Ads 468x60px

Monday 20 January 2014

Christie speaks, and looks for lessons

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie speaks to media and homeowners about the ongoing recovery from Hurricane Sandy in Manahawkin, New Jersey
“I will learn things from this,” Chris Christie told me last Friday, a little more than a week after he gave the News Conference to End All News Conferences, and a few days after the cable channels covered his annual address to the legislature in Trenton as if it were Nixon waving from the helicopter. “I know I will. I don’t know exactly what it is yet that I’ll learn from it. But when I get the whole story and really try to understand what’s going on here, I know I’m going to learn things.”

We were sitting in a conference room at a training center for high-tech jobs in Camden, down the street from where Christie had just sworn in a Supreme Court justice. This was his first interview since he had publicly declared himself “embarrassed and humiliated” by the disclosure that his aides had conspired to snarl traffic on the George Washington Bridge, and Christie, who fiddled with a half-eaten pack of vending-machine muffins, seemed more subdued than usual. He described his state of mind, after hearing about the incriminating e-mails from one of his closest aides, as “completely disorienting, like I got hit across the forehead with a 2x4.” 

He said he hadn’t watched the song parody that his hero Bruce Springsteen and Jimmy Fallon threw together (singing “Governor Chris Christie Fort Lee, New Jersey traffic jam” in the place of “tramps like us, baby we were born to run”). But he’d gotten a direct message on Twitter from Fallon assuring him it was all in good fun, and his oldest son told him, “It’s actually kind of cool to have Bruce saying your name.” Christie said he wasn’t angry about it.

In fact, Christie went out of his way several times to assure me he was not angry and was not an angry person, even though I hadn’t suggested he was. “It doesn’t mean I don’t get angry – everybody gets angry,” he said. “But they confuse sometimes, if you’re blunt and you’re direct and you just say things the way you see them, that that’s anger. More times than not it’s not anger with me. It’s just my personality.

“So I’m going to learn from this,” he went on. “I can’t tell you yet what it is I’m going to learn. But I am intent on learning from this.”

Christie’s gleeful critics – they are legion, and they are fierce – would suggest that the only lesson in all of this for Christie is that he is a bad governor (and probably a bad person, too), and that that the full truth of his involvement is yet to be known. His backers would tell you (as they told The New York Times Sunday) that Christie just has to be less loyal to longtime aides who do shady business in his name. 

But if we’re going to be more thoughtful about it, this question of what exactly Christie should take away from this scandal – assuming, for the moment, that he’s being truthful when he says he knew nothing about it – is a little more complex.

The revelations about traffic inconveniences came at a particularly inconvenient time for Christie. This month, he took over as chairman of the Republican Governors Association, making him the face of what has traditionally been an influential leadership bloc in the party. Christie had planned to use his State of the State address last week, and the inaugural speech he will give Tuesday, to preview the message that he thinks could make him a top-tier contender for the Republican nomination in 2016.

That message is all about finding bipartisan solutions, in contrast to the intransigence in Washington. “We cannot fall victim to the attitude of Washington, D.C, the attitude that says I am always right and you are always wrong,” Christie plans to tell his inaugural audience. “The attitude that puts everyone into a box they are not permitted to leave. The attitude that puts political wins ahead of policy agreements. The belief that compromise is a dirty word.”

Christie, who talked about fostering an “attitude of choice” in his State of the State Address last week, told me he had the same message for his fellow Republicans nationally. “You can make a choice to be just rhetorical, to say this is my position and this is my line in the sand and all the rest of that stuff, and be damned to whether that gets governance done or not,” he said. “Or you can say all that stuff, but also say in the back of my mind there’s going to be a place where I can reach accommodation. I’m asking them to choose to govern.”

