Lee Atwater, Newt Gingrich and the rise of Republican all-out political warfare

For context, the comments in this 40 second video from 1980 by radical Christian nationalist Paul Weyrich made clear that the Republican Party knew it was in deep trouble even back then. Most Americans were not buying what the GOP was selling.

In 1991, the New York Times published these comments about and by Lee Atwater, one of the architects of the modern Republican Party's brand of poisonous, no-compromise political warfare. The new Republican politics movement had nothing to do with governing democratically or in good faith. It had everything to do with discrediting the political opposition and winning power. Atwater was then the chairman of the national Republican Party. At the time, he was dying from a brain tumor, which he feared. His comments can reasonably be taken as deathbed confessions.

.... Lee Atwater has apologized to Michael S. Dukakis for the "naked cruelty" of a remark he made about the Democratic Presidential nominee in the 1988 campaign. 

Since being stricken last year, the 39-year-old Mr. Atwater has apologized on several occasions for many of the campaign tactics he once employed and for which he was criticized.  

Mr. Horton, who is black, raped a white woman and stabbed her husband while on a weekend furlough from a Massachusetts prison. The Bush campaign used the case to portray Mr. Dukakis, then Governor of Massachusetts, as a liberal who was soft on crime.

"In 1988," Mr. Atwater said, "fighting Dukakis, I said that I 'would strip the bark off the little bastard' and 'make Willie Horton his running mate.' I am sorry for both statements: the first for its naked cruelty, the second because it makes me sound racist, which I am not." 

Reputation as 'Ugly Campaigner' 

"In part because of our successful manipulation of his campaign themes, George Bush won handily," Mr. Atwater said. He conceded that throughout his political career "a reputation as a fierce and ugly campaigner has dogged me."

"While I didn't invent negative politics," he said, "I am one of its most ardent practitioners."

"After the election, when I would run into [Democratic Party national chairman] Ron Brown, I would say hello and then pass him off to one of my aides," he said. "I actually thought that talking to him would make me appear vulnerable.

"Since my illness, Ron has been enormously kind -- he sent a baby present to Sally T.," Mr. Atwater's third child, who was born only weeks after he was stricken. "He writes and calls regularly -- and I have learned a lesson: Politics and human relationships are separate. I may disagree with Ron Brown's message, but I can love him as a man."

After Atwater, Newt Gingrich came on the scene. He made the situation more poisonous than it already was. Gingrich did not care about Atwater's regrets. He was all-in on the GOP's all-out political warfare plan. A November 2018 broadcast on NPR, 'Combative, Tribal, Angry': Newt Gingrich Set The Stage For Trump, Journalist Says, discusses Gingrich and his brand of poison politics. In the podcast below, Terry Gross interviews McKay Coppins, who wrote an article about the rise and tactics of Gingrich, The Man Who Broke Politics, for The Atlantic magazine at the about same time as the NPR broadcast. Coppins commented about Gingrich:

"He set a model for future Republican leaders," Coppins says of Gingrich. "I think that his defining legacy is he enshrined this combative, tribal, angry attitude in politics that would infect our national discourse in Washington and Congress for decades to come."

These are a couple of the comments from the interview transcript:

GROSS: I thought Newt Gingrich had kind of disappeared from the political scene. But apparently, he's very active on Fox News and very influential on Fox News.

COPPINS: Yeah. It's, I think, interesting. If you're not a regular Fox News viewer, I think a lot of people probably forgot about Newt Gingrich. He's very influential with the Republican base, the Fox News audience. He's seen as kind of this iconic figure, this truth teller. And he's also, frankly, influential within the Trump administration. He talks to the White House, he told me, 10 to 15 times a week. He's on the phone with Jared Kushner or Mike Pompeo or, you know, talking to Republican leaders in Congress. He is quite an influential figure. And I think that a lot of people forget about him, but I don't think we should for many reasons.

GROSS: What are the reasons?

COPPINS: Well, for one thing, he's influential in this current Trump administration. But also, his career is important to understand if you want to understand how we got to this point in our politics. He entered Congress in the '70s. And if you kind of trace the last 40 years of his career, you'll really come to understand how our politics has devolved into this kind of zero-sum culture war. You'll see the way that he pioneered a lot of the tactics of partisan warfare that we now take for granted as just a common fixture of our political landscape but were actually important innovations by Newt Gingrich and his allies.

