No, It's NOT Just About The South, Sen. Voinovich

Amazing what comes out of the mouths of retiring Republican Senators once they no longer have to depend on the base for their political survival:

Too many conservative senators like Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) are to blame for the GOP's downfall, one of their retiring Republican colleagues complained Monday.

"We got too many Jim DeMints and Tom Coburns," Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) told the Columbus Dispatch. "It's the southerners."

Voinovich, a native Clevelander who retires after the 2010 election, continued after the southern elements of the GOP.

"They get on TV and go 'errrr, errrrr,'" he said. "People hear them and say, 'These people, they're southerners. The party's being taken over by southerners. What they hell they got to do with Ohio?'"

Markos sez that this is largely factual, that the interests of the South do not match the interests of the country and a political party overcome by regional elements will inevitably have problems. But I think Voinovich is being a bit too clever here. What has he really stood up to his party about over the last several years? He temporarily blocked John Bolton's confirmation. That's about all I can think of.

Indeed, if you look at Jim DeMint's solution for health care, it doesn't have a regional bias, but reflects the standard conservative talking point about the free market.

DeMint offered the usual line on health care: free markets will solve all. And he pushed especially hard for letting insurance companies sell across state lines, which he claimed would make insurance affordable for everyone.

This is a teachable moment; I think it helps get at the heart of what’s wrong with free-market approaches [...]

The reason we have restrictions on interstate sales of health insurance is that a number of states regulate insurers. In particular, some states have a form of community rating, which basically says that insurers can’t deny you coverage or charge extremely high premiums if you have a preexisting condition. And community rating will be unsustainable if individuals can buy insurance from out of state; insurance companies in states that don’t have community rating will cherry-pick the healthy, good risk people, leaving the community rating states with only the highest-cost people.

Now, you might say that’s fine: if you’re a bad risk, you don’t get insurance. But politicians never say that in public, because most voters feel that their fellow citizens shouldn’t be denied health care. So the way this is always presented is that effective competition will make insurance so cheap that everyone can afford it [...]

So when you hear people like DeMint — or conservative economists — preach the wonders of a market-based health care system, bear in mind that this is what it would look like: an America in which nobody who has ever had a major health problem, or had a minor health problem that for some reason bothers the insurance company, can get coverage. Believing that it would turn out otherwise is the triumph of ideology over experience.

DeMint believes unfettered markets can cure health care, when they cannot. But would that be at odds with the approach of the Business Roundtable, or the Chamber of Commerce or any of a dozen or more think tanks?

Southerners may have a different style than a George Voinovich, but they are all selling the same policies. Maybe the Southern rump does it with a little more flair and a lot more religion. But they fundamentally have a conservative set of mantras, and they don't deviate. Sen. Voinovich wants to deflect blame for the failure of these policies, but we shouldn't let him.

Voinovich Admits GOP Opposes Health Care Reform For Political Reasons

George Voinovich is retiring from Congress next year, and I guess that means he can feel free to let a few things slip out. In this clip from CNBC, he admits what we've known all along - that opposition to the President is driving opposition to health care reform. Republicans know that if a Democratic President expands access to health care more than any time since Medicare, and lowers individual costs for most people, he will reap rewards. So their strategy, as revealed previously by internal memos and Jim "Waterloo" DeMint, is to obstruct reform to deny the President a "win", thusly turning the uninsured and the poor into pawns in a political game.

Most of Voinovich's remarks are of the fiscal scold variety, claiming that we cannot afford the cost of government (something I forget hearing from Voinovich when he voted to authorize a war in Iraq that cost three trillion dollars), but here's the key moment at around 4:25:

QUESTIONER: ...on health care, how much of this disagreement with the Administration is about the policy of health care and how to fix it, and how much of it is Republicans' obvious and understandable desire to declaw the President politically? How much of that does fit into the equation.

VOINOVICH: I think it's about 50/50, but I will tell you this...

He then claims that some Republicans want to work "on a bipartisan basis" on health care, but that's pretty much the death knell right there.

