Think Progress

Kristol Calls GOP’s Preconditions On Health Care Meeting ‘Silly’

On Sunday, President Obama announced his intention to host a televised bipartisan meeting on health care reform “to go through systematically all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward.” Yesterday, congressional GOP leaders responded with a list of preconditions for simply sitting down with the President and Democrats.

In a letter to White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, Reps. John Boehner (R-OH) and Eric Cantor (R-VA) wrote that, “[i]f the starting point for this meeting” is the bills that passed the House and Senate, “Republicans would rightly be reluctant to participate.” They also called on Obama to take reconciliation off the table as a “show good faith” to the GOP.

Yesterday on Fox News, Bill Kristol — who has made no secret of his desire to kill health care reform — criticized Boehner and Cantor for setting preconditions and being disrespectful to Obama, adding that they should instead be more direct about their intention not to meet the President half way:

KRISTOL: Obviously when the president invites you to the White House you go. They should politely go and tell him he should kill this terrible bill that the House and Senate — or two bills the House and Senate Democrats have put together and start over. [...]

And Republicans should hold their ground and they shouldn’t be apologetic, they shouldn’t snipe at the president. This letter they sent today I think is silly. Is it really going to be bipartisan? Is it really going to be transparent? You said you were going to be bipartisan in the past.

Forget all that. Just say we welcome a substantive debate. We have been engaged in substantive debate in health care, we Republicans, for a year, and we are perfectly happy to continue that debate. And Mr. President if you want to come to the position of small incremental, sensible reforms in the health care system, more than happy to work with you.

Watch it:

Preconditions or not, it’s clear that both Kristol and the GOP want the same thing — to ultimately kill health care reform. Kristol is merely suggesting to his friends that they make it clearer. Indeed, the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein noted last night on MSNBC that the reality is that the GOP’s position means that a bipartisan compromise will be next to impossible to achieve:

KLEIN: There are two sides with different sets of ideas and they disagree about the ideas and if they can compromise on them, then we get a bill. In fact, you have two sides where one side wants a bill and the other does not want the bill, and it’s actually very hard to compromise between those two positions.

Steve Benen notes that the summit “puts Republicans in an awkward spot.” “If they participate, they’ll very likely lose the policy debate. If they reject the invitation, they’ll look petty and small (even more so than usual).”

Bill’s Late Father Irving Kristol: ‘My Poor Son Has Got It Wrong Again’

Despite all the failures of the neoconservative movement in foreign policy over the last eight years, Newsweek writes that we are witnessing “the return of the neocons.” However, the article provides little hard evidence that neoconservative foreign policy has actually gained renewed credibility. Neocons simply “agree…that they are not about to go away.” And despite the premise of the piece, the article notes why neoconservatism is, in the words of Newsweek, “alive and well“:

“They are effectively insulated from failure,” says Stephen Walt of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, one of the neocons’ most frequent antagonists. “Even if you’ve totally screwed up in office and things you’ve advocated in print have failed, there are no real consequences, either professionally or politically. You go back to AEI and Weekly Standard and continue to agitate or appear on talk shows as if nothing has gone wrong at all.”

One such prominent neocon is Bill Kristol, whom Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart once asked, “Are you ever right?” But it hasn’t just been Kristol’s ideological opposites that have criticized him. According to Newsweek, neocons, other Republicans, and even his own late father have criticized him:

“He would rather take an interesting wrong position than a dull correct one,” says a longtime neocon who did not want to be named because the two are friendly. Several people who know Kristol describe his Palin boosterism—his very public campaign to persuade John McCain to put her on the Republican ticket—as a schoolboy-like infatuation, sparked when a Weekly Standard cruise docked in Juneau. [...] “Bill’s a very close friend of mine, but he does an awful lot of things just to get publicity,” says one prominent Republican who also did not want to be named for fear of offending Kristol. [...]

Even his father had his qualms. “My poor son has got it wrong again,” he sometimes lamented to an old family friend.

Even far right-wing hawk and Fox News analyst Ralph Peters took a jab at neoconservatives. “These are men for whom too much came too easily in life, so it was all too easy for them to view our troops as mere tools to implement their visions,” he said, adding that he doesn’t consider himself a neocon. “I served in the military, didn’t go to a prep school, didn’t go to an Ivy League university, and didn’t have a trust fund. And I’m physically fit.”