And more than anything, I think that if you look at the way that he gained power in the first place, he did it very deliberately and methodically by undermining the institution of Congress itself from within by kind of blowing up the bipartisan coalitions that had existed for a long time in Washington and then using the kind of populist anger at the gridlock in Congress to then take power. And that's a strategy we've seen replicated again and again all the way up into 2016 when Trump was campaigning on draining the swamp. This is a strategy that may seem kind of commonplace now but that Newt Gingrich was one of the premier architects of.

GROSS: So your new article about Newt Gingrich is titled "The Man Who Broke Politics." And you date his really divisive style of politics to 1978. He was running for Congress as a House representative from Georgia. He was speaking to a gathering of college Republicans. He was 35 years old. And he said, one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don't encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient and loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around the campfire but are lousy in politics. And he told them that to be successful they need to, quote, "raise hell," to stop being so, quote, "nice" and to realize that politics was, quote, "a war for power." (emphasis added)

In his article in The Atlantic, Coppins wrote about a meeting at the Philadelphia Zoo with Gingrich, who was an animal lover:

“There is,” he explained soon after arriving, “a lot we can learn from the natural world.” 

.... Gingrich has spent much of the day using zoo animals to teach me about politics and human affairs. In the reptile room, I learn that the evolutionary stability of the crocodile (“Ninety million years, and they haven’t changed much”) illustrates the folly of pursuing change for its own sake: “If you’re doing something right, keep doing it.” (CAUTION: Crackpot reasoning alert! -- for example, the climate is changing, so we need to change what we do) 

Outside the lion pen, Gingrich treats me to a brief discourse on gender theory: “The male lion procreates, protects the pride, and sleeps. The females hunt, and as soon as they find something, the male knocks them over and takes the best portion. It’s the opposite of every American feminist vision of the world—but it’s a fact!” (CAUTION: Crackpot reasoning alert! -- for example, in some animal societies, females knock the males over and take the best food)

But the most important lesson comes as we wander through Monkey Junction. Gingrich tells me about one of his favorite books, Chimpanzee Politics, in which the primatologist Frans de Waal documents the complex rivalries and coalitions that govern communities of chimps. De Waal’s thesis is that human politics, in all its brutality and ugliness, is “part of an evolutionary heritage we share with our close relatives”—and Gingrich clearly agrees. (CAUTION: Crackpot reasoning alert! -- this is just plain nuts, e.g., humans invented laws to keep violence down and laws actually do that)

One can reasonably ask why such toxic politics and flawed reasoning resonated then and still resonates now with tens of millions of Americans. One commenter here, PD, postulates: 

.... in a different era or context, Gingrich's antics really would backfire. Some of this has to do with the post-Watergate, post-Vietnam New Right coalition ( Right Wing Libertarians, White Evangelicals like the Moral Majority, demoralized cold warriors after the Fall of Saigon, disillusioned southern democrats in the wake of the civil rights era, etc.) that emerged in the late 70s, and which was embodied by the "Reagan Revolution." There was (and still is) a lot of anger and frustration out there for someone like Gingrich (or nowadays Trump) to exploit, and understanding some of that anger (whether you agree with it or not) is also important.

That sounds a lot like what I've been arguing here for the last ~3 years. A lot of irrational fear, anger, distrust, intolerance and anti-democratic, pro-authoritarianism is going on here. For the most part, that toxic sentiment has been fomented by mendacious, divisive radical right demagogues. IMO, divisive modern Republican radicalism predates Atwater and Gingrich. 

One can arguably trace the origins of modern poison conservative politics to federal civil rights laws in the 1960s, the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court public school desegregation decision, and maybe the US Civil War or even the drafting of the US Constitution. Authoritarian mindsets do not arise from nothing. That is inherent in the human condition, along with all other kinds of mindsets. But sometimes, it takes a few talented demagogues at the right places and times to unleash the full potential of anti-democratic authoritarian politics.

Republican hypocrisy and lies on display, once again

Radical: advocating or based on thorough or complete political or social change; representing or supporting an extreme, progressive or conservative section of a political party; (noun) a person who advocates thorough or complete political or social reform; a member of a political party or part of a party pursuing such aims

Mitch McConnell is warning Biden to not nominate a ‘radical’ supreme court justice because his mandate from the 2020 election was to govern from the middle and unite America. His hypocrisy on all three points is blatant, shameless, insulting and immoral. The New York Times writes:

“The American people elected a Senate that is evenly split at 50-50,” Mr. McConnell said in his first statement since word of the retirement leaked. “To the degree that President Biden received a mandate, it was to govern from the middle, steward our institutions and unite America. The president must not outsource this important decision to the radical left. The American people deserve a nominee with demonstrated reverence for the written text of our laws and our Constitution.”

Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer said he wants to act quickly on Biden’s nomination, but in view of bad faith Republican obstructionism over Merrick Garland’s nomination by Obama, he said “We need to be ready and willing to fight, and fight ferociously.” He is probably right about that. 

Who is the radical here?

What Republicans want is thorough political and social change in American government and society. Along with wealthy special interests and their money, the GOP is dominated by fundamentalist Christian nationalists who openly want to establish Old Testament Biblical law, Christian sharia, on America. Most Americans would oppose that if they were asked, which unfortunately they are not. In Republican propaganda, anyone who is not a radical right authoritarian, is smeared and slandered as a socialist or communist radical. The GOP lies and slander story is that Democrats and Biden are hell bent on establishing a tyranny where racial and ethnic minorities brutally oppress White people, White rights and the practice of Christian religion. The Republican Party is hostile to free and fair elections and has been for decades.

In situations like this, Republicans never, ever mention the fact that the results of elections are skewed to rural states due to our electoral system. Lies of omission are front and center. For the GOP, it does not matter one iota that most Americans often oppose them. Republicans deny, downplay or distort this reality into insignificance. Republicans govern as radical right neo-fascist Christian fundamentalists and brass knuckles laissez-faire capitalists regardless of public opinion. Republicans in power are no more responsive to public opinion than Democrats. And when Democrats try to push forward policies that most Americans support, e.g., environmental regulation, fairer tax policy, etc., the GOP and lobbyists with their vast free speech (campaign contributions) power is always right there to block it.

By contrast, Biden is a neoliberal capitalist who caters to Wall Street special interests at least as much as he wants to cater to the public interest. Democrats tend to want society to progress as it will and government to reflect those changes over time. Democrats what time to pass, while Republicans want to freeze time and re-establish an illusory past at some ill-defined point(s) in time. Polls show that a majority of Americans support many or most major Democratic goals, e.g., health care, environmental protections and correcting unfair taxation. That includes Democratic Party support for free and fair elections unlike the GOP, which opposes voting rights and free and fair elections, which it has to do in view of its minority status in terms of public support.

Or, are both parties so much alike that significant distinctions are more illusion than reality?

Quota filling...

I like balance.  Balance is good.  I like symmetry.  And I really like that elusive idea of “fairness.”  I know, I know... in these tribal days, call me silly.

For example, I’m glad that Biden promised to nominate a woman on the Supreme Court.  That gives it more balance.  Some might consider that quota-filling:

Definition of quota

1: a proportional part or share especially : the share or proportion assigned to each in a division or to each member of a body

2: the number or amount constituting a proportional share

3: a fixed number or percentage of minority group members or women needed to meet the requirements of affirmative action

So, this leads to a couple of questions:

1. Are you for quota-filling, whether it be in government, schools, workplace, etc.?  Give your pro/con reasons.

2. Is the United States the kind of country that needs to have quota-filling mandated, else top (usually) man on totem pole constantly keeps his “side” in power?

Thanks for posting and recommending.

The deep and bitter the American reality divide

The AP writes:

BENSON, Minn. (AP) — The newspaper hit the front porches of the wind-scarred prairie town on a Thursday afternoon: Coronavirus numbers were spiking in the farming communities of western Minnesota.

“Covid-19 cases straining rural clinics, hospitals, staff,” read the front-page headline. Vaccinate to protect yourselves, health officials urged.

But ask around Benson, stroll its three-block business district, and some would tell a different story: The Swift County Monitor-News, the tiny newspaper that’s reported the news here since 1886, is not telling the truth. The vaccine is untested, they say, dangerous. And some will go further: People, they’ll tell you, are being killed by COVID-19 vaccinations.

It’s another measure of how, in an America increasingly split by warring visions of itself, division doesn’t just play out on cable television, or in mayhem at the U.S. Capitol.

It has seeped into the American fabric, all the way to Benson’s 12th Street, where two neighbors -- each in his own well-kept, century-old home -- can live in different worlds.

Jason Wolter, is a thoughtful, broad-shouldered Lutheran pastor who reads widely and measures his words carefully. He also suspects Democrats are using the coronavirus pandemic as a political tool, doubts President Joe Biden was legitimately elected and is certain that COVID-19 vaccines kill people.

He hasn’t seen the death certificates and hasn’t contacted health authorities, but he’s sure the vaccine deaths occurred: “I just know that I’m doing their funerals.”

He’s also certain that information “will never make it into the newspaper.”