Christie’s detractors see this version of bipartisanship as a sham, perpetrated by a handful of Democrats who have allowed themselves to be intimidated. But the record in New Jersey, which has long been one of the most recklessly governed states in the country, would indicate there’s more to it than that. During Christie’s first term, he and New Jersey’s mostly Democratic legislature managed to reform the system for financing public pensions, cap growth in property taxes and extend in-state college tuition to the children of undocumented immigrants, even as they worked together – mostly, anyway – to blunt the effects of a killer hurricane. There aren’t many governors in America who wouldn’t trade for those talking points.

Christie’s strategy has been remarkably consistent, and more sophisticated than it might seem to the casual observer. He is a public bully and a private dealmaker, a guy who bludgeons his opponents into as weak a bargaining position as he can before staking out his own compromise behind closed doors. It’s good theater, followed often, though not always, by good policy.

Someone should probably write a book about Christie’s tumultuous, almost sibling-like relationship with the powerful president of the New Jersey Senate, Stephen Sweeney, a labor Democrat who has called the governor a “punk” and threatened to hit him – and that was just in one week. In the end, the two men, similar in temperament, have repeatedly returned to Christie’s conference table and forged one of the more functional political partnerships anywhere. 

“Part of politics is trying to have sharp elbows publicly in order to make a deal privately,” Christie told me. “And if you don’t have the willingness and ability to do that, then the opportunity to make deals privately that benefit the public become much more difficult in my view, and in my experience.”

Here’s the problem, though: even if Christie is as shocked by the revelations as he says, what Fort Lee made clear is that, after four years of this, all those public “sharp elbows” have begun to overtake the private pragmatism. After the viral videos of Christie dressing down constituents and the insults casually tossed around like Frisbees on the shore, it’s apparently gotten hard for Christie’s own aides and allies (some of whom, it seems, aren’t quite as bright as the governor to begin with) to discern where the theatrics leave off and the governance begins.

The bridge fiasco, featuring that horrendous e-mail in which a Christie ally mocked the bus-riding children of Democratic voters, is an extreme case. But now you have the Democratic mayor of Hoboken saying Christie’s lieutenant governor threatened to pull back hurricane relief to force her hand on a real estate development. And you can bet there will be more stories like this in the weeks ahead, stories of aides who thought they were channeling the boss, because their concept of the boss, more and more, resembles Tony Soprano.

In politics, as in life, your greatest strengths almost always become, eventually, your most glaring weaknesses. Think of Christie’s pal Rudy Giuliani, who managed to clean up the streets of New York by leaning on his cops, and then leaned so hard and so long that eventually a lot of non-white New Yorkers were afraid of their own police force. Or Barack Obama, who’s cool, “no-drama” demeanor was considered a major asset until congressmen started complaining he wasn’t passionate or needy enough. 

“I think I’m a fairly good politician,” Christie told me, in defense of his rhetorical style. But the best at his craft learn, sooner or later, to rein in and recalibrate the things that work for them, especially if they entertain thoughts of the White House. “I think it is most likely that the next Republican nominee for president will be a governor,” Christie told me. I reminded him that in 2011 he had told me he didn’t feel ready to be president, and asked about now. “Yeah. I’m readier, if that’s a word,” Christie said. 

It is. And the experience of the past few weeks may help to make him readier still, but only if the worst revelations are now behind him, and only if he takes the deeper lesson from them. Only if he figures out some way to preserve the blunt persona that got him here, without letting that persona overwhelm the political philosophy that underlies his accomplishments.

On Friday, Christie didn’t sound like a guy who intended to revisit his style. “I’m not growing a new personality at 51,” he said. I reminded him that politicians do it all the time. “Not me, man,” he laughed. “This is it. I like who I am.”

But Christie admitted the public pummeling had seared him. “I don’t think anybody knows what it feels like to have the kind of attention that I’ve had in the last nine days until you go through it,” he said near the end of our interview, sounding spent. “It’s awful. Listen, it’s awful. I can explain to you as vividly as you like, but you won’t get it.

“I’m trying to get my arms around an awful situation,” he sighed, “and understand it, and then address it, and then resolve it.” 

Chris Christie vows he’ll learn something. And then the rest of us will learn something about whether he’s a great politician, or just a fairly good one.