In Last-Ditch Effort To Derail Reform, Right Wing Calls Medicare Commission A ‘Death Panel’

Last Friday, Politifact declared that former Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s infamous claim that health care reform legislation included a “death panel” for “the sick, the elderly, and the disabled” is the “lie of the year.” Palin’s claim was widely interpreted to be about voluntary end-of-life counseling provisions in a version of the House’s health care bill that were not included in the Senate legislation because of the uproar caused by Palin’s lie.

But as passage of health care reform appears increasingly likely, right-wingers desperate to derail the legislation have christened the proposed Independent Medicare Advisory Board (IMAB) as the new “death panel.” The attack started after Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) complained on the Senate floor on Monday night about rules regarding IMAB. Red State’s Erick Erickson and the Weekly Standard’s John McCormack immediately labeled the provision as “making the death panels permanent.” After Bill Kristol and Rush Limbaugh joined in the fearmongering, Palin finally weighed in on her Facebook page last night:

Last weekend while you were preparing for the holidays with your family, Harry Reid’s Senate was making shady backroom deals to ram through the Democrat health care take-over. The Senate ended debate on this bill without even reading it. That and midnight weekend votes seem to be standard operating procedures in D.C. No one is certain of what’s in the bill, but Senator Jim DeMint spotted one shocking revelation regarding the section in the bill describing the Independent Medicare Advisory Board (now called the Independent Payment Advisory Board), which is a panel of bureaucrats charged with cutting health care costs on the backs of patients – also known as rationing. Apparently Reid and friends have changed the rules of the Senate so that the section of the bill dealing with this board can’t be repealed or amended without a 2/3 supermajority vote. [...]

In other words, Democrats are protecting this rationing “death panel” from future change with a procedural hurdle. You have to ask why they’re so concerned about protecting this particular provision. Could it be because bureaucratic rationing is one important way Democrats want to “bend the cost curve” and keep health care spending down?

Palin claimed that the IMAB provision vindicated her from the “lie of the year” designation, saying that efforts to reduce Medicare spending are “precisely what I meant when I used that metaphor.” But this isn’t true. When Palin defended her “death panel” claim on Facebook in August, she specifically cited “Advance Care Planning Consultation” in the House bill.

Additionally, as McCormack actually acknowledges, the Senate legislation specifically says that IMAB “shall not include any recommendation to ration health care, raise revenues or Medicare beneficiary premiums…increase Medicare beneficiary cost-sharing (including deductibles, coinsurance, and copayments), or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility standards.”

Kristol: Obama’s Nobel Speech ‘Lays The Predicate For The Legitimate Use Of Force’ Against Iran

Since President Obama delivered his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech last week, Bill Kristol has been arguing that it is somehow in-line with his neoconservative philosophy and that it vindicates President Bush’s “global war on terror” that he wholeheartedly supported.

Today on Fox News Sunday, Kristol continued with the theme, calling it “the most Bush-like speech of his presidency” and that it “articulated his own version of the pre-emptive doctrine.” Kristol later said that it actually lays the groundwork for a preemptive strike on Iran:

KRISTOL: There’s this one sentence, “There will be times when nations – acting individually or in concert – will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.”

That’s a pretty striking statement. I mean any American president should say that who’s looking at Iran developing nuclear weapons. I think he is, it’s not just that Israel might use preemptive force against Iran. This speech lays the predicate for a legitimate use of force to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons by the U.S.

Watch it:

The problem with Krisol’s logic is that Obama’s speech outright rejected the Bush approach:

I know that engagement with repressive regimes lacks the satisfying purity of indignation. But I also know that sanctions without outreach — and condemnation without discussion — can carry forward a crippling status quo. No repressive regime can move down a new path unless it has the choice of an open door.

“The satisfying purity of indignation,” as Matt Duss noted, is “a wonderfully succinct description of the simplistic and destructive ideology that drove George W. Bush’s foreign policy, and which Bill Kristol is still trying heartily to convince himself and others hasn’t been discredited.”

