Josh Marshall helpfully pointed us all to a Focus on the Family radio interview of Mark Levin (author of Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America, the latest right-wing bestseller) by James Dobson. Talk about a fair and balanced discussion…. it’s like listening to a couple of McCoys covering a Hatfield family reunion.Josh went right to the money quote near the end of the broadcast, when Dobson quotes some nameless minister who compared the white-robed men of the Ku Klux Klan to the black-robed men of the federal bench.And that’s vintage Dobson, who loves phony analogies depicting himself and his fellow extremists as brave souls defending themselves and the human race against totalitarian tyranny. A few years back, in a bout of self-pity about being “persecuted” by gay rights activists, Dobson took to comparing himself to Dietrich Bonhoeffer and other “Confessing Church” victims of Hitler. Now, apparently, he’s a Freedom Rider risking violence from the Klan.Any day now, I expect to see Dobson at some Save Tom DeLay rally leading a horde of lobbyists and cultural warriors, arms linked, in a heart-felt rendition of “We Shall Overcome.” The whole Dobson-Levin conversation is an eye-opener for those, like me, who haven’t quite had the stomach to digest the Latter-Day Right’s view of the U.S. Constitution. Levin is a real piece of work, and it is not good news that his bestselling book may provide hundreds of thousands of readers with their only exposure to constitutional law. Unless I am missing something, he seems to object not only to recent Supreme Court opinions, but to Marbury v. Madison, the landmark case that established the right of judicial review 202 years ago.Levin’s mastered the trick of stringing together every generally acknowledged constitutional abomination since then–Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, Korematsu v. The United States–and breezily identifying them with Roe v. Wade, which creates a nice litany of “black-robed masters” enabling “slavery, segregation, internment and abortion.” His “solutions”–term limits for federal judges and a congressional veto of Supreme Court decisions–would, of course, require either constitutional amendments or armed revolution, but that doesn’t trouble Levin. At one point, he says “we can’t get our hands on the Supreme Court, but we can get our hands on elected officials.” Nice turn of phrase for a legal beagle, eh? But then again, in addition to being a best-selling author, Levin’s now a radio talk show host.The other really striking thing about the Dobson-Levin “interview” is exactly how far the Souderization of Justice Anthony Kennedy has gone. God, they hate this appointee of Ronald Reagan so much more than the “liberals” on the Court. With his usual stance of posing as a victim of those he is attacking, Dobson says: “Anthony Kennedy scares me;” Levin seems to posit Kennedy as at the center of a “cabal of radical leftists” who are literally taking over the country at the behest of “moral relativists” and one-worlders.This duo’s reasoning is something to behold. Dobson slips effortlessly from yammering about “lifetime appointees to the Court” to blasting Florida Circuit Court Judge George Greer, the Devil Figure in the Right’s view of the Schiavo case. I suspect Dobson knows Greer is an elected judge who won a new six-year term just last year, but hey, can’t cut those judicial murderers any slack, can you?After all, when you’re fighting today’s black-robed Klan, you have to fight fiery cross with fiery cross.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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May 8: How Obamacare Undermined Republican Appetite for Medicaid Cuts
There’s a new and important problem facing Republicans as they seek to hammer Medicaid yet again, as I explained at New York:
In the long Paul Ryan era of Republican budget-cutting efforts (when Ryan was House Budget Committee chairman and then House Speaker), Medicaid was always on the chopping block. And when the program became a key element of Democratic efforts to expand health-care coverage in the Affordable Care Act sponsored by Republicans’ top enemy, Barack Obama, Medicaid’s status as the program tea-party Republicans wanted to kill most rose into the stratosphere. No wonder that the last time the GOP had a governing trifecta, in 2017, there was no single “big beautiful bill” to implement Trump’s entire agenda, but instead an initial drive to “repeal and replace Obamacare” along with measures to deeply and permanently cut Medicaid. Rolling back health coverage for those people was Job One.