Syria's Assad: Tough to explain war to my children


A picture by the opposition Local coordination Committees in Syria (LCC) purportedly shows people standing around a mass grave in the town of Taftnaz, on April 5, 2012
Damascus - Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, whose regime has been locked in a bloody war for nearly three years, in an exclusive interview he finds it hard to explain the conflict to his children.


Speaking from the plush surroundings of his presidential palace in Damascus, the Syrian leader appeared at ease, smiling as he spoke.
He said he neither lived nor worked in the vast palace, finding it too large, and preferred to be at his office elsewhere in town, or at home.
"There are a few things that haven't changed," he said, when asked how the brutal conflict has changed his daily life.
"I go to work as usual and we live in the same house as before, and the children go to school. These things haven't changed," he said in the interview conducted on Sunday.
But he acknowledged that the war had intruded on his family's life in some ways, adding that "children are affected more deeply than adults in these circumstances".
"There are questions put to you by children about the causes of what's happening, that you don't usually deal with in normal circumstances," said Assad, a father of three.
"Why are there such evil people? Why are there victims? It's not easy to explain these things to children, but they remain persistent daily questions and a subject of discussion in every family, including my own."
He said the war, which has killed more than 130,000 people according to one NGO's tally, had forced children to "grow up too early and mature much faster".
And he added that sadness "lives with us every day, all the time, because of what we see and experience, because of the pain, because of the fallen victims everywhere and the destruction of the infrastructure and the economy".
"This has affected every family in Syria, including my own," he said.
Assad's wife Asma was raised in London, where her parents still live, and there have been occasional rumours that she has fled Damascus for Britain.
Assad said he had never considered leaving the country throughout the conflict.

