, the better.

As it turns out, even in the best case scenario, the BP spill will be in the news throughout the next legislative session. The Dems need to dare the Republicans to oppose aggressive regulation of this industry. If they don't take the bait, we get aggressive regulation. If they do take the bait and go to war on behalf of the oil industry, we win the election and get aggressive regulation in January or February 2011 from the new congress. The Dems need to make the bait very enticing for republican "no" votes, but simple to understand and easily supported by the public. Causing the corporations to pay for the damage is a good first step.

This, played right, is a no lose situation. President Obama has shown in the past that he has a ready grasp of "no lose" situations and an ability to exploit them. Now is the time.

[babylonsister]

2. What they really need to push is a new stimulus or at least

make a concerted effort to put job creation front and center. And while they're at it, they could show they cared a little by helping the unemployed get bennies and not be so concerned about the deficit. People are suffering; it's not going to get better by itself despite what the rethugs think.

[quaker bill]

3. Benefits - deficits

While this is by no means nuanced for those in need, and I know from personal experience, the argument is muddled. You can have benefits without a deficit by simply raising taxes, but this will not happen in the run up to an election. So benefits will happen, but by raising the deficit. This is not a clear political win, it is important, but not a clear "us or them" moment. Stimulus, while probably needed, will not show benefits prior to the election.

Energy needs to be the hallmark issue with financial reform following in second.

[TheKentuckian]

6. You have to be willing to use sharp elbows with "stakeholders"

and be prepared to pass on contributions to make the obvious work.

[Jakes Progress]

4. You gotta wonder if WH aides

swipe the paper before Obama gets to see it.

[Puzzler]

5. This quote says it all:

"the G.O.P. establishment had to shut him (Barton) down because he was revealing the party’s true loyalties, not because it disagreed with him"


Exactly!