I think we’re beginning to see the end result of the formation of the echo chamber of the extreme right. One data point is just a data point, but now a second data point is beginning to form, and I’ll call it a theme. The first data point? GOP shock and bewilderment that constituents like the health care benefits of the ACA and allied programs. Some GOP lawmakers have had the courage to try to weather the storm, such as Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas:
Cotton paused the event at that comment to make clear he was not trying to accuse vocal critics at the event of being illegitimate or paid, as Trump and Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz have done.
“I don’t care if anybody here is paid or not. You’re all Arkansans,” Cotton said. “Thank you for everyone coming out.”
As the event continued, dozens of people lined up at microphones to ask questions. Cotton ultimately extended the event by about 30 minutes while questions ranged from accountability for Trump, Obamacare, the refugee program, Trump’s proposed border wall and many other policy areas. [CNN]
Plaudits to Senator Cotton. Working along the spectrum, we find Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, who couldn’t withstand the cognitive dissonance of discovering what her handlers have to say vs what her actual constituents have to say:
Fielding questions from her constituents for a whole 45 minutes wore down Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) on Tuesday, causing her to flee and the audience to roar.
Ernst was in the tiny town of Maquoketa, population 6,062, for a roundtable with veterans. When she arrived at city hall, slipping through a side door, she found 100 people crammed inside the room, CNN reports, with dozens more filling the hallways and atrium. The microphone being used by constituents repeatedly cut in and out, frustrating people in the room who couldn’t hear what was being said, and Ernst only took one question from a non-veteran, a man who asked her about the Affordable Care Act. When she uttered the words “health savings accounts,” Ernst was met with a chorus of boos.
The meeting came to a jarring end after only 45 minutes, despite a long line of people waiting at the microphone to ask more questions, causing the crowd to boo and jeer. [The Week]
While Senator Ernst appears to have a weak stomach for dissent, or too much appetite for ideology, Representative Gohmert of one of the reddest districts of Texas is a shivering coward on the subject:
Former Rep. Gabby Giffords of Arizona urged members of Congress to host town hall meetings after Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert citing her shooting as a reason he was not going to schedule one.
“To the politicians who have abandoned their civic obligations, I say this: Have some courage,” Giffords said in a statement. “Face your constituents. Hold town halls.” [Politico]
These and many other GOP lawmakers are facing crowds critical of decisions to repeal and (maybe) replace the ACA. This suggests a behavior with anti-survival characteristics – believing what you want to believe is true, rather than what is true on the ground. So what’s this second data point now forming? Steve Benen points me to it: NRA President (and immortal vampire) Wayne LaPierre’s remarks at CPAC:
“Right now, we face a gathering of forces that are willing to use violence against us,” he said. “The leftist movement in this country right now is enraged. Among them and behind them are the most radical political elements there are: Anarchists, marxists, communists and the left of the—the rest of the left-wing socialist parade. They hate everything America stands for: Democracy, free market capitalism, representative government, individual freedom. They want to tear down our system and replace it with their collectivist top-down global-government-knows-best-utopia.”
LaPierre claimed that billionaire George Soros is paying protesters, that crime is on the rise, that gangs are infiltrating the military and law enforcement and that the media “theorized” Trump would be assassinated before Inauguration Day.
LaPierre wrapped up by attacking the media and insinuating violence against the “violent left” if it brings “terror” to communities. [Talking Points Memo]
LaPierrre has manipulated the membership of the NRA through fear for years, transforming it from a respectable organization in my youth into something a lot of non-shooters just shake their heads at and wonder. I am not a shooter myself, but in my younger days I took Dr. John Lott’s research on the detrimental effects of gun control on public safety quite seriously; I have not kept up with that controversy, and a quick Google search seems to indicate it keeps bubbling on.
But back to my point: LaPierre even had the gall to make this statement last year, as Media Matter notes and fact checks:
The leader of the National Rifle Association insisted he wasn’t “crazy,” “paranoid,” or “nuts” before ranting to NRA members in an “urgent” video message where he made claims at odds with reality, including claiming that his widely ridiculed prediction that President Obama would come for Americans’ guns “came true.”
During a six-minute get out the vote video, NRA executive vice president and CEO Wayne LaPierre described America after eight years of Obama as president in hellish terms unrecognizable to anyone who actually lives here, claiming that the president has “laid waste to the America we remember” causing the country to “completely unravel.”
After describing a calamitous America, LaPierre claimed, “I told you exactly what [Obama] would do. The media said I was nuts. But in the end, America knows I was right.” You decide whether LaPierre was right:
LaPierre said his prediction that Obama “would come for our guns and do everything in his power to sabotage the Second Amendment” “came true” following the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre, when Obama “exploited a horrible tragedy to launch a blizzard of gun bans, magazine restrictions, and gun registration schemes against law abiding gun owners all across the country.” (Nothing proposed by Obama would have violated the Second Amendment as understood in the Antonin Scalia-authored Supreme Court decision District of Columbia v. Heller. The background check bill that was voted on in the Senate after the massacre specifically prohibited the creation of registries.)
And etc. Quite a list of things that I don’t recall ever happening. So we see in the earlier statement an attempt to keep up the bubble from which he profits; when Trump was elected, he was faced with an unexpected problem – how to retain his power when the Big Bad Federal Government Controlled by Liberals …. isn’t. So we get the beginning of a theme – let’s only talk among ourselves, construct our own reality, and if that benefits me, why, it keeps us all safe, doesn’t it? But you have to wonder how many members are sticking around. Sure, those who only get their news from NRA publications will stick – their information environment is too heavily skewed to expect any other behavior. But what about everyone else? Turns out it’s hard to say, as the NRA numbers are confidential. Here’s The Trace on the subject:
The precise size of NRA’s membership — the core of the group’s perceived political muscle — has long been a mystery. In January 2013, Executive Vice President and CEO Wayne LaPierre boasted before Congress that he served 4.5 million members. Speaking at an NRA convention a few months later, he upped that figure to 5 million. On January 5, in a statement responding to President Barack Obama’s executive actions on guns, the group described itself as “more than 5 million members strong.”
But the truth of those numbers is a matter of debate — the NRA has never allowed an outside party to authenticate its membership, and independent estimates predict a much smaller number. Circulation audits of American Rifleman and other NRA-published magazines that are sent to every member come in at around 3 million. One former board member told the Washington Post in 1998 that when the NRA counts its size, it includes many deceased lifetime members.
So, talk to yourselves, not to anyone outside the tribe. The GOP is getting some shocks now. Will the NRA? Today’s liberals are well known for their law-abiding ways, so gangs of liberals roaming the countryside just makes me giggle. And what will be the next data point on the theme? Perhaps what I fear is another economic crunch caused by out of control spending on defense. Trump has already sounded that horn with his call for going to the “top of the pack” in terms of nuclear weapons. (For those of you who were wondering, most experts say we’re already there and can go off and do something else instead.) A very expensive and dangerous distraction. Given that I think we’re heavily overspending on defense already, and both parties seem to want to increase spending yet again (another example of fear-based manipulation, I think), we may find out the hard way that overspending on defense is a path to recession. But will we recognize it? Or is that bubble too big?