Malaysia's God problem erupts, tarnishing moderate image


A priest and altar boys walk down the aisle after prayers were conducted during a mass service inside the church of Our Lady of Lourdes at Klang, outside Kuala Lumpur
KUALA LUMPUR - The Sunday Mass at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic church seems like a model for the multicultural, tolerant Malaysia that its government likes to present to the outside world.
An ethnic Chinese priest conducts the service in the Malay language to a congregation made up of migrants from the country's eastern Borneo island states along with a handful of Vietnamese immigrants.
But it takes only a few minutes for the worshippers to utter the Malay and Arabic word for God that has become a festering source of contention in the Muslim-majority country, deepening ethnic divisions and tarnishing its moderate image.
"We believe in Allah, the father almighty, creator of heaven and earth," the 300 or so faithful chant.
A long tussle over who can say "Allah" in Malaysia has flared anew, as Islamization that many see as driven by political forces threatens to erode the secular constitution and minority rights in the ethnically diverse country following a divisive election last year.
A court ruling last October in favor of the government's case that Allah is exclusive to Muslims was followed this month by the seizure of more than 300 Malay-language Bibles by Islamic authorities using a little-known state law.
Lawyers say the row now threatens to become a constitutional crisis as the federal charter's guarantee of religious freedom is challenged by more assertive enforcement of little-used state laws and decrees by Malaysia's royal sultans - who have the authority to appoint clerics and instruct religious police.
The crisis appeared to deepen on Sunday when Malaysia's king, regarded as the defender of the Islamic faith, gave his backing to the October court ruling, the first time the largely ceremonial head of state has weighed in on the issue.
Malaysian police have recommended prominent Catholic priest Lawrence Andrew be charged with sedition for saying churches would keep saying Allah in Selangor, Malaysia's most populous and richest state which neighbors the capital Kuala Lumpur.
The tussle over the right to use the word is uniquely Malaysian, bemusing many religious scholars even in countries with a reputation for much stricter Islam.
"When I go through Facebook you can see people are saying Malaysia is being such a funny country, we have become the laughter of the world," said Richenda Raphael, a 25-year-old worshipper at the Catholic Mass.
"In Saudi Arabia all people can use the Allah word, but here we can't. We should stop this," said Raphael, who moved to Kuala Lumpur from the Borneo state of Sabah five years ago.
The latest bout of tension, and confusion, over the word was triggered by a court ruling in October that Andrew's Catholic newspaper could not use Allah because it was not "an integral part of the faith in Christianity". A federal court will hear an appeal by the Catholic Church in March.
Government ministers have said the word could still be used in eastern Sabah and Sarawak states, where most of Malaysia's Christians live, but the ruling has left doubt over whether it can be used in the peninsula, to where many Christians have migrated. Christians make up about 9 percent of Malaysia's 29 million people.
The unprecedented raid to confiscate Bbibles this month was based on a 1988 state law in Selangor that restricts more than 30 Arabic words and phrases to Muslims.
MIXING POLITICS AND RELIGION
Those who support Muslims' exclusive right to the word have justified it by saying that its use by Christians could confuse Muslims and be used to convert them to Christianity.
At one of a series of public events to defend the ban in Selangor state, Islamic and ruling party officials said Andrew had inflamed the issue and flouted state law with his comment that Christians would keep saying Allah. An effigy of the priest was reportedly burned at a recent protest by Muslims.
"It is part and parcel of the uniqueness of Malaysia," said Hamidzun Khairuddin, a 47-year-old Muslim resident who came to watch the sparsely attended event by the side of a football field. "Everybody has to respect other religions."
A large number of Islamic scholars say Allah is not exclusive to Muslims. Many have noted that Allah is not a name, with a literal meaning in Arabic of "the God". The term predates the founding of Islam and the Quran does not prohibit other religions from using it.
Critics say Prime Minister Najib Razak's government, which is under pressure over a jump in living costs as it cuts fuel and food subsidies, has given confusing signals on the issue and at worst encouraged conservative Islamist elements within the long-ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO).
The government has tilted away from liberal reforms and catered more to UMNO and Islamic traditionalists since last May's unconvincing election win, in which ethnic Chinese voters and many urban Malays deserted the long-ruling coalition.
While promoting his anti-extremist Global Movement of Moderates on foreign trips, at home Najib has allowed senior party members and ministers to sharply raise their rhetoric against perceived threats to mainstream Islam. The interior ministry this month banned a prominent civil society group, partly because some of its members were deemed un-Islamic.
"They have totally abdicated their responsibility to provide leadership at a time of crisis," said Andrew Khoo, co-chairman of the Malaysian Bar Council's Human Rights Committee.
"Malaysia's international reputation must be suffering as a result of this."
Najib - whose cabinet endorsed a 10-point plan in 2011 that allowed the importation and publication of Bibles in Malay - has not mentioned that agreement, calling for the dispute to be settled using "the rule of law and dialogue as well as mutual respect". The plan was announced after arsonists firebombed several churches in 2010 over an initial ruling that allowed the Catholic newspaper to use the Arabic word.
The three-party opposition has also not made a united condemnation of the January 2 seizure of Bibles from a Christian group.
That reflects the political risks of appearing not to defend Islam. A survey by the University of Malaya found that 77 percent of Malays, who are Muslim and make up about 60 percent of the population, felt Allah should not be used by other religions.
"It's a collective failure of the whole system of maintaining balance and good sense between the different races and religious groups," said Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid, associate professor of political science at Universiti Sains Malaysia.
That has left Christian worshippers in Selangor and other states in limbo over what they see as an integral part of their faith. The worshippers at Our Lady of Lourdes church said the word had been second nature to them and their only way to refer to God since their childhoods in Borneo.
"I don't like the Malaysian system where politics is mixed with the religious because these are two different things and very sensitive," said Frendie Aloysius, a 29-year-old customs officer, after attending Mass.