Democrats are right to jump all over this and expose the GOP as obstructionists. We've known this for some time with the record number of filibusters, but haven't gotten it out to the public. On a high-profile issue like health care, it should be radioactive to obstruct for political reasons and deny millions of people the right to have quality, affordable care.

OH-Sen: Voinovich Becomes Third Republican To Retire

Do you think the GOP is priming for a big comeback in 2010? Well, so far, Mel Martinez has decided to retire from his Senate seat in Florida, Kit Bond has decided to retire from his Senate seat in Missouri, and now George Voinovich has decided to retire from his Senate seat in Ohio. I get the feeling that they're less than confident.

Sen. George V. Voinovich announced this morning that he won't seek re-election next year and will retire from politics when his term expires at the end of 2010. And the words were barely out of his lips this morning when the line starting forming to succeed him.

The Ohio Republican told his Washington staff this morning of his decision to retire during a conference call from his vacation home in Florida. Voinovich planned to fly back to Washington today where he is scheduled to hold a news conference in the late afternoon.

In a statement, Voinovich said that after "prayerful consideration and much thought," he and his wife Janet decided he would not run again. Voinovich said "this has not been an easy decision for us. I still have the fire in my belly to do the work of our nation, but after serving the next two years, it will be time to step back and spend the rest of our time with our children and grandchildren, siblings and extended family and friends."

Three swing states, three Republican retirements.

This seats up a real battle. Rob Portman, who was Bush's US trade representative and a former Congressman, and who was shortlisted for McCain's Vice-Presidential pick, is sure to run, and I'd guess he'll be the nominee. Former Senator Mike DeWine may also run. On the Democratic side, there's a formidable bench, including Lt. Governor Lee Fisher, Attorney General Richard Cordray, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, and thirtysomething Congressman Tim Ryan from Youngstown, who would absolutely be my choice for the seat. The guy is a dynamo. Bob Brigham has more.

New Wheels For GM And Chrysler - Or Not

A draft bill has been introduced by the House on an auto recovery plan, which everyone knows will only last until the next Administration (for some reason we had to go big with the financial bailout, though).

The legislation provides up to $14 billion in short-term bridge loans and includes accountability measures banning corporate excesses, including no golden parachutes, no bonuses for the 25 most highly paid employees at each company, and no corporate airplanes, with requirements to sell or end leases on any existing aircraft.

The money's coming from the already-appropriated funds to help automakers build energy-efficient vehicles, which sucks. The new "car czar," who has pretty expansive powers, will be selected by Bush, which sucks. The clause saying that the automakers have to drop their lawsuit against California to regulate greenhouse gas emissions has been stricken, which sucks.

This piece is good:

Each Automobile Manufacturer will analyze the potential use of excess production capacity to manufacture vehicles (including buses and rail cars) for sale to public transit agencies. Also includes provisions to guarantee leases of qualified public transit agencies.

The automakers have giant factories and transit companies, not to mention defense firms, have needs. I have no idea why they hadn't been paired up to this point.

In short, there's not a lot to like about this bill, other than it will at least get the carmakers to January. But that's not good enough for the neo-Hooverist Republicans:

Senate Republicans say they have grave concerns about the agreement between congressional Democrats and the Bush White House to speed billions of dollars to struggling U.S. automakers.

Sen. George V. Voinovich, a Republican from Ohio and a leading supporter of the emergency measure, says it doesn't have the necessary Republican votes to pass Congress.

Voinovich is relatively moderate, so if he's saying that, it's probably true.

I can't believe that we're going to force blue-collar companies into bankruptcy while lavishing hundreds of billions onto Wall Street. And based on convenient lies like "auto workers are richie riches!"

That figure — repeated on television and in newspapers as the average pay of a Big Three autoworker — has become a big symbol in the fight over what should happen to Detroit. To critics, it is a neat encapsulation of everything that’s wrong with bloated car companies and their entitled workers.