“There are no alternative facts,” Reed Anfinson [publisher, editor, photographer and reporter for the Monitor-News] says. “There is just the truth.”

Wolter’s frustration boils over during a late breakfast in a town cafe. Seated with a reporter, he starts talking as if Anfinson is there.

“You’re lying to people,” Wolter says. “You flat-out lie about things.”

So, there you have it. Anfinson reports facts as best he can, but is nonetheless considered a liar by Wolter for whom the facts must be too inconvenient and psychologically threatening to be accepted. Disbelieving people like this base beliefs on faith, not hard evidence. In the case of alleged COVID vaccine deaths, death certificates would prove that the COVID vaccine kills people. Such evidence does not exist because, with very few exceptions, the vaccines do not kill people. That wonderful Lutheran pastor calls newspaper publisher Anfinson a liar without one shred of evidence. Instead Wolter relies on blind raging faith in his false alt-reality. Unfortunately, reality does not care whether Wolter or anyone else believes something that is true or false. It just doesn't care. Only people can care.

Some vaccine facts for context:

Over 339 million vaccine doses were given to 187.2 million people in the US as of July 19, 2021. The vaccines have been proven to be safe and effective. .... Between December 2020 and July 19th, 2021, VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) received 6,207 reports of death (0.0018% of doses) among people who got a vaccine, but this does not mean the vaccine caused these deaths. Doctors and safety monitors carefully review the details of each case to see if it might be linked to the vaccine. There are three deaths that appear to be linked to blood clots that occurred after people got the J&J vaccine. (emphasis added)

This raises some issues. One is how much actual evidence and data is needed to convince a disbeliever that actual facts and true truths are real. Another is how damaging such reality disconnects are to democracy and empowering they are to authoritarianism. If intentional polarization and alt-reality propaganda victimizes people and causes this kind of fantasy about public health, why wouldn't it cause the about same reality disconnects for all other issues that have been propagandized? 

Actually, some don't do any research and 

just rely on propaganda for their blind faith

Your pick...

 

-So, with Justice Stephen Breyer retiring, who is your pick for  his SCOTUS replacement, and why?  Give as many details as possible.

-Do you foresee any interference by the Republicans on Biden's SCOTUS nomination?  If yes, in what way(s) and by whom?

Thanks for posting and recommending.

Planned obsolescence: A short history

"By the mid-1920s [1], just about every American who needed a car had one. It had been hard enough to convince Americans that this new-fangled invention was a necessary investment, but now automakers had a new problem. How the hell were they going to sell more cars? How were they going to make any money?" 

The program Throughline, which is broadcast by NPR, looks at the historical origins of various aspects of modern society, politics and life (link here). This program is devoted to the origins and modern manifestations of planned obsolescence is instructive. Not surprisingly, planned obsolescence is designed by capitalists to increase profits by decreasing the durability and/or repairability of products that consumers and businesses have to buy more frequently than if those products had been designed to last and be more easily repairable.

Maybe less known, but also no surprise once it is known is the fact that modern planned obsolescence marketing and rhetoric is grounded in modern cutting edge propaganda technology, which is grounded in cutting edge cognitive biology and social behavior science research. 

A couple of points merit mention:

• One of the first known examples of planned obsolescence was hatched by a global organization of businesses called the Phoebus Cartel. In December of 1924, the cartel hatched and initiated a secret plan to increase sales of light bulbs by bringing the average bulb's lifespan from 2,500 hours down to 1,000 hours. It took several years of engineering and testing to finally build light bulbs that reliably burned out at about 1,000 hours, but the plan finally succeeded. Giant businesses such as General Electric participated in this plan to boost profits by selling light bulbs intentionally designed to fail sooner.

• Under the guidance of the brilliant engineer and master marketer Alfred P. Sloan, General Motors (president, chairman and/or CEO from the 1920s through the 1950s), along with designer Harley J. Earl, pioneered the concept of psychological obsolescence, e.g., by inventing annual car and truck model changes. That was do to make last and previous year's vehicles look and feel obsolete or shabby compared to newer year models. One tactic that GM used was to flog a new car sales as hard as the GM sales force could, but then the instant a new car was sold, the sales people would instantly pivot to a ruthless psychological campaign to instill regret in the new car buyer by shifting the consumer's focus from their brand new car. The focus changed from how great this new car is to how great the new and improved model that will come out next year compared to the one you just bought. This sales tactic started even before the buyer had driven a new car off the lot. Psychological obsolescence was worth billions is sales to GM over the decades. From what I can tell, GM marketing worked so well that most Americans actually came to believe the propaganda that what is good for GM is good for America.