Noting that Kristol and his washed-up neocon gang are increasingly turning their sights on Iran, IPS News’s Jim Lobe reminds us that, just like with the Iraq war, consequences and reality have little bearing on this new push:

Kristol doesn’t ask what may be the impact on McChrystal’s efforts [in Afghanistan] of war with Iran. There’s every reason to believe, at least at this point, that the Pentagon is probably the national-security institution most adamantly opposed to an attack on Iran — be it by Israel or its own forces — precisely because it would greatly complicate Washington’s position throughout the region. But that’s not the point. Now that Obama is committed in Afghanistan, the neo-con priority moves to Iran, with urgency.

Kristol Urges No Trial For Hasan: ‘They Should Just Go Ahead And Convict Him And Put Him To Death’

Law enforcement officials announced yesterday that Maj. Nidal M. Hasan has been charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder in the brutal attacks at Fort Hood Army base. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that “the number one issue, I think right now, is that Major Hasan be brought to justice.”

Last night on Fox News, Bill Kristol called Napolitano’s comment “stupid” and stated outright that there should be no trial:

KRISTOL: I was very struck also by Janet Napolitano’s comment, I hadn’t read it before to see her say that, that the number one priority is to bring him to justice is such a knee-jerk comment and such a stupid comment. He’s going to be brought to justice. He is not going to be innocent of murder. There are a lot of eyewitnesses to that. They should just go ahead and convict him and put him to death.

Watch it:

Apparently, Kristol is not a huge believer in the Constitution, the Sixth Amendment of which states that “[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed.”

Hasan’s attorney, Col. John Galligan (Ret.), noted this fact when CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked how he could “represent someone accused of mass murder”:

GALLIGAN: I fully appreciate the importance of ensuring that everybody has a fair trial. I think that’s particularly important when it applies to anyone in uniform, officer or enlisted. Their profession is to defend us. We owe it to them as either fellow service members or as U.S. citizens to ensure that we properly defend them. The rights that I’m asking be accorded to Major Hasan are the rights that service members live and die for. Let’s just make sure we don’t deprive them in his case.

As Adam Serwer at TAPPED noted of those espousing Kristol’s view, “This is Salem Witch Trial justice: If the crime is heinous, the accused is automatically guilty. That the evidence may be overwhelming doesn’t matter: You don’t just ’skip’ a fair trial because you feel like it. There’s a word for systems of justice that selectively afford due process — that word is ‘corrupt.’”

Kristol Says He Helped Congressional GOP Formulate ‘The Best Arguments Against’ Health Care Reform

In Dec. 1993, Bill Kristol, a current Fox News contributor and the editor of the Weekly Standard, issued a now-infamous memo to Republican leaders, arguing that they should “defeat” President Clinton’s health care reform plan “outright” instead of negotiating a compromise. In later memos, Kristol counseled that Republicans should oppose reform “sight unseen” because “there is no health care crisis.” Kristol’s advice “animated” Republicans, who concluded “that all-out opposition to the Clinton plan” was “in their best political interest.”

Throughout this year’s debate over health care reform, Kristol has played a similar role, arguing in the media that Republicans should “kill” reform instead of trying to be “constructive.” In an interview on the Washington Times’ America’s Morning News radio show yesterday, Kristol revealed that he had met with some congressional Republicans on Wednesday night to devise strategy for defeating reform:

KRISTOL: Next week will really be a first crescendo in the big health care debate. And this dinner I was at last night was some Republican members, Senate and House, some staffers, some outside people, trying to think about how to, the best arguments against it and where the politics of this lies. She is really going for it. And I think the issue is Medicare. I mean this will be the largest package of Medicare cuts I think the Congress will ever have passed.

Later in the interview, Kristol distilled the conclusions from the strategy session with congressional Republicans, saying that citizens “need to go see their congressman and say ‘do not vote for this until either we have a chance to read it more carefully, but really more importantly just don’t vote for it because it’s going to cut my Medicare and raise my taxes.’” He echoes the same attack line in his Weekly Standard column today: “There will be no Republican votes for the Pelosi Plan of tax hikes and Medicare cuts. Will there be enough Democratic resistors so the bill is either withdrawn or defeated?.” Listen here:

For the past month, Fox has been claiming that it is not actually a “communications arm” for the Republicans. What do they think about one of their regular contributors advising Republicans on strategy behind closed doors? Will they disclose Kristol’s advisory role when he appears on the air?