To the Big Three’s defenders, meanwhile, the number has become proof positive that autoworkers are being unfairly blamed for Detroit’s decline. “We’ve heard this garbage about 73 bucks an hour,” Senator Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat, said last week. “It’s a total lie. I think some people have perpetrated that deliberately, in a calculated way, to mislead the American people about what we’re doing here.”

So what is the reality behind the number? Detroit’s defenders are right that the number is basically wrong. Big Three workers aren’t making anything close to $73 an hour (which would translate to about $150,000 a year).

But the defenders are not right to suggest, as many have, that Detroit has solved its wage problem. General Motors, Ford and Chrysler workers make significantly more than their counterparts at Toyota, Honda and Nissan plants in this country. Last year’s concessions by the United Automobile Workers, which mostly apply to new workers, will not change that anytime soon.

Just to clarify, Detroit doesn't have a "wage problem." Leonhardt's own chart shows that legacy costs and pensions, which apparently aren't allowed anymore, make up for the entire "problem." Leonhardt does correctly argue that the real problem here is getting Americans to buy American cars. But look. GM and Ford have a business overseas. They have a business in the US. They were getting the message on fuel economy and were on the road to profitability when this disaster struck in the credit markets. That is not of their own doing. And yet, for a pittance of what we're throwing down AIG's gullet, we could get them through this tough time and come out on the other end with a sustainable auto industry. Scott Lemieux has this right.

First of all, is there any other context in which progressives would uncritically use the conserveratrian formulation "wage problem"? Am I supposed to be cheering for Wal-Mart to crush Costco because of the latter's "wage problem" while shopping at the former besides? When he watches American Dream, does Kevin cheer for the Hormel executives? Call me crazy, but I'm inclined to think of the generous wages and benefits accorded to their workers is a point in Detroit's favor. (And if you think that wages at non-union American factories will remain at their current level if Detroit stops competing for labor, I have some beautiful condos in Flint to sell you.)

The devil is in the details, of course. But Ford and GM, at least, are producing some quality cars that people in fact are buying, and it's by no means obvious that they can't be profitable companies after the Bush Depression turns around. Given the stakes involved for the American economy and American labor, government money that permits product line consolidation and development with longer time horizons certainly seems like a good gamble to me.

But not to the neo-Hooverists who are putting us on the road to a completely deindustrialized and unsustainable America.

Frozen in Amber

Today the House gets its chance to question David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, and if the Senate hearings are a guide, the overwhelming emotion will be frustration with a policy frozen in amber and destined to be punted to the next President.

"A year ago, the president said we couldn't withdraw because there was too much violence," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). "Now he says we can't afford to withdraw because violence is down." Asked Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.): "Where do we go from here?"

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said: "I think people want a sense of what the end is going to look like."

But the bottom line was that there was no bottom line. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker echoed what they said seven months ago in their last update to Congress -- often using similar words. Iraq's armed forces continue to improve, overall levels of violence are lower than they were last year, and political reconciliation is happening, albeit still more slowly than they would like.

"Iraq is hard, and reconciliation is hard," Crocker said in September. Yesterday, he added: "Almost everything about Iraq is hard."

In eight hours of testimony, the two men danced around the question of what constitutes success in Iraq. "As I've explained, again, from a military perspective," Petraeus said wearily as the day drew to a close, ". . . what we want to do is to look at conditions and determine where it is without taking undue risks. This is all about risk."

Seven months since the previous assessment, the general and the ambassador, standing in for George Bush and Dick Cheney, had nothing to offer the Senate, no glimmers of hope, really nothing other than a belief that the future is completely unknowable except that we know there'd be chaos if we leave. For a policy so important to our future, on an economic level and on a national security level, a policy we're shoving so much into to apparently get a chaotic muddle as a reward, this is unacceptable.

George Voinovich (R-OH) had the most honest take, and while I'm not sure he's willing to do anything about it, he definitely was able to add a touch of anger to the proceedings.

Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) said that, because of the Iraq war, “we’re at a point where we’re really strained and stressed out.” “I hate to agree with Sen. Feingold,” he added, “but I think Osama bin Laden is sitting back right now looking at this thing [and saying] in effect, ‘We’re kinda bankrupting this country.’ We are eating our seed corn. We’ve got some really big problems today, and we are in a recession, and God only knows how long we’re gonna be in it.” [...] Voinovich argued that the course in Iraq should consist of the U.S. telling its Middle East allies, “Hey guys, we’re on our way out.” We need “a surge in diplomacy,” he added. “The American people have had it up to here.”

Ultimately, this is how things are going to stay. The American people will continue to have it up to here, and the policymakers in the White House won't give a damn, and the only expression of this frustration will occur on November 4. Beyond the personalities involved and the bullshit minutiae sure to be hyped in the broadcast media, that's the only choice that matters on Election Day; Iraq frozen in amber, or a long-awaited change.

UPDATE: The House Armed Services Committee hearing can be found here.

What Do We Want? An End To The War! When Do We Want It? At Some Unfixed Time In The Future!

You've gotta be kidding me.

A small group of Republicans facing election fights next year have rallied around war legislation they think could unite the GOP: call for an end to U.S. combat in Iraq, but wait until President Bush is out of office.

The legislation was deemed essentially a nonstarter by Democrats Friday and underscored the difficulty Congress has in striking a bipartisan compromise on the war. What attracts Democrats has repelled Republicans and vice versa, making it impossible so far to find a middle ground [...]

The proposal, by Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, would require that Bush change the mission of U.S. troops from combat to primarily support roles, such as training Iraqi security forces and protecting U.S. infrastructure in Iraq. His legislation would set a goal of completing such a mission transition within 15 months.

If enacted immediately, that timeline would not kick in until Bush's last couple weeks in office.

Co-sponsors of the bill include Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina and Norm Coleman of Minnesota. Of the sponsors, only Voinovich is not up for re-election in 2008.

Awfully convenient.

Can anyone now not say that the Republicans are primarily concerned with getting Bush off the hook and blaming the failure in Iraq on Democrats? And also, this is classic Overton Window stuff. You have the President running around giving back-channel advice to the Democratic candidates, advising them to stay in Iraq. That's completely absurd, so as a compromise, the "sensible centrist" Republicans who are concerned with keeping their jobs go "OK, we can leave after Bush is done." This completely unreasonable suggestion seems reasonable, compared to Bush (and compared to Democratic front-runners).

UPDATE: By the way, Congress passed a two-month blank check for the occupation with almost no fanfare. Only Russ Feingold dissented in the Senate. Therefore you must conclude that he's the only one in the Senate who actually wants to end the war.

Rabbit Ears

It's definitely a trying situation for Democrats. Any time they say they support the troops the Bush Administration makes it seem like they support the policy. Anytime they say they don't support the policy the Bush Administration makes it sound like they don't suport the troops.

Which is a tough situation. And yet 70% of the American people, with little help from the media or even Democrats, support the basic policy of ending the occupation of Iraq. So maybe the key here is to stop listening to what the Bush Administration is saying about you and carry out the policy that brings us closest to that goal. Stop playing chess and start playing checkers.

I mean, Rep. McNerney, this is nice and all...

But in an interview yesterday, McNerney made clear his views have shifted since returning from Iraq. He said Democrats should be willing to negotiate with the generals in Iraq over just how much more time they might need. And, he said, Democrats should move beyond their confrontational approach, away from tough-minded, partisan withdrawal resolutions, to be more conciliatory with Republicans who might also be looking for a way out of the war.

"We should sit down with Republicans, see what would be acceptable to them to end the war and present it to the president, start negotiating from the beginning," he said, adding, "I don't know what the [Democratic] leadership is thinking. Sometimes they've done things that are beyond me."

NOTHING is acceptable to them. They want to play out the string and keep Americans dying in Iraq indefinitely. It's nice to want to negotiate to find the pony, but the only thing that will come out of it is getting 3 Republicans to agree to a withdrawal 7 years from now. But only if we invade Syria first.