Ukraine protesters, police in tense standoff after clashes


A protester throws a stone towards a burning police bus in front of him, during clashes with police, in central Kiev, Ukraine, Sunday, Jan. 19, 2014. Hundreds of protesters on Sunday clashed with riot police in the center of the Ukrainian capital, after the passage of harsh anti-protest legislation last week seen as part of attempts to quash anti-government demonstrations. The violent scenes further escalated this ex-Soviet republic?s political crisis and showed a rift among opposition leaders, one of whom fought bravely to stop the violence, while others condemned the events from afar. (AP Photo/Evgeny Feldman)
Kiev - Opposition protesters were Monday locked in a tense standoff with Ukrainian security forces in Kiev after hours of unprecedented clashes deep into the night left dozens wounded and parts of the centre resembling a battlefield.


The clashes, the worst in Kiev in recent times, came amid mounting anger over new restrictions on protests ordered by President Viktor Yanukovych after almost two months of protests over his refusal to sign a pact for integration with the EU.
A special commission set up by Yanukovych was due Monday to meet representatives of the opposition for emergency talks but it was unclear if this could in any way help ease the crisis.
In near apocalyptic scenes close to parliament, several police buses and vehicles were torched by the protesters who hurled stones and Molotov cocktails at the ranks of the security forces. Police responded with tear gas, stun grenades, rubber bullets and water cannon.
The White House urged an end to the violence, with US National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden saying that Washington was deeply concerned and urging "all sides to immediately de-escalate the situation".
The spokeswoman warned that Washington was still considering sanctions against Ukrainian officials, a step urged by the Ukrainian opposition. "The US will continue to consider additional steps -- including sanctions -- in response to the use of violence."
After intense clashes continued into the early hours of Monday morning, the situation was calmer at 0700 GMT but hundreds of protesters who had spent the night in temperatures of minus 10 degrees Celsius were still out on the streets.
However the situation remained tense with protesters launching occasional sorties at the police line to throw stones or Molotov cocktails.

Police use water cannon, fire rubber bullets

After a peaceful mass rally in the afternoon, hundreds of demonstrators sought to storm police cordons near the Verkhovna Rada parliament and close to the stadium of the legendary Dynamo Kiev football club in central Kiev, witnesses and AFP correspondents said.
In the most violent scenes since the start of the protests in November, demonstrators set five buses and two trucks on fire while the air filled with the stench of tear gas.
Their faces covered by scarves or ski masks, many of the protesters wielded sticks or even chains. Later in the night, they began to dig the cobble stones out of the road to hurl at police and use as barricades.
The security forces made extensive use of water cannon in a bid to douse the protesters and push them back and used rubber bullets which activists said left dozens injured.
Ukrainian opposition television broadcast pictures of two young men who it said were stripped naked by the security forces and then peppered with rubber bullets.
Health officials said 24 people were injured and three were hospitalised, while police said more than 70 officers had been hurt. The interior ministry said 20 people had been arrested for mass rioting.
Opposition leaders, including former boxing champion Vitali Klitschko and Arseniy Yatsenyuk, called on the protesters to refrain from using force but their calls were ignored.
It was not clear who was behind the clashes with police, which appeared to have been a well-organised move. Ukrainian media linked the action to a hitherto little-known right-wing youth group called "Right Sector".
Amid the chaos of the clashes, Klitschko was sprayed with powder from a fire extinguisher, leaving his eyes irritated and face and clothes covered in white powder.
Special commission to meet opposition

In an apparent attempt to find a compromise, Klitschko travelled to the president's luxurious Mezhygirya residence outside Kiev to meet Yanukovych in person.
The president received Klitschko and promised early Monday to create a special commission of officials set up by national security council secretary Andriy Klyuyev to solve the crisis, the boxer's party and the presidency announced. The presidency said the new commission would meet the opposition on Monday.
Klitschko told online television channel Hromadske TV that the president had appeared "very concerned" by the latest events but also pointedly ignored the opposition's main demand for early elections.
In the afternoon, some 200,000 people had filled Kiev's Independence Square and surrounding streets for a new mass rally in defiance of new strict curbs on protests passed by lawmakers in a show of hands last week and signed into law by Yanukovych.
The new laws allow the authorities to jail those who blockade public buildings for up to five years and permit the arrest of protesters who wear masks or helmets. Other provisions ban the dissemination of "slander" on the Internet.
Protesters expressed frustration at the rally over the lack of a clear programme from the opposition leaders after almost two months of protests, whistling and heckling the opposition leaders during the main rally for their perceived inability to mount a stronger challenge.
Yanukovych's arch nemesis Yulia Tymoshenko remains in jail, while the protest leadership appears riven by rivalries ahead of presidential election next year.

