Politics

No, Politics Won't Take a Break for the Virus – POLITICO

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5 years ago

March 29, 2020

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“This is unbelievable!” yelled Maine’s Susan Collins earlier this week when she was temporarily blocked from speaking on the Senate floor about the massive stimulus bill.

“Hopefully,” said Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, “some adults will show up on the other side of the room and understand the gravity of the situation.”

Across the aisle, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, the most centrist of all Senate Democrats, denounced Republican proposals for being “more focused on the big corporations and the health of Wall Street than we are on the health care of the people in rural America and Main Street.”

Trump, for his part, reportedly wants to establish himself in the crisis as a “wartime president,” above the fray, but can’t resist stopping to tweak his own rivals, from Joe Biden to Mitt Romney.

Is this the way the U.S. government is supposed to behave in the face of a grave threat to the nation—spending days in partisan rancor before finally hammering out desperately needed legislation in the dead of night? In a national crisis, isn’t politics as usual supposed to be put on hold?

It might be tempting to invoke the notion of “good old days,” when politics stopped at the water’s edge, when an endangered nation put political differences aside for the sake of national unity. But those yearnings should be put on hold. More often than not, the story of America is one where political divisions don’t really hit the pause button—even in the face of war, disaster or economic catastrophe. For every example of a move toward unity in a crisis, there’s a countervailing example, or two or three, where political divisions run deep and wide, and in some cases, deeper and wider. Counterintuitive though it might seem, it may be a sign of civic strength that these divisions, bitter as they sometimes are, can be openly expressed even at a time of peril.

Even in crises that have seemingly called for putting politics aside, unity has come, when it has, only briefly—and the nation still pulled through on the other end. Yes, it’s true that in the middle of the Civil War, as a gesture of national unity, President Abraham Lincoln put a Democrat—Tennessee’s military governor and former senator, Andrew Johnson—on his ticket when he ran for reelection in 1864. (Given Johnson’s disastrous white supremacist presidency, that might have been Lincoln’s worst decision ever).

But that election was awash in party strife, even beyond the obvious bloody division between North and South. Many Northerners, anxious for a quick end to the war, embraced the candidacy of George McClellan, the Union general whom Lincoln had fired for timidity. At the same time, many Republicans opposed Lincoln’s half-hearted approach to slavery—so much so they nominated John Fremont for the presidency (Fremont ultimately declined to run). Overall, the mood of the nation was sufficiently sour that Lincoln himself assumed he would lose reelection; in the end it was military victories that helped win Lincoln a landslide, and with it the appearance of national unity.

Yes, Franklin D. Roosevelt looked for bipartisan support in 1940 as he prodded a reluctant nation to mobilize and to assist Great Britain in the face of a relentless Nazi bombing campaign. He named Herbert Hoover’s secretary of State, Henry Stimson, as Secretary of War, and Frank Knox—the GOP vice presidential candidate in 1936—as Secretary of the Navy. And his 1940 foe, Wendell Willkie, was a supporter of mobilization and gave FDR crucial support in launching peacetime selective service.

But having Willkie there didn’t keep the White House from coming under heavy fire from the strong isolationist wing of the GOP. At the end of October, a Republican radio broadcast proclaimed: “when your boy is dying on some battlefield in Europe, and he’s crying out ‘Mother! Mother!—don’t blame President Franklin D. Roosevelt because he sent your boy to war—blame yourself, because you sent Franklin D. Roosevelt back to the White House!”

Surely, though, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the nation came together, right? Well, the America First Committee, Charles Lindbergh’s platform for isolationism, disbanded quickly, and only one member of Congress voted against the declaration of war. But less than a year later, Republicans gained in the 1942 midterms by campaigning against America’s wartime president, capitalizing on the gloomy news from the war and from domestic discontent over the heavy hand of government. That November, Republicans gained 47 seats in the House and nine in the Senate.