This focus on Prime Minister Maliki is similarly absurd. You think some other Prime Minister is going to unify the country? Who? Iyad Allawi? Didn't we already try that? Meanwhile, Levin acknowledges progress on the military front after a hasty two-day trip, getting spun about the utility of Iraqi forces. So this is what to expect in September.

Senate Democrats largely will not challenge, but rather will embrace and celebrate, the notion that The Surge Is Working and that we are making "military progress," whatever that might mean this month. To "oppose the war," they instead will follow the strategy Hillary Clinton has adopted this year -- namely, blaming the Iraqis for failing to take advantage of the great opportunities we are creating for them. Levin's demand that Prime Minister Maliki be replaced is designed to accomplish exactly that. Democrats are afraid to challenge the U.S. military's claims that we are Winning, and are even afraid to oppose the Surge, so instead, they will take the safest course -- heaping the blame on the Iraqi government and demanding that they improve [...]

Iraq is so disintegrated, so ethnically cleansed, so broken that, as (Nir) Rosen points out, it does not really exist as an entity any longer:

Iraq has been changed irrevocably, I think. I don't think Iraq even -- you can say it exists anymore. There has been a very effective, systematic ethnic cleansing of Sunnis from Baghdad, of Shias --from areas that are now mostly Shia. . . . And Baghdad is now firmly in the hands of sectarian Shiite militias, and they're never going to let it go.

Rosen reports that the number of externally displaced Iraqis is now close to 3 million -- most of them Sunnis, representing a sizable portion of the Iraqi Sunni population which, in turn, further ensures Shiite sectarian militia control of most of the country. Always obscured by the exciting debate over whether we are "winning" is what happens if we "win" -- the installation of an Iran-and-Syria-friendly Shiite "government" surrounded by an ethnically divided country armed and ruled by sectarian militias loyal to a whole variety of Middle East actors. In light of all of that, Sen. Levin's claim of "military progress" is just incoherent.

Democrats have put themselves in a horrible spot. There is going to be a drawdown of troops, mainly because of physical realities of manpower, that they won't be responsible for, and it will be seen by the media as "piling on" to suggest it's insufficient, especially after they've determined that "the surge is working." The 100,000 or so contractors will stay, of course, there will be no talk of them. And there may be an internal coup that will be used as a rhetorical weapon by the White House ("We need to give the new Prime Minister time to succeed"). None of this will have any bearing on Iraq's inevitable slide into absolute chaos.

Things that the Democrats could do: highlight reports like this in the same way they're highlighted against you...

In Baghdad, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker was downbeat in his assessment of Maliki's ability to end sectarian warfare between the Shiites and Sunni Arabs. He called progress toward national reconciliation "extremely disappointing" and said Maliki and other members of his government needed to reach compromises to help quell the bloodshed.

"We do expect results, as do the Iraqi people, and our support is not a blank check," Crocker told journalists.

Speak absolutely clearly that the surge is a failure.

“No matter how brilliantly and bravely our troops and their commanders perform — and they have performed brilliantly and bravely — they cannot and should not bear the responsibility of resolving grievances at the heart of Iraq’s civil war,” Mr. Obama said. “No military surge, no matter how brilliantly performed, can succeed without political reconciliation and a surge of diplomacy in Iraq and the region.”

Bird-dog the other side to get them on the record about Bush's war:

But, unlike most lawmakers who return from the war-torn country, Voinovich is refusing to offer an assessment of what he saw on his trip. “He’s not going to get into that right now — what’s working, what’s not working, is the surge working,” his spokesman, Chris Paulitz, told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “He’s not really interested in a soundbite response.”

And be extremely firm in calling for a specific end to this war, asking Republicans for their support but also firmly explaining to them the consequences of their opposition; namely, the end of their political careers.

And quit listening to every word the Republicans say on this thing.

I Know What'll Stop Bush! A Nonbinding Resolution!

Sorry, fellas, but Dick Lugar is not prepared to do a damn thing to stop the occupation of Iraq. You know what he favored in an interview on NPR today? MORE NONBINDING RESOLUTIONS. Really.

Given what you said, the next time there is an opportunity for you to vote on the war, would you be a vote against the war?

