The Difference Between Hype & Substance

As we pointed out Tuesday morning, modern Republican politicians don't seem to understand the difference between theory and practice these days. Nowhere was that more evident Tuesday than in the fake outrage reactions of right-wing media organizations and politicians to the President's comments about the anniversary of the killing of Osama Bin Laden.

In case you were busy Tuesday - maybe flying to Afghanistan like the President or members of the White House Press Corps - you may have missed the explosion of hypocrisy that permeated the media. In short, as we'd forecasted, it was a huge eruption of hypocritical organic fertilizer.

The sanctimonious idea the right wing was desperately clinging to Tuesday was that President Obama doesn't have the right to take some kind of credit for his gutsy decision a year ago, that was directly responsible for the death of Bin Laden. As we also pointed out Tuesday, that fallacy in thinking is laughable on its face. President Obama had to make a very difficult call - one that could have easily ended poorly, like the decision to rescue Iranian hostages that President Carter made in 1980.

Luckily for him and us, President Obama capitalized on the opportunity to get rid of the world's number one terrorist, and the mission was successful. The fact that Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, had at least two well-publicized opportunities to take out major Al-Qaeda figures, and capitalized on neither opportunity, didn't seem to matter those in the right-wing media.

Those same dogmatic media conservatives were insistent that President Obama's announcement of Bin Ladens' death last year, and his relatively few words this year about Bin Laden, were actually the real offense to the senses. The fact that President Bush's "Mission Accomplished" photo-op came eight years before the actual end of the Iraq war - and nine years to the day from yesterday - didn't seem to matter to them. They were outraged about hype, because - dammit, didn't liberals understand? In their minds, Republicans are always supposed to be better at this war and military stuff.

Meanwhile, President Obama was busy actually moving America's real foreign policy forward in a surprise trip to Afghanistan.

The White House kept most of the media in the dark about the trip, and was mostly successful, announcing with a flourish Tuesday afternoon, that President Obama was signing a new pact with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, signaling a real end to the Afghan War that Bush and company began over a decade earlier.

In short, on the anniversary of the day that President Obama announced that American servicemembers had killed Osama Bin Laden, President Obama signed the first of many official documents that will bring about the real end to the Afghan war. In a somewhat ironic twist, the agreement Obama signed with Karzai is similar to one that President Bush signed with Iraqi President Maliki, that began the American exit from Iraq.

The new agreement says that - as Mr. Obama had previously planned -  by next year, American military forces will be in full support mode of the Afghan forces, and by 2014 all U.S. combat military troops will be out of Afghanistan.

Then, for an undetermined period of time, 15,000-20,000 non-combat American forces will remain in Afghanistan. At that point, the U.S. will continue to help fund Afghanistan's anti-terrorism forces for a few more years - if the U.S. Congress can figure out how to get anything done.

That, of course, is the kicker.

If Congress - and especially the extremists on the far right - keep following the idea that hype is more important than substance, we doubt they'll follow the lead of President Obama.

They'll be too busy preening for their next media opportunity to say Mr. Obama never does anything of substance.

Theory And Practice

We know that today is May Day, a day commonly used to celebrate worker's rights all over the world. That topic is one we fully support, and hope to address again soon. [We also know that in some places, May Day is about giving candy and gifts to your neighbors, but that's another story.]

However, after the stack of columns, commentaries, and news items over the last 24 hours that all pointed to the same idea, we've decided to focus on the difference between theory and reality in politics today. That seems to be something modern Republican politicians don't seem to truly understand - even if many others, including many Republican voters, do.

The tip of the metaphorical iceberg surfaced with a column from this weekend's Washington Post by two centrist political scholars (one of whom works for a conservative think tank), entitled, "Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem." In short, the two political scienists agree that the slavish devotion to ideological theory that current Republican Party politicians cling to, has - in practice - ground our current political system to a halt.

It's not that most Republican voters want the kind of inaction our system now displays. On the contrary, Republican voters, in general say they want our legislators to make smart, sensible laws in a very efficient way. That's not what our current Republican political leaders seem to want, though.

As we mentioned on Monday, just like Newt Gingrich, modern Republican politicians only seem to care more about proving their political theories correct then they do actually governing effectively. Like the poorly planned attacks on Planned Parenthood in Texas, and the illegitimate "personhood" bill in Oklahoma, Republican politicians seem to bent on imposing their theories on those they serve. Sadly, because those legislators didn't consider the constitutionality or ethical nature of either bill, both the bill in Texas and the one in Oklahoma were struck down or halted in court on Monday - which will now cost the taxpayers in both states significantly more money, with zero benefit.

The mindless pursuit of ideology seems to have also found its way into action by Nebraska's State Board of Education. The Board appears set to attempt to force students in all Nebraska public schools, at all levels, to say the Pledge of Allegiance every school day. That a similar bill in Nebraska's legislature failed to pass earlier this year only seemed to be more of an incentive to the Republican politicians on the Board. It doesn't seem to matter that some voters - conservatives among them - agree that being forced to say words one doesn't believe or support won't be helpful to the kids or the schools.