Kristol: ‘Thank God Most Of The Workforce Isn’t Unionized’

Earlier this week, hate radio host Rush Limbaugh was dropped from an investor group that was trying to purchase NFL’s St. Louis Rams franchise. Limbaugh’s involvement with the group sparked a week of controversy due to his history of racially divisive commentary. African-American NFL players said they “wouldn’t play” for Limbaugh’s team while the head of the NFL’s players union said he opposed Limbaugh’s bid because sports are meant to reject “discrimination and hatred.”

On Fox News Sunday today, the “All-Stars” jumped to Limbaugh’s defense. NPR’s Juan Williams set up a false comparison, claiming that people don’t complain about MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann announcing football games even though he makes “divisive” statements about conservatives. The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol used the NFL player’s union’s opposition to Limbaugh to attack unions in general, saying “thank God most of the workforce isn’t unionized”:

KRISTOL: Thank God most of business isn’t a monopoly. Thank God most of the workforce isn’t unionized. Why could this happen? This could happen because all the NFL players are in one union. Because all the NFL owners are in one club and pressure can be put on them. Thank God there’s more diversity in this country in terms of different industries and different businesses. And people can be controversial and can still find places that are willing to have them.

Watch it:

Kristol’s attack on unionization ignores the fact that unions are good for the American economy since unions help workers secure higher wages and greater benefits. Additionally, the collective bargaining of unions give workers the ability to shape the conditions of their employment, as the NFL players union successfully demonstrated.

According to Dan Lebowitz, executive director of the Center for Sports and Society at Northeastern University, the NFL has 78 percent African-American players. Because the player’s union has leverage, that means the players won’t have to work for someone who said just two years ago, “the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it.”

Kristol Compares Obama’s Olympics Pitch To ‘George W. Bush-Like’ Bullying

Conservatives have been bashing President Obama for the past week over his decision to personally go to Copenhagen to boost America’s pitch for the 2016 Olympics. When the International Olympics Committee eliminated Chicago in the first round, those same conservatives were euphoric. Today on Fox News Sunday, Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard — whose headquarters erupted in “cheers” when America lost — said that Obama’s decision to go to Copenhagen was an example of George W. Bush-like bullying:

KRISTOL: Our economy doesn’t need the boost of the Olympics. And then an American president in sort of a George W. Bush-like way goes and tries to bully the International Olympic Committee. [...]

Come walk with us. I’m here for America. Can you imagine if some Republican — if Bush had done this and we hadn’t gotten it? Typical Bush heavy-handedness, cowboy unilateralist, hegemonic imperialist action. Obama falls into that trap and they went for it. I must say you couldn’t help be amused by it.

Watch it:

First of all, Kristol was a big fan of the Bush administration’s policies, so it’s not clear why he wouldn’t like Obama going to Copenhagen. But more importantly, Obama’s trip was not a “hegemonic imperialist action.” Brazil, Spain, and Japan — the other three 2016 finalists — all sent their country’s leaders to Copenhagen, as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow pointed out on NBC’s Meet the Press today. Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks said that he was proud Obama had “put his country ahead of his own personal prestige”:

MADDOW: In 2012, London got the Olympics after Blair tried for them. In 2014, Russia got them after Putin tried for them, and in 2016, all four finalists sent their head of government or head of state to make the argument. Obama did nothing unreasonable, and it would have been a shock if Chicago won. For them to be cheering America’s loss here on the right, I think is sort of disgusting. [...]

BROOKS: Nonetheless, I have to say, I’m with Obama on this. He took a risk, he comes away somewhat humiliated, but he took a risk for his town, he took a risk for his country, he put his country ahead of his own personal prestige, and he lost one. I actually don’t mind it. I think he was all right on this.

E.J. Dionne added that Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) presidential slogan was “Country First,” but “in this case, it was Obama-hatred first on the right, not the country.” Watch it:

The Reemergence Of Discredited Neocons: Right-Wing Conference To Advocate A Surge In Afghanistan

The Foreign Policy Initiative (aka “PNAC 2.0”), an organization which is headed by neoconservatives Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan, and Dan Senor, is holding a conference today and tomorrow on “Advancing & Defending Democracy.” FPI arose after its previous incarnation — the Project for a New American Century — suffered a massive blow to its credibility by staking its reputation on advocating for the “one of the worst foreign policy blunders in American history” — the Iraq war.