The partisan fires raged much hotter in the 1950 midterms, just months after U.S. forces began fighting in Korea. Sen. Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska said of President Harry Truman, “The blood of our boys in Korea is on his shoulders, and no one else.” The Republican National Committee built its midterm campaign around Democratic “blundering” in Korea. And the Republicans were already campaigning against the Truman administration for its indifference to—if not outright sympathy with—Communists. Earlier that year, Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy had charged in a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, that there were some 200 “known Communists” in the State Department. “Who lost China?” became a theme of Republican campaign rhetoric, and the Republican Party wound up winning 28 House seats and five Senate seats that year. And two years later, as the Korean War sunk into quagmire, the entire 1952 GOP campaign was encapsulated as “K1C2” slogan: “Korea, Corruption, and Communism.”

Vietnam, of course, is remembered as the war that split the nation, but the discontent was brewing well before 1968. As early as October 1965, Ronald Reagan, preparing to launch his campaign for governor of California, was arguing from the right that Lyndon Johnson wasn’t pushing hard enough. “We should declare war on North Vietnam. We could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas,” Reagan said. At the same time, opposition to the war was growing within the Democratic Party. By 1966, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman William Fulbright was holding hearings questioning the rationale for the war, and Senator Robert Kennedy, among other Democrats, was publicly expressing doubts about the war. By 1968, it had effectively split the party.

As for the Republicans: Just before the November election, the campaign of Republican nominee Richard Nixon surreptitiously persuaded South Vietnam’s leaders not to agree to an election eve peace proposal—not just undermining the current president, but leading Republicans like George Will, among others, to subsequently label it “treason.”

If you’re looking for examples of genuine unity, you can point to the atmosphere after the attacks of September 11, 2001, when, as in the days just after Pearl Harbor, there was a real sense of patriotic fervor. That sense even survived the initial decision by the Bush Administration to invade Iraq—the House approved the use of force by a 296-133 margin and the Senate vote was 77-23. But, as with Korea and Vietnam, the setbacks in the field took a political toll. What helped save Bush’s re-election was a distinctly unsubtle campaign suggesting that a John Kerry presidency would subject the nation to another terrorist attack.

You might also look at who happened at the end of the 2008 campaign, in the wake of the financial meltdown. Both major party nominees—John McCain and Barack Obama—joined President George W. Bush and others at a white House meeting to shape a common response. But even with the entire global economic structure at risk, politics was never far from center stage. When the $700 billion measure came to the House floor, two-thirds of Republicans voted against it, sending the proposal down to defeat. Only after the stock market suffered its biggest drop in history did the House reverse itself four days later. President Obama fared a little better in putting together his own plan for economic recovery. His $838 billion stimulus plan won only three GOP votes in the Senate, despite the inclusion of a large chunk of tax cuts. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said: “It’s full of waste” and “we’re taking an enormous risk, an enormous risk, with other people’s money.”

So why should anyone express surprise or dismay at a fight over what to do about what might be the most dangerous crisis in our history? The arguments in the Senate over the bailouts and rescue packages reflect deep ideological divisions about where to direct resources, whether to aim them at afflicted companies or workers; other debates revolve around everything from abortion policy to climate change to health care. And is anyone really surprised that Democrats might not embrace the idea of half a trillion dollars to be dispensed at the discretion of the most polarizing president in history, or seek to block him and his family from profiting from the massive rescue package?

It says something about the staying power of America’s political institutions that they can sustain fierce partisan and ideological arguments even while the nation is under siege. And even when a free society puts aside the mechanisms of political conflict, they do not remain neglected for long. When Winston Churchill became prime minister of the United Kingdom in 1940, he quickly formed a broad coalition government, which included Clement Atlee, leader of the Labour Party. There were no elections at all until after V-E day, five years later. There, you might say, that is what national unity looks like. But barely two months after V-E day, the British people pushed Churchill out of office in a landslide.