For modern Republican politicians, these kinds of differences between theory and reality don't seem to matter. It doesn't even seem to matter when their theories have been proven to be wrong. For example, the entire conservative theory of budgetary austerity - which, in short, is the Ryan Budget plan - has proven a massive failure throughout Europe. Yet Republicans continue to insist if the rest of us would just try these failed theories, for the thousand and first time, it would be different than the thousand previous failures of the same plan.

GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney followed that same stubborn Republican pattern today, when Romney made an offhand comment about President Obama's decision to go ahead with the raid that lead to the death of terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden. Romney tried to frame the decision President Obama made last year as a theory, one that was no big deal, saying that, "even Jimmy Carter would have given that order."

However, as multiple people pointed out, Carter - like Obama - didn't just have a theory. Carter put into actual practice his decision in April of 1980, to rescue U.S. diplomats in Iran, a decision that was incredibly similar to Obama's decision to go after Bin Laden.

Unlike President Obama's decision however, President Carter's ended in tactical and political failure - and was likely a major reason Carter was not re-elected. As Romney's offhand comment makes clear, though, President Obama's call to go ahead with the Bin Laden raid was not just some pie-in-the sky theory, nor was it an easy decision. Obama's choice was a gutsy move, with calculated risks, that was a Presidential leadership move in practice.

For us, Yogi Berra summed it up best when he said, "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is."

What Newt Leaves Behind...

If you were like many folks this past weekend, you were probably busy doing some Spring cleaning, or finalizing plans for upcoming events. Maybe you were at a car show - or, for some of you, going to the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner, often self-deprecatingly called "Nerd Prom."

In case you missed the news in the midst of all those events, former 2012 GOP candidate for president, Newt Gingrich, has finally announced that he's leaving the race Wednesday, instead of Tuesday - which, for most people, doesn't mean a whole lot.

Perhaps it should, though.

Like it or not, Newt has been a force for dissent and self-destruction within the Republican Party during the GOP presidential primaries this past year. As one Washington pundit noted over the weekend, "To Gingrich, politics is war by other means."

Newt's attitude of politics as war has been obvious from the time he first really came on the national political scene. If any one politician has exemplified the modern Republican way of doing things, it's Newt, who really set the tone for the modern version of the GOP. In his first major political battle that gained any national attention back in 1990, he won in a very Karl Rovian way - 50% plus a handful of votes. When he became the Speaker of the House, he bullied his way to that position, too. Upon gaining power in the House, Newt used that power to browbeat, bludgeon, and bluster his way to claiming huge successes - just as he did in this year's GOP campaign, where he only won a single race.

His claims, though, have almost always been shallow and false. The truth is, Mr. Gingrich has always left a trail of massive failures, not the least of which was his shutdown of the Federal government in 1995. Newt's biggest legacy though, will be the way current Republicans in Congress and in state governments now regularly operate. That method is, frankly, like bullies, not in good faith as Republicans once operated, but as though every disagreement - even within their own party - were a battle to the death.

What has this delusional belligerence gained the Republican party?

To start with, a 2012 nominee for President that even Republican voters can't stand.

As journalist John Nichols pointed out last week, in the five Republican primary races held last week, between 33% and 43% of Republican primary voters picked someone other than Mitt Romney, even when they already knew Romney was going to be their candidate for President. In fact, in Pennsylvania, comparing the results from the uncontested Democratic primary to the number of votes in the contested Republican primary, President Obama got more votes than both Mr. Romney and Rick Santorum, combined. Unsurprisingly, all three men got more votes than Gingrich.

Of course, even when Republicans are getting trounced, modern party hacks never admit it. That too is a legacy of Newt Gingrich.

Current GOP House Speaker John Boehner made an excellent display of that kind of braggadocio and ignorance this past weekend, on one of the Sunday shows. Boehner tried to claim his most recent blasting of President Obama was simply Boehner's attempt to "help" the President make better decisions.

We'll admit - the President's remarks towards some Republicans over the weekend were not all that kind during the White House Correspondents' Dinner. However, they were meant as jokes with barbs, as is the usual custom at that event. The President even made some sharp self-depricating comments, showing that his comments were not meant to be serious. The difference between Mr. Boehner's comments and the President's is that everyone knew the President's comments were a joke. Mr. Boehner meant his comments to be serious.

Such obtuseness - or possibly, self-delusion - is also a legacy of Newt Gingrich.

In short, Newt is an ugly bully of a man, who can't seem to be honest, with himself or with anyone else. He's a monster, frankly, who's left a slime in American politics that will only likely disappear with time. While we're almost certain Mr. Gingrich is headed back into the swamp of lobbyists that pervades Washington, DC, he's left behind a template that far too many leaders in the modern Republican Party continue to follow - even though their current attitude, like his, seems to continue to lead them to failure.