Kristol, Kagan, and Senor are now enthusiastically dedicating their efforts to building support for a U.S. troop surge in Afghanistan, calling such a strategy “politically smart for Republicans.” Kagan said recently that withdrawing from Afghanistan would be to “commit preemptive suicide.”

President Obama is thus far resisting the calls to rush more troops into Afghanistan. “I don’t want to put the resource question before the strategy question,” he said on CNN yesterday. “Because there is a natural inclination to say, if I get more, then I can do more. But right now, the question is, the first question is, are we doing the right thing? Are we pursuing the right strategy?” In a letter to Obama earlier this month, FPI made clear that the only “strategy” it’s interested in is escalation:

Since the announcement of your administration’s new strategy, we have been troubled by calls for a drawdown of American forces in Afghanistan and a growing sense of defeatism about the war. … There is no middle course. Incrementally committing fewer troops than required would be a grave mistake and may well lead to American defeat. We will not support half-measures that repeat the errors of the past.

Of course, no one knows more about repeating “errors of the past” than Bill Kristol. At its conference this week, FPI has two separate panels on Afghanistan. The right-wing organization is not hosting a single Democratic elected official (though Rep. Jane Harman did participate in its last event on Afghanistan in March). Instead, the conference is marked by the presence of right-wing luminaries, such as Sen. Jon Kyl, former Gov. Mitt Romney, Elliott Abrams, and Newt Gingrich. Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt is moderating a panel, while Michael O’Hanlon and Ken Pollack from the Brookings Institution are also participating. Finally, the conference will fittingly wrap up tomorrow with “A Conversation with John McCain.”

Matt Yglesias writes that the Obama administration needs to “reject the kind of discredited neocon logic that says the only way to deal with the problem of the moment is with maximum force.” He adds, “the situation in Afghanistan has gotten as bad as it has in large part precisely as a result of the last administration listening to the counsel of people like McCain.”

Bill Kristol And Dennis Miller Think That Conservatives Should ‘Plant A Flag On The Phrase Progressive’ »

While interviewing Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol on his radio show yesterday, Dennis Miller suggested that conservatives ought to consider commandeering the term “progressive” for their cause. “If I was Republicans right now or conservatives, whatever way you want to look at it — I would plant a flag on the phrase progressive,” said Miller.

Miller claimed that “liberals are trying to co-opt” the term, but they haven’t “completely commandeered it” yet, so conservatives should “start claiming progressivism on the right too.” Kristol agreed, citing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s frequent use of the phrase, “progressing Alaska forward”:

KRISTOL: And I agree with you. What’s progressive about heaping tax burdens and energy costs burdens on working class and middle class people in a tough economic time? I mean, who’s really for progress? People make fun of Sarah Palin, her grammar’s not so good some times and she’s always talking about “progressing Alaska forward.” It’s not a verb I usually use, but maybe she’s on to something in the notion that conservatives should not give up the notion that they’re the progressive force now in American politics.

Listen here:

Kristol and Miller’s musing about co-opting progressivism for the conservative movement will likely shock right wingers like Glenn Beck, who have sought to demonize the term. “I’ve been saying now for awhile, and it really has clicked in my mind, um, that it is the progressive movement, it is the cancer that is inside both parties,” said Beck last month. Citing the lessons he learned from Jonah Goldberg’s book, Liberal Fascism, Beck is convinced that “progressivism” is the true insidious force threatening America:

BECK: We’ll come back with Jonah Goldberg. I want to make something real clear, though. It wasn’t just — don’t think that this is a Barack Obama or a Democrat-bashing thing. Because it’s not. Compassionate conservativism is the same thing. Progressivism is in both parties, and that is the cancer that you need to educate yourself on and know what it is so you can fight it and irradiate it. It is — and you can find the beginnings of it. A great place to start is a book, it’s just come out in paperback I think tomorrow, or maybe it was out last week. Jonah Goldberg’s book, Liberal Fascism.

But Miller, who raised the idea of re-branding conservatives as progressives, might not mind that his idea tramples on Beck’s paranoid shtick. Miller has mocked Beck as “a shaky cat” who “makes Howard Beale look like John Wayne.”

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