Posted on 05/09/2010 12:31:19 PM PDT by Sub-Driver
Bennett’s Loss in Utah a ‘Damn Outrage,’ ‘Non-Violent Coup,’ Part of Larger Intolerant GOP Narrative By Brent Baker Created 05/09/2010 - 14:41
“This is a damn outrage,” a disgusted David Brooks, the faux conservative columnist for the New York Times, declared on Sunday’s Meet the Press reacting to Republican Senator Bob Bennett’s loss Saturday at Utah’s Republican convention which chose two others to compete in a June primary for the seat. Brooks fretted he was punished for being “a good conservative who was trying to get things done” by “bravely” working with Democrats on health care and supporting TARP. “Now,” he repeated, “he's losing his career over that. And it's just a damn outrage.”
Sitting beside Brooks on NBC’s roundtable, liberal Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr,. a former New York Times correspondent, saw “almost a non-violent coup because they denied the sitting Senator even a chance of getting on the primary ballot.”
Over on Fox News Sunday, NPR’s Juan Williams expressed exasperation: “This is evidence of how the American political center is losing, on the right wing of the party a guy like Bob Bennett, who is a right-wing conservative, is being driven out because he’s not sufficiently conservative?”
ABC’s Jake Tapper brought Rudy Giuliani aboard This Week to address the handling of the Times Square botched bomber, but wouldn’t let him go before bringing up Bennett’s defeat as proof of an intolerant GOP: “Are you worried at all that the Republican Party is not only growing more hostile to more liberal to moderate Republicans such as yourself, but also conservative Republicans who are shown to, at least shown an ability to work with Democrats?”
Later, during the roundtable, George Will answered the presumption Bennett was the victim of an ideological purity test:
This is an anti-Washington year. How do you get more Washington than a three-term Senator who occupies the seat once held by his father, a four-term Senator, who before that worked on the Senate staff and then as a lobbyist in Washington? He’s a wonderful man and a terrific Senator. But the fact is, he’s going against terrific head-winds this year and he cast three votes: TARP, stimulus and an individual mandate for health care. Now, you might like one, two or all three of those, but being opposed to them is not outside the mainstream of American political argument.
Brooks admired those very votes from Bennett, hailing the Wyden-Bennett health plan as “a substantive, serious bill, a bipartisan bill, with strong conservative and some liberal support. So he did something sort of brave by working with Democrats which more Senators should do and now they've been sent a message to him don’t do that.”
As if this would convince conservatives, Dionne pointed to how “you just had an election in Britain where David Cameron, the conservative, almost got a majority by saying we need to de-toxicfy, take the rough edges off conservatism, appeal to a broader constituency.” But he didn’t get a majority with that approach!
From the May 9 Meet the Press:
DAVID BROOKS: This is a damn outrage, to be honest. This is a guy who was a good Senator and he was a good Senator and a good conservative, but a good conservative who was trying to get things done. The Wyden-Bennett bill, which he co-sponsored -- if you took the health care economists in the country, they would probably be for that bill, ideally. It was a substantive, serious bill, a bipartisan bill, with strong conservative and some liberal support. So he did something sort of brave by working with Democrats which more Senators should do and now they've been sent a message to him don’t do that.
The second thing is the TARP. Nobody liked the TARP. But we were in a complete economic meltdown and sometimes you have to do terrible things. And we're in a much better economic place because of the TARP. So he bravely cast a vote that nobody wanted to really cast and now he's losing his career over that. And it's just a damn outrage.
E.J. DIONNE: I agree with David on this. And I think that something’s happening inside the Republican Party that I think in the long run won't be good for the Republican Party. You just had an election in Britain where David Cameron, the conservative, almost got a majority by saying we need to de-toxicfy, take the rough edges off conservatism, appeal to a broader constituency. And here you have a state party convention, by the way, not a primary. It's almost a non-violent coup because they denied the sitting Senator even a chance of getting on the primary ballot. And I think the party in the long run risks a backlash among voters who may not be liberal at all, but don't like this kind of politics.
And before people on the right crow too much about this, it is a party convention in Utah. I would imagine the left would win a party convention on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. So let's not, sort of, make this into a bigger thing than it is. But it is a big deal to dump somebody like Bob Bennett.
From Fox News Sunday:
JUAN WILLIAMS: This is evidence of how the American political center is losing, on the right wing of the party a guy like Bob Bennett, who is a right-wing conservative, is being driven out because he’s not sufficiently conservative?...If I lived in Utah, I’m going to give up Bob Bennett and his seniority and connections?
BILL KRISTOL: Why do you need the seniority? To bring the pork home?
WILLIAMS: To bring the pork home?
KRISTOL: That’s worked well over the last several years.
WILLIAMS: Oh, so you’d sit here and say, “oh TARP was terrible, bailouts were terrible,” even though we saved ourselves from depression? That’s rational? That’s good, inspired caring about America?
He did vote against reigning in Fannie and Freddie so thus is on the Barney Frank/Chris Dodd/ACORN side of the collapse. Add in a bridge to nowhere vote, subsidies for the steel industry and the pattern became obvious.
The other candidates aren't slouches either. I think some of this was to inject new blood in Washington. Go along to just get along is not working.
I guess the voters in Utah think differently than you, David, located in your ivory tower in NYC spouting off on things you don't understand.
Excellent answer, Mr. Will!!
“I agree with Juan Williams in this instance.”
That’s hardly surprising.
Almost every article, and statements by Bennett himself, refer to this ‘ending his career.’ He’s been in the Senate for three full terms .. that’s 18 years. That follows in his father’s footsteps, after serving 24 years! Bennett is 76, by now his contemporaries in the private sector have long since either retired or been retired. I am sick up to HERE of incumbency being the key qualification for office, and apparently a lifetime tenure if the pundits and insiders had their way.
