One of the most frustrating recent phenomena for Democrats has been a “false equivalency” meme wherein Republican candidates have been forgiven intraparty pandering to “the base” and congratulated for general election “moves to the center” as though that’s what everybody does. This media tendency has been especially notable in this year’s Iowa Senate contest, where Republican Joni Ernst has benefited from a cynical acceptance of both her extremism and her rationalizations for abandoning it. I dissected and deplored this media vice in a TPMCafe column today:

[Democratic nominee Bruce] Braley has gamely stuck to issues, primarily by hammering Ernst for very unpopular right-wing positions on the minimum wage and Social Security. But he’s also used issues to raise his own “character” issue: the claim that this mild-mannered hog-castrating war veteran woman in the soft-focused ads is actually an extremist. And in that pursuit he’s found plenty of ammunition in Ernst’s record in the Iowa legislature and on the campaign trail, particularly early in the 2014 cycle when she was looking for wingnut traction.
Ernst is crying “unfair,” most notably in an exchange in their first debate last Sunday. Braley criticized her for sponsoring in the legislature a state constitutional amendment establishing prenatal “personhood” from the moment of fertilization, which he accurately said would outlaw now only the very earliest abortions but also IV fertility clinics and several types of contraception. This was Ernst’s response:

“The amendment that is being referenced by the congressman would not do any of the things that you stated it would do,” Ernst said. “That amendment is simply a statement that I support life.”

That’s true in a highly technical sense — perhaps using the reasoning of a trial lawyer — insofar as constitutional amendments don’t inherently create the laws they rule out or demand, but in a more basic sense, it’s just a lie, as Ernst and her campaign surely know. “Personhood” amendments are so extreme they have been routinely trounced when placed on the ballot (twice in Colorado and once in Mississippi). And if sponsoring one of them is a “statement” of anything, it’s a statement of absolute submission to Iowa’s powerful antichoice lobby, in the sense of ruling out any of those weasely “exceptions” to a total abortion (and “abortifacient”) ban.

Ernst’s efforts to escape accountability are more egregious, believe it or not, on other issues:

Democrats [are] calling attention to Ernst’s multiple passionate statements subscribing to the insane, John Birch Society-inspired conspiracy theory that the United Nations is behind land-use regulations of every kind. [But that] is treated as the equivalent of Republicans howling about Braley’s “chicken suit.” The reason, I suppose, is that you can’t criticize a pol for pandering to “the base” during primaries and then “moving to the center” in general elections. It’s just what you do.
I’m sorry, I just don’t buy it. Extremism is, or should be, a “character” issue. And so, too, should be flip-flopping. Personally, I respect “personhood” advocates for taking a dangerous position based on the logical extension of strongly-held if exotic ideas about human development. I don’t respect those like Cory Gardner and Joni Ernst who try to weasel out of such positions the moment they become inconvenient.
As for Agenda 21, anyone who talks seriously about this twisted hoax should be drummed out of electoral politics for good. But just as bad is Joni Ernst’s excuse for why she’s not talking about it now:

“I don’t think that the U.N. Agenda 21 is a threat to Iowa farmers,” Ernst said in an interview in her Urbandale campaign office. “I think there are a lot of people that follow that issue in Iowa. It may be something that is very important to them, but I think Iowans are very smart and that we have a great legislature here, we have a very intelligent governor, and I think that we will protect Iowans.”

In other words, the conspiracy to ban golfing and force people out of their cars onto bike trails is real, but Iowa Republicans are so vigilant about it that the conspirators have moved elsewhere.

Democrats can and should call Republicans on this kind of crap, but the MSM should pitch in, too, and if they don’t, they deserve the abuse they so often get for cynical enabling of political vices.

At The Washington Spectator Lou Dubose explains why “Ignoring Obama’s Record Rewards the Party of No“:

Caught between the unmet expectations of the left and the animosity of the extreme right, the president is defined by two narratives that work against a dispassionate appraisal of his record. In particular, a domestic record that will likely play a decisive role in the midterm elections.
Is Obama deserving of disapproval numbers that range between 50 and 55 percent?
Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley has suggested a different criterion by which to evaluate the president.
Brinkley describes Obama as a new type of 21st-century Democratic chief executive: a curatorial president. Obama, he writes, is a “progressive firewall” standing between an energized right-wing Republican Party and the legacy of the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier and the Great Society.

“The Curatorial President” or “The Firewall President,” neither moniker is very inspiring. Yet the terms illuminate an extremely important accomplishment — preventing the GOP’s wholesale rollback of the gains of the New Deal and the Civil Rights Movement. It’s fortunate that we have a President who had the guts to pick up the fallen torch of Sen. Ted Kennedy, as a force against Republican excess. Dubose elaborates:

As long as he is president, Social Security will not be privatized (as proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan); Medicaid will not be turned into a voucher program (per the Ryan budget that the House passed in 2008); the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and National Public Radio will not be defunded (a John Boehner initiative); and the EPA will not be abolished (as proposed by Senators Richard Burr, John McCain, Mike Enzi, John Thune and Roy Blunt).
The role squares with Obama’s character: a deliberative (perhaps excessively deliberative) chief executive deciding where to draw the line on domestic programs he considers essential to the lives of ordinary Americans.