As soon as the bombs stopped falling, politics emerged as strong as ever. And that rapid resumption of partisan battle was as powerful a demonstration as any that one of the foundations of free society—open, freewheeling, raucous debate—was alive and well. Here at home, the same clashes in the Senate that triggered angry words may well have produced a piece of legislation a lot better than one that had been rushed to passage without contentious unity. To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, sometimes—even in crisis—unity asks too much.

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Austrian far-right party hopes for its first national election win in a close race

Published

1 day ago

September 28, 2024

Anne Joseph

VIENNA (AP) — Austria’s far-right Freedom Party could win a national election for the first time on Sunday, tapping into voters’ anxieties about immigration, inflation, Ukraine and other concerns following recent gains for the hard right elsewhere in Europe.

Herbert Kickl, a former interior minister and longtime campaign strategist who has led the Freedom Party since 2021, wants to become Austria’s new chancellor. He has used the term “Volkskanzler,” or chancellor of the people, which was used by the Nazis to describe Adolf Hitler in the 1930s. Kickl has rejected the comparison.

But to become Austria’s new leader, he would need a coalition partner to command a majority in the lower house of parliament.

And a win isn’t certain, with recent polls pointing to a close race. They have put support for the Freedom Party at 27%, with the conservative Austrian People’s Party of Chancellor Karl Nehammer on 25% and the center-left Social Democrats on 21%.

More than 6.3 million people age 16 and over are eligible to vote for the new parliament in Austria, a European Union member that has a policy of military neutrality.

Kickl has achieved a turnaround since Austria’s last parliamentary election in 2019. In June, the Freedom Party narrowly won a nationwide vote for the first time in the European Parliament election, which also brought gains for other European far-right parties.

In 2019, its support slumped to 16.2% after a scandal brought down a government in which it was the junior coalition partner. Then-vice chancellor and Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache resigned following the publication of a secretly recorded video in which he appeared to offer favors to a purported Russian investor.

The far right has tapped into voter frustration over high inflation, the war in Ukraine and the Covid pandemic. It also been able to build on worries about migration.

In its election program, the Freedom Party calls for “remigration of uninvited foreigners,” and for achieving a more “homogeneous” nation by tightly controlling borders and suspending the right to asylum via an “emergency law.”

Gernot Bauer, a journalist with Austrian magazine Profil who recently co-published an investigative biography of the far-right leader, said that under Kickl’s leadership, the Freedom Party has moved “even further to the right,” as Kickl refuses to explicitly distance the party from the Identitarian Movement, a pan-European nationalist and far-right group.

Bauer describes Kickl’s rhetoric as “aggressive” and says some of his language is deliberately provocative.

The Freedom Party also calls for an end to sanctions against Russia, is highly critical of western military aid to Ukraine and wants to bow out of the European Sky Shield Initiative, a missile defense project launched by Germany.

The leader of the Social Democrats, a party that led many of Austria’s post-World War II governments, has positioned himself as the polar opposite to Kickl. Andreas Babler has ruled out governing with the far right and labeled Kickl “a threat to democracy.”

While the Freedom Party has recovered, the popularity of Nehammer’s People’s Party, which currently leads a coalition government with the environmentalist Greens as junior partners, has declined since 2019.

During the election campaign, Nehammer portrayed his party, which has taken a tough line on immigration in recent years, as “the strong center” that will guarantee stability amid multiple crises.

But it is precisely these crises, ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and resulting rising energy prices, that have cost the conservatives support, said Peter Filzmaier, one of Austria’s leading political scientists.

Under their leadership, Austria has experienced high inflation averaging 4.2% over the past 12 months, surpassing the EU average.

The government also angered many Austrians in 2022 by becoming the first European country to introduce a coronavirus vaccine mandate, which was scrapped a few months later without ever being put into effect. And Nehammer is the third chancellor since the last election, taking office in 2021 after predecessor Sebastian Kurz — the winner in 2019 — quit politics amid a corruption investigation.

But the recent flooding caused by Storm Boris that hit Austria and other countries in Central Europe brought back the topic of the environment into the election debate and helped Nehammer slightly narrow the gap with the Freedom Party by presenting himself as a “crisis manager,” Filzmaier said.