‘TARP was necessary and the financial institutions have repaid their money with interest.’
the COP found that the Treasury bought $25 billion of assets from Citigroup on 10/14/08, however, the actual value was estimated to be $15.5, creating a 38% (or $9.5 billion) subsidy
Some in the financial industry were not using the money for the reasons the money was injected. Others further abused investors after the TARP legislation was passed by telling investors their money was invested in the federal TARP financial bailout program and other securities that did not exist. Neil Barofsky, Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP), told lawmakers, “Inadequate oversight and insufficient information about what companies are doing with the money leaves the program open to fraud, including conflicts of interest facing fund managers, collusion between participants and vulnerabilities to money laundering
In its January 2010 quarterly report to Congress, SIGTARP has opened 86 and has 77 ongoing criminal and civil investigations as of December, 2009. The first TARP fraud case was brought by the SEC on January 19, 2009 against Nashville-based Gordon Grigg and his firm ProTrust Management. The latest occurred in March 2010, with the FBI claiming Charles Antonucci, the former president and chief executive of the Park Avenue Bank, made false statements to regulators in an effort to obtain about $11 million from the fund
******
The banks are eager to escape TARP and the restrictions that come with it, particularly the limits on how much they can pay their 25 most highly compensated workers.
Yet even banks that return taxpayers’ money will remain dependent on other forms of government aid. Among them are enhanced deposit insurance, incentive payments to modify home mortgages and federal guarantees on bonds that banks sell to raise capital.
homeowners and consumers are unlikely to benefit if banks repay their TARP funds en masse. Banks are giving back money that might otherwise be used to make loans.
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The Treasury Department, via the IRS, has made a terrible deal with Citigroup for TARP repayment: They repay $20 billion in TARP money, and in exchange we give them keep $38 billion in tax abatements.
******
Signs Of The Apocalypse: Dozens Of TARP Banks Miss Payments
March 20, 2010
Among the things that the Treasury Department elects to say very little about is how many of the firms that still owe the government TARP money are not even paying interest on the capital they have loan
They didn't make the decision to let Lehman fail messy.
Bush and the Fed put in place all the necessary policies to fix the mess before leaving office, and they have all worked. Nothing the Dems added since helped, surely. But they didn't cause any of it either.
The drop of $15 trillion in asset values in the panic doubled the downside of a normal cyclical recession, and the proximate cause of that panic was the idiotic Lehman decision. Which was caused by a puritanical hatred of bailouts to the exclusion of any practical sense or responsibility. And no you are not going to get away with pretending that never happened.
You're a stinking crony capitalist and a certified Domestic Enemy.
The modern world is not broken, it works, it doesn't need you stupid ideology to save it. The definition of conservatism is the desire to conserve the entirely legitimate institutions that got us all the wealth, justice, freedom and power we enjoy, and graditude and realism about those institutions. Its opposite is radicalism, the ideology that believes the entire world should be destroyed as beneath the vision of your stupid ideology.
Well reality stands is judgment of your ideas and not the other way around. Nobody needs your spiteful useless attacks on the great institutions of this country, any more than we needed communism or fascism or any of the other modern ideologies trying to condemn the entirely successful modern world.
Crawl back in your hole, worm.
Me, I don't try to be more "originalist" than George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. You haven't got a leg to stand on. There is a reason great Americans created the great institutions that made this country, and your ignorant attacks on them reflect only on you, and not on those institutions or this country.
So this article is saying the people of Utah are toxic? I think the American people are pointing at the politicians in D.C. and calling them toxic.
New Conservative paradigm. More government/regulation = “left.” Less government/regulation =”right.”
More government = less individual freedom.
So someone who votes for TARP, federal Stimulus and government health care is anything BUT “Conservative.”
Real capitalists use private money, not tax dollars. Real capitalists don't advocate for your brand of crony capitalism.
You may like to paint this as some kind of class warfare thing or try and insinuate that I'm 'anti-finance', but everyone can see through your phony facade. I'm 100% pro finance as long as slimy bastards like you keep your mitts off our tax dollars and tell the truth. That hasn't been happening.
There is plenty of need for truth, Jason and that's why I'm here slumming by having a conversation with you. You are the one who isn't needed here or anywhere else. If anyone wants to listen to your brand of clueless, fantasy based 'financial analysis', they can just turn on CNBC.
The finance industry pays $400 billion a year to the Federal treasury and you think it is your birthright or something. Then at no cost to you in occasionally, one or twice a generation, needs some assistance itself, and gets it, and repays it in full - and you howl and howl in mock outrage.
You are a parasite on them, not them on you. They produce more value and pay for more US marines and all the rest of it, than you ever have or will. Meanwhile all the actual deadbeats on mainstreet get a pass from you, and all the actual useless giveaway boondoggles that go to the same middle class, don't bother you at all.
You simply hate richer men, think everything they earn belongs to you for nothing, which is class warfare drivel and socialist poison. It isn't conservatism at all. Get out of my party and my movement. You don't understand it and your lack of morality pollutes it.
You’ve got the whole thing ass backwards. Your perception of what TARP “accomplished” is divorced from reality. Calling perfect_rovian_storm a communist based on his comment #46 is just ignorant.
I don’t think too many Americanos have any idea as to how far to the Left social attitudes are in the UK compared to the US.
Brooks does not bother averting his eyes...neither does O’haha.
It’s great to see all the usual suspects tossing a fit over losing one of their implants on the “other side of the aisle.” So thankful to Utah!
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