In addition to his “firewall” leadership, let’s give Obama due credit for his pro-active accomplishments, which required some deft politicking, including the Affordable Care Act and saving the all-important auto industry, in stark contrast to the GOP’s laissez faire demolition derby alternative.
Dubose recounts the horrific statistical litany of Bush II’s 2008 meltdown, including the sudden evaporation of $16.4 trillion in personal wealth and 3.8 million private-sector jobs. All of which were soon followed by the Republicans explosion of vitriolic lies and all-out obstruction of even modest reforms that would benefit working Americans.
The Republican response to President Obama’s efforts to get America back into a semblance of economic health was described by Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein as “ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.” Dubose adds “No modern president has been confronted by an opposition party that is as nihilistic in its determination to thwart virtually every initiative proposed by the executive branch.”
Further, President Obama’s executive orders, which have enraged Speaker Boehner and other Republicans to initiate a lawsuit, include some eminently defensible measures:

• Providing legal status for more than half a million undocumented residents brought to the country as minors by their parents
• A minimum wage of $10.10 an hour for anyone working for federal contractors
• Blocking companies with a history of workplace violations from receiving federal contracts
• Adding sexual orientation and gender-identity provisions to existing federal workforce protections
• Allowing debtors paying off college loans to cap payments at 10 percent of their annual income
• EPA and Transportation Department rules that will increase fuel economy in cars and light trucks to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.

Sigificant reforms, yes, but hardly deserving of the Republicans’ accusations and tantrums about socialism run amok. The President’s latest executive actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, also overwhelmingly supported by the public, has Republicans even more apoplectic.
As Dubose sums up and concludes,

“…$787 billion in stimulus invested in roads, bridges, schools, police forces and public school faculties; health care reform that LBJ biographer Robert Caro describes as a major advance in the history of social justice; public investment in an auto industry to avert its collapse; the expansion of Medicaid to 10.5 million uninsured indigent Americans; ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy; and fulfilling a campaign promise to wind down two wars.
In a healthy political ecosystem, that is a record that candidates would be running on, rather than disowning.”

What President Obama has accomplished, despite the toxic environment created by the GOP and their refusal to negotiate in good faith is remarkable. He may not get the deserved lift in his approval ratings in time to help much in the midterm elections. But average American families ought to be glad he was there to stop the Republicans from shredding the reforms of the New Deal, destroying the economy and weakening health care services for millions more citizens.

The blogger Spocko at Hullabaloo has an informative read for those who were glad to see Google dump the Koch Brother’s wing nut wrecking ball, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). As Spocko explains:

This is a big deal. It comes on the heels of a number of other corporations like Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Yahoo! having left ALEC. These things don’t just happen magically. There are a lot of people who have worked very hard to make that happen.
… I think it’s important to acknowledge this success and see what we can learn from it. Like the actions used to get advertisers to leave Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and other RW radio hosts, part of this is educating sponsors and advertisers about the person or entity’s comments and actions so people can decide they don’t want to taint their brand with the association.
We often think that if we just give people the facts they will make the right decision. That does apply in some cases, especially when dealing with Vulcans. Other times we think people only make decisions to maximize revenue, and that’s true when dealing with Ferengi. But humans are more complex, and we need to look at and combine multiple methods to persuade, convince or pressure.

Spocko links to a list of organizations which were instrumental in persuading Google to bail from ALEC’s funding. Spocko goes on to reveal that ALEC’s opposition addressing climate change rubbed Google’s execs the wrong way and was probably hurting their image among socially-conscious young people who are concerned about the environment. In addition,

CEOs aren’t always the final decider, but when you can line up multiple reasons ranging from financial through emotional and into brand image they can be convinced to take a different course of action.
ALEC and Rush appeal to people’s most selfish impulses. They use greed, fear and ignorance to get what they want. They want us to believe that everyone thinks like they do, when in fact it is a self-selected minority that holds these beliefs. They say if you only believe them, you will be among society’s winners.
But when we go to the interested third parties and educate them, many of those real winners are disgusted with what they hear. Combining that education with appeals to both personal and stated corporate values systems and you have a solid package to help them decide to walk away.
If you want to convince people within the corporate form to walk away from a right wing media personality or a right wing legislation bill mill, learn who they are, what they say their company is about and ALL the things that they care about. We have lots of ways to find that out now, just Google them.

Good advice, certainly. There are numerous reasons for companies that seek a measure of social cred to back away from ALEC’s Kool-Aid. But let’s not assume that even large companies that support ALEC are all driven by an ardent wingnut perspective. Some are run by execs who are merely politically, well, low-information. They have to be educated about the destruction ALEC is wreaking on America. The coalition effort lead by Common Cause to meet this challenge is a great start, which merits more support from progressives.