Nehammer said in a video Thursday that “this is about whether we continue together on this proven path of stability or leave the country to the radicals, who make a lot of promises and don’t keep them.”

The People’s Party is the far right’s only way into government.

Nehammer has repeatedly excluded joining a government led by Kickl, describing him as a “security risk” for the country, but hasn’t ruled out a coalition with the Freedom Party in and of itself, which would imply Kickl renouncing a position in government.

The likelihood of Kickl agreeing to such a deal if he wins the election is very low, Filzmaier said.

But should the People’s Party finish first, then a coalition between the People’s Party and the Freedom Party could happen, Filzmaier said. The most probable alternative would be a three-way alliance between the People’s Party, the Social Democrats and most likely the liberal Neos.

___

Associated Press videojournalist Philipp Jenne contributed to this report.

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In Alabama, Trump goes from the dark rhetoric of his campaign to adulation of college football fans

Published

1 day ago

September 28, 2024

Anne Joseph

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) — As Donald Trump railed against immigrants Saturday afternoon in the Rust Belt, his supporters in the Deep South had turned his earlier broadsides into a rallying cry over a college football game as they prepared for the former president’s visit later in the evening.

“You gotta get these people back where they came from,” Trump said in Wisconsin, as the Republican presidential nominee again focused on Springfield, Ohio, which has been roiled by false claims he amplified that Haitian immigrants are stealing and “eating the dogs … eating the cats” from neighbors’ homes.

“You have no choice,” Trump continued. “You’re going to lose your culture. You’re going to lose your country.”

Many University of Alabama fans, anticipating Trump’s visit to their campus for a showdown between the No. 4 Crimson Tide and No. 2 Georgia Bulldogs, sported stickers and buttons that read: “They’re eating the Dawgs!” They broke out in random chants of “Trump! Trump! Trump!” throughout the day, a preview of the rousing welcome he received early in the second quarter as he sat in a 40-yard-line suite hosted by a wealthy member of his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.

Trump’s brand of populist nationalism leans heavily on his dark rendering of America as a failing nation abused by elites and overrun by Black and brown immigrants. But his supporters, especially white cultural conservatives, hear in that rhetoric an optimistic patriotism encapsulated by the slogan on his movement’s ubiquitous red hats: “Make America Great Again.”

That was the assessment by Shane Walsh, a 52-year-old businessman from Austin, Texas. Walsh and his family decorated their tent on the university quadrangle with a Trump 2024 flag and professionally made sign depicting the newly popular message forecasting the Alabama football team “eating the Dawgs.”

For Walsh, the sign was not about immigration or the particulars of Trump’s showmanship, exaggerations and falsehoods.

“I don’t necessarily like him as a person,” Walsh said. “But I think Washington is broken, and it’s both parties’ faults — and Trump is the kind of guy who will stand up. He’s a lot of things, but weak isn’t one of them. He’s an optimistic guy — he just makes you believe that if he’s in charge, we’re going to be all right.”

The idea for the sign, he said, grew out of a meme he showed his wife. “I thought it was funny,” he said.

Katie Yates, a 47-year-old from Hoover, Alabama, had the same experience with her life-sized cutout of the former president. She was stopped repeatedly on her way to her family’s usual tent. Trump’s likeness was set to join Elvis, “who is always an Alabama fan at our tailgate,” Yates said.

“I’m such a Trump fan,” she said, adding that she could not understand how every American was not.

Yates offered nothing disparaging about Trump’s opponent, Democratic nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris, instead simply lamenting that she could not stay for the game and see Trump be recognized by the stadium public address system and shown pumping his fist on large video screens in the four corners of Bryant-Denny Stadium.

That moment came with 12:24 left in the second quarter, shortly after Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe ran up the right sideline, on Trump’s side of the field, to give the Crimson Tide an eye-popping 28-0 lead over the Vegas-favored Bulldogs.