Syria opposition threatens talks boycott over Iran invite


UNITED NATIONS (United States)  - A furious Syrian opposition threatened Monday to pull out of this week's peace conference and the United States issued a warning after the United Nations invited Iran to the talks.

But the Syrian National Coalition promptly said it would withdraw from the negotiations unless the invitation to Iran -- a key backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad -- was retracted.UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said he made the late invitation to the talks in Switzerland from Wednesday after Tehran pledged to play a "positive and constructive role" in efforts to end Syria's worsening three-year civil war.
And the United States also weighed in, urging Iran to back calls for a transitional government in Syria or lose the invitation.
If Iran does go, there will be 40 countries and a group of regional bodies at the opening meeting, which will be the most intensive diplomatic effort yet to end a war that the UN says has left well over 100,000 dead.
Talks between Assad's government and the opposition are due to start in Geneva on Friday.
Ban told a news conference he extended a late invitation to Tehran after intense talks over two days with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
"Foreign Minister Zarif and I agree that the goal of the negotiations is to establish, by mutual consent, a transitional governing body with full executive powers," Ban told reporters.
"He assured me again and again that Iran, if they are invited, then they will play a very positive and constructive role," the UN secretary-general added.
But Louay Safi, spokesman for the Syrian National Coalition, which only decided on Saturday to attend the conference, announced on the group's Twitter account that the opposition would withdraw "unless Ban Ki-moon retracts Iran's invitation".
The threat came only hours after international leaders had hailed the coalition's decision to take part in negotiations.
The United States and other Western powers had opposed Iran's attendance at the meeting as long as it refused to accept a communique adopted by the major powers in Geneva on June 30, 2012, calling for a transitional government in Syria.
Washington made a new call for a clear signal from Tehran, a financial and military supporter of Assad, that it back efforts to set up a transitional government.
"The United States views the UN secretary-general's invitation to Iran to attend the upcoming Geneva conference as conditioned on Iran's explicit and public support for the full implementation of the Geneva communique," US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement.
"This is something Iran has never done publicly and something we have long made clear is required."
Up until Ban's announcement on Sunday, Iran had only said it would go to the peace talks if there was an invitation without conditions.
Ban, who had joined Russia in supporting Tehran's presence, said he expected some kind of statement by the Iranian government.
"I believe strongly that Iran needs to be part of the solution to the Syrian crisis," he said.
Ban said that, as host of the peace conference, he also extended last-minute invitations to Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Greece, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, South Korea and the Vatican.
He said the additional countries would be "an important and useful show of solidarity in advance of the hard work that the Syrian government and opposition delegations will begin".
'This violence must stop'
The United States and Russia played key roles convincing the opposition and Assad to send delegations to the conference, which has been pushed back several times.
They will attend alongside the other permanent members of the UN Security Council -- China, Britain and France -- and additional countries suffering fallout from the war, including Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon.
Ban said it was vital for the ministers at the meeting to urge the Syrian protagonists "to act and negotiate in good faith for their own future".
"This violence must stop for humanity and for the future of Syrians," said the head of the United Nations, which has launched its biggest ever operation to help refugees from the conflict and millions inside Syria who have been left homeless and without food.
More than 2.3 million people have fled the country and some 6.5 million are displaced inside Syria.
At least 30 people died there in violence Sunday, including 15 killed when government planes dropped barrel bombs on rebel zones in the northern province of Aleppo, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Thursday 9 January 2014