• Modern products are obsolescence planned. The Throughline program discusses the iPhone as a prime example. Batteries were built to fail and not be replaceable until enough consumer complaints forced just enough changes to mostly blunt the complaints. The overall iPhone strategy is to force customers to replace their designed-to-fail iPhones as soon as psychologically acceptable to consumers. 

One way to see this more broadly

Stepping back and looking broadly, essentially all American political, religious and business elites are well-grounded in cutting edge propaganda technology, which includes planned obsolescence. It arguably amounts to a propaganda movement. Most of the public is mostly unaware of how pervasive and effective it is, maybe because,  like fish in water, most people can't see it because it is everywhere and therefore nowhere. That is no accident. The elites use propaganda technology ruthlessly and relentlessly on average citizens to get what they want, often or usually by deceit, flawed reasoning, irrational emotional appeals, and irrationally fomented social division and polarization. The latter tactic applies to all three of modern American politics, American Christian religion and American business.

What do the elites want? For the most part, and regardless of what they say to the contrary or how hard or often they say it, the elites in America want and are getting wealth and power concentrated among themselves at the expense of the masses (the mob as they see us, or as Trump has called us, "disgusting people"). In general, two kinds of ideology or mindset drives the wealth and power trickle up in modern America, laissez-faire capitalism and radical fundamentalist Christian theocracy.

That is the real us vs. them fight that is now underway in America, and liberal democracies elsewhere. Planned obsolescence is just one manifestation of the bigger picture. 

When an apologist for hard core capitalism tells you that capitalism works because it is based on selling the best products at the lowest cost to maximize benefit to all people, it is fair and balanced to tell them they are full of crap and either ignorant or lying. Yes, some businesses are exceptions, but most or all of the big ones are not. 

As discussed in footnote 1, early on Ford and GMN operated on different principles. Ford build vehicles to last a long time. GM built them to not last. The economic success of GM's sales and marketing propaganda forced Ford to adopt the same tactics. That is why I assert that that most of all big corporations have the same mindset, which is maximize profit over all other concerns, including social, personal and environmental risk or harm. That is what it means to have profit as the one and only overriding moral value in most of capitalism and most capitalists. Planned obsolescence is just one manifestation of that general rule.

Footnote: 

1. That article, A Primer on Planned Obsolescence – How to Avoid Self-Destructing Goods, includes these comments:

Henry Ford, despite his white supremacist leanings, had an engineer’s integrity—and didn’t see any point in altering the Model T. It worked well, it came in one color (black) and they lasted as long as their owners maintained them.

His competitors at General Motors, however, didn’t have the same scruples. The head of GM, Alfred Sloan Jr., suggested a campaign that his critics would later label “planned obsolescence,” he would introduce new models each year, in new colors, styles, and with more powerful engines. In so doing, he would create demand for new cars, even before his customers had worn out their first one.  

If you’re reading this article on your phone or computer (or even if you’re a psycho and printed it out), you’re familiar to some degree with planned obsolescence. Notice how your devices don’t hold a charge like they used to? Or how your printer cartridges seem to run out of ink before they ought to? That’s planned obsolescence, baby.  

Though we attribute the first modern application of planned obsolescence to Alfred Sloan of GM, the philosophy thereof was developed by another man: Bernard London. London’s 1932 pamphlet, Ending The Depression Through Obsolescence, espoused the theory that creating products with an artificially shortened lifespan could boost the economy and lift the nation out of the Great Depression. He explains,

In a word, people generally, in a frightened and hysterical mood, are using everything that they own longer than was their custom before the depression. In the earlier period of prosperity, the American people did not wait until the last possible bit of use had been extracted from every commodity. They replaced old articles with new for reasons of fashion and up-to-dateness. They gave up old homes and old automobiles long before they were worn out, merely because they were obsolete. All business, transportation, and labor had adjusted themselves to the prevailing habits of the American people. Perhaps, prior to the panic, people were too extravagant; if so, they have now gone to the other extreme and have become retrenchment-mad.

London goes on to suggest a government program whereby old goods that had been deemed “useless” would be bought up by the government and destroyed so that consumers could go out and buy newer versions of the same products and stimulate the economy and get people back to work in manufacturing jobs (*cough cough* Cash for Clunkers *cough cough*) .

NOTE: As noted above, the Phoebus Cartel to control light bulbs was launched in 1922 and London wrote in 1932. Thus, the article above gets the origins of planned obsolescence wrong, but it's there for some historical context and commentary, e.g., Henry Ford really was a rabid White supremacist.