I'm not going to have a vote for or against the war, at least I don't conceive of how this would occur. Most likely debate will occur once again when we take up money for the troops, for the prosecution of Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. I think the majority of the Senate, regardless of how they feel about the prosecution of the war, are not about to cut off funds that would jeopardize our troops in any way. That will be probably an overlying proposition.

Which sounds like you're saying that this is not going to change your vote.

Not with regard to support of the troops. I'm going to vote for the authorization and the appropriations. But there are many, many ways in which the Congress ultimately can influence even the president with regard to this war and we'll have to think through the most appropriate one.

Give me one — before we let you go — one thing that Congress can do.

Well, Congress could offer at minimum Sense of the Senate resolutions. They do not have the effect of law, but they clearly indicate how the country feels through its representatives. And that we really have not come to do simply because we have not really wanted to be ambiguous as a nation with regard to our foreign policy.

So why again is this guy getting lauded on talk shows and even liberal websites for "breaking with Bush"? He wants to do a bunch of Sense of the Senate resolutions, and he really and truly believes that the President and Fourthbranch care about public opinion:

If the president does not see things your way and continues on the same course, should the Senate and Congress in general force him to change?

I'm not certain how that occurs. I would just say that at some stage it will become apparent that the lack of support for the president not only in the Congress but with the public would command such a change. Even the president will understand that.

What an ignorant man. I mean ignorant in the sense that he's completely unaware of how Washington has worked the past 6 1/2 years, even while LIVING AND WORKING IN WASHINGTON. Dick Lugar is not going to lift a finger to bring any troops home. I suspect George Voinovich is the same way. They're still wedded to the "support the troops" nonsense and don't understand that defunding the war does not equal defunding the troops.

If this is the way they're talking now, whatever artificial happy talk comes from the guy that reported artificial happy talk back in 2004, David Petraeus, will even make them weaker on the issue. Face it, guys like Lugar and Warner and Voinovich are mush who have been rolled for years by BushCo. It's not changing anytime soon.

And Now Voinovich

They can talk about bringing troops home or they can do something about it. If they do the latter, I'll welcome them to the mainstream of American debate. If not, they are enabling a failed occupation, which is resulting in longer and more deadly combat tours for our men and women, who aren't even finding anybody when they want to fight.

Huh. I guess, maybe, insurgents run away from superior firepower:

The operational commander of troops battling to drive fighters with Al Qaeda from Baquba said Friday that 80 percent of the top Qaeda leaders in the city fled before the American-led offensive began earlier this week. He compared their flight with the escape of Qaeda leaders from Falluja ahead of an American offensive that recaptured that city in 2004.

In an otherwise upbeat assessment, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the second-ranking American commander in Iraq, told reporters that leaders of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia had been alerted to the Baquba offensive by widespread public discussion of the American plan to clear the city before the attack began. He portrayed the Qaeda leaders’ escape as cowardice, saying that "when the fight comes, they leave," abandoning "midlevel" Qaeda leaders and fighters to face the might of American troops — just, he said, as they did in Falluja.

Wow. Who could have predicted that? And while the challenge to Al-Qaeda's manhood is charming in a fourteenth century kind of way, I seriously doubt that the insurgent leadership is as stupid as, say, Right Blogistan or the braintrust of the Bush administration. Indeed, the idea that fleeing superior numbers, firepower, and technology is somehow "unmanly" is rather quaint; I suspect that insurgents would be happy enough if we threw down our tanks, cruise missiles, fighter jets, and armored personal carriers and settled this dispute by Marquess of Queensbury rules.

This is the stupid, "I'm more manly than you" logic which is getting people killed in Iraq. Including those sheikhs we're ballyhooing for "turning on Al Qaeda." Well, that just got them killed. And by the way, not every single enemy fighter we face in Iraq is Al Qaeda. This is an oversimplification of a very complex conflict that, again, people like Dick Lugar and George Voinovich have enabled.

So what's it going to be, Senators? Talk? Or action? (and does this mean the September strategy favored by the Administration is finally dead?)