Why Republicans are going on offense about poverty


Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a Cuban-American, speaks about the “American dream” on the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s first State of the Union address in 1964, where LBJ committed the government to a war on poverty, Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2014, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Rubio’s speech was hosted by the conservative American Enterprise Institute. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
After years of emphasizing austerity, Republicans are leaping to discuss ways the government can help alleviate poverty. The apparent shift in emphasis has a convenient hook — this week marked the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty" — but there is another, more pressing, political reason for the interest in the topic on the right.
Congressional Democrats are preparing an intense campaign to highlight wage inequality and solutions to ease the effects of the Great Recession. The Senate this week approved a procedural motion to open debate on extending unemployment insurance, but most Republicans voted against it because the cost was not offset elsewhere in the budget. The chamber intends to hold another vote to increase the minimum wage next month, two senior Democratic Senate aides told Yahoo News. Democrats know Republicans will resist. Sensing a wedge issue they can win on in an election year, Democrats intend to  bludgeon them as out of touch and uncompassionate.  
Republicans know this is coming, and they don't want to be caught flat-footed and portrayed again as merely the “Party of No.” So they're going on the offensive. 
In back-to-back speeches in Washington on Wednesday, House Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor argued for giving state and local governments more control over education dollars; and Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio called for dismantling federal programs aimed at reducing poverty by turning money over to states. Next week, Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan will speak about his own poverty initiatives at a Brookings Institution summit. Late last year, Republican Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah outlined other proposals to increase upward mobility among the working class. 
Combined, their efforts give Republicans a platform in the inevitable debates over income inequality and poverty. But it will be difficult for them to change their image overnight. In many ways, the party remains haunted by the still-lingering shadow of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who had particular trouble discussing issues of poverty. On the campaign trail in 2012, Republicans collectively winced when Romney said he wasn’t “concerned about the very poor,” for instance, wording he surely regretted later. His belief that he could “never convince” Americans who receive government assistance that “they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives," was a seriously injurious unforced error.
Of course, other Republicans deserve share of the blame as well. Since President Barack Obama took office in 2009, Republicans have focused on restraining the president's liberal ambitions and adopted policies of austerity. From the repeated approval of welfare-cutting budgets written by Ryan to votes to eliminate entire programs, the Republicans' intended message of economic growth has been clouded by their tea party-driven calls for cuts.

On the messaging front, the party has spent much of 2013 working to repair the damage to the GOP brand caused by comments like Romney's. Since the election, lawmakers in the party have worked to refine the way they speak about issues and have worked to craft a series of policies built around an anti-poverty agenda.

In his speech Wednesday, Cantor promoted school choice programs and went as far as to call on the Senate to adopt a bill called the “Student Success Act,” which passed the House last year and is intended to make it easier for students to leave failing public schools. The bill is part of a larger "Making Life Work" initiative he rolled out last February.

“For many families, living in poverty spans generations. Parents and grandparents struggled to realize the American dream. School choice is the surest way to break this vicious cycle of poverty, and we must act fast before it is too late for too many,” Cantor said.

Rubio delivered his remarks on Capitol Hill right after Cantor, explaining a proposal that would transfer money spent on federal anti-poverty programs to the states through a system of grants, allowing state governments to tailor them to the needs of each region. During his speech, Rubio criticized proposals to raise the minimum wage as not addressing the root causes of poverty.

“Our current government programs at best offer only a partial solution. They help people deal with poverty, but they do not help people emerge from poverty,” Rubio said. The only solution that will achieve meaningful and lasting results is to provide those who are stuck in low paying jobs the real opportunity to move up to better paying jobs. And to do this we have to focus on policies that help our economy create those jobs and that help people overcome the obstacles between them and those jobs. The War on Poverty accomplished neither of these two things.

In a speech last month in Detroit on similar themes, Paul called for creating “economic freedom zones” to spur economic development in the struggling city and Lee outlined a series of conservative reforms he argued would help alleviate poverty and promote upward mobility.

Despite these efforts, Democrats clearly still feel confident enough that Republicans will struggle when discussing these issues, and that they can put points on the board by keeping the debate alive.

Popular Posts

Recent Posts

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...