Trump did not react to Milroe’s scamper, perhaps recognizing that Georgia, not reliably Republican Alabama, is a key battleground in his contest against Harris. But when “the 45th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump” was introduced to the capacity crowd of more than 100,000 fans — all but a few thousand wearing crimson — Trump smiled broadly and pumped his fist, like he had done on stage in July after the bullet of a would-be assassin grazed his ear and bloodied his face.

The crowd roared its approval, raising cell phone cameras and their crimson-and-white pompoms toward Trump’s suite, where he stood behind the ballistic glass that has become a feature after two assassination attempts. A smattering of boos and a few extended middle fingers broke Trumpian decorum, but they yielded to more chants of: “USA! USA! USA!”

Indeed, not everyone on campus was thrilled.

“There is, I think, a silent majority among the students that are not with Trump,” argued Braden Vick, president of Alabama’s College Democrats chapter. Vick pointed to recent elections when Democratic candidates, including President Joe Biden in 2020, vastly outperformed their statewide totals in precincts around the campus.

“We have this great atmosphere for a top-five game between these two teams, with playoff and championship implications,” Vick said, “and it’s just a shame that Donald Trump has to try to ruin it with his selfishness.”

Trump came as the guest of Alabama businessman Ric Mayers Jr., a member of Mar-a-Lago. Mayers said in an interview before the game that he invited Trump so that he could enjoy a warm welcome. And, as Mayers noted, Trump is a longtime sports fan. He tried to buy an NFL team in the 1980s and helped launch a competing league instead. And he attended several college games as president, including an Alabama-Georgia national championship game.

Mayers also invited Alabama Sens. Katie Britt and Tommy Tuberville. Britt, a former student government president at Alabama, delivered the GOP response to Biden’s last State of the Union address, drawing rebukes after using a disproven story of human trafficking to echo Trump’s warnings about migrants. Tuberville, a former head football coach at Auburn University, Alabama’s archrival, is a staunch Trump supporter.

Joining the politicians in the suite were musicians Kid Rock and Hank Williams Jr. Herschel Walker, a Georgia football icon and failed Senate nominee in 2022, traveled in Trump’s motorcade to the game.

Fencing surrounded parts of the stadium, with scores of metal detectors and tents forming a security perimeter beyond the usual footprint. Sisters of the Alpha Omicron Pi sorority showed their security wristbands before being allowed to their sorority house directly adjacent to the stadium. Bomb-sniffing dogs stopped catering trucks carrying food. Hundreds of TSA agents spread out to do a potentially unpopular job: imposing airport-level screening for each ticket-holder.

But what seemed to matter most was a friendly home crowd’s opportunity to cheer for Trump the same way they cheered the Crimson Tide, unburdened by anything he said in Wisconsin or anywhere else as he makes an increasingly dark closing argument.

“College football fans can get emotional and kooky about their team,” Shane Walsh said. “And so can Trump supporters.”

They didn’t even mind that Trump’s tie was not crimson. It was Georgia red.

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Politics

B.C.’s NDP, Conservatives nominate full slates of candidates for Oct. 19 election

Published

1 day ago

September 28, 2024

Anne Joseph

VICTORIA – Elections BC says the New Democrats and Conservatives have nominated full slates of candidates for the upcoming Oct. 19 provincial election.

Elections BC says in a statement the two main parties will field candidates for each of the province’s 93 ridings, while the Green Party nominated 69 candidates.

Nominations closed Saturday afternoon with 323 total candidates, of which 269 represent seven different political parties and 54 who are contesting the election as Independents or unaffiliated candidates.

Elections BC says the official list includes five Freedom Party of B.C. hopefuls, four Libertarians, three representing the Communist Party of B.C. and two candidates from the Christian Heritage Party of B.C.

There are no BC United candidates.

BC United officials said earlier they might run some candidates in the election to preserve the party entity for the future after Leader Kevin Falcon announced the suspension of BC United’s election campaign in late August to prevent a centre-right vote split.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 28, 2024.

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