So now that Trump has returned to office with another trifecta in Congress, an alleged mandate, and a big head of steam that has overcome every inhibition based on politics, the law, or the Constitution, you’d figure that among the massive federal cuts being pursued through every avenue imaginable, deep Medicaid cuts would be the ultimate no-brainer for Republicans. Indeed, the budgetary arithmetic of Trump’s agenda all but demands big Medicaid “savings,” which is why the House budget resolution being implemented right now calls for cuts in the neighborhood of $600–$800 billion. And it’s clear that the very powerful House Freedom Caucus, thought to be especially near and dear to the president’s heart, is rabid for big Medicaid cuts.
To be sure, the extremely narrow GOP margin in the House means that so-called “moderate” Republicans (really just Republicans in marginal districts) who are chary of big Medicaid cuts are one source of intraparty pushback on this subject. But the shocking and arguably more important dynamic is that some of Trump’s most intense MAGA backers are pushing back too. OG Trump adviser Stephen Bannon issued a warning in February, as The New Republic’s Edith Olmsted reported:
“Steve Bannon, former architect of the MAGA movement turned podcaster, warned that Republicans making cuts to Medicaid would affect members of Donald Trump’s fan club.
“On the Thursday episode of War Room, while gushing over massive government spending cuts, Bannon warned that cutting Medicaid specifically would prove unpopular among the working-class members of Trump’s base, who make up some of the 80 million people who get their health care through that program.
“’Medicaid, you got to be careful, because a lot of MAGA’s on Medicaid. I’m telling you, if you don’t think so, you are deeeeeead wrong,’ Bannon said. ‘Medicaid is going to be a complicated one. Just can’t take a meat ax to it, although I would love to.’”
Bannon didn’t comment on the irony that it was the hated Obamacare that extended Medicaid eligibility deep into the MAGA ranks (with voters in deep-red Idaho, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Utah insisting on taking advantage of it), making it a dangerous target for GOP cuts. But in any event, particularly given Trump’s occasional promises that he’d leave Medicaid alone (which didn’t keep him from supporting the deep 2017 cuts), there existed some MAGA sentiment for finding “savings” elsewhere.
The volume of this sentiment went up sharply when one of the flavor-of-the-year right-wing “influencers,” Trump buddy Laura Loomer (reportedly fresh from laying waste to the National Security Council staff) went after a conservative think-tanker who was advising HFC types on how to savage Medicaid, per Politico:
“In a social media post Monday, Loomer called Brian Blase, the president of Paragon Health Institute, a ‘RINO Saboteur’ for helping draft a letter circulated by 20 House conservatives that advocated for deep cuts to Medicaid in the GOP’s domestic policy megabill.
“’In a shocking betrayal of President Donald Trump’s unwavering commitment to America’s working-class families, and his promise to protect Medicaid, [Brian Blase] … is spearheading a dangerous campaign to undermine the Republican Party’s midterm prospects,’ Loomer said on X.”
Loomer’s blast at Blase was clearly a shot across the bow of the House Freedom Caucus and other Republicans who are lusting for Medicaid cuts and/or are focused on deficit reduction as a major goal. She called Medicaid “a program critical to the heartland voters who propelled Donald Trump to his election victories” and warned that Medicaid cuts could badly damage Republicans in the 2026 midterms.
The perpetually shrewd health-care analyst Jonathan Cohn thinks MAGA ambivalence about Medicaid cuts could be a game-changer. After citing data from Trump’s own pollster showing support for Medicaid among Trump supporters, Cohn noted this could have an impact in Congress:
“Trump himself has said he is going to protect Medicaid — although, as is always the case, it’s hard to know exactly what he means, how seriously he means it, or how much thought he has even given to the matter.
“But Trump’s own uncertainty here is telling, just like the pushback to Medicaid cuts from the likes of Loomer. Together they are a sign of just how much the politics around government health care programs has changed in the last few years — and why this piece of Trump’s big, beautiful bill is proving so tough to pass.”
It wouldn’t be that surprising if there’s a thunderbolt from the White House on this subject before the House budget reconciliation bill is finalized. If there isn’t, nervous House Republicans may be forced to read his ever-changing mind.