Who Got the Power? Warren, Cruz, and Boehner v. the 1%
P. Schultz
January 7, 2015
Below are
links to two articles on what appear to be diverse topics. One is entitled,
“The GOP’s Grand Con Job: Why Its Cynically Scheming to Dupe the 1%.” And the
other is entitled, “Elizabeth Warren’s Surprising Compliment: Why Comparisons
to Ted Cruz are Good.” But although
they seem to be devoted to different issues, they address the same issue: Who
got the power, politicians or the 1%?
Now, of
course, it would be foolhardy to make this an either/or choice, but it is not
foolhardy to wonder if the conventional wisdom that it is the politicians who
are in the service of those with the money is as accurate as it claims to be.
In the
article on Warren and Cruz, the author argues that such a comparison, made
after Warren “named names” in the Senate when she said “Responding
Citigroup’s complaints about financial reform, “let me say this to anyone who
is listening at Citi [group]. I agree with you Dodd-Frank isn’t perfect. It
should have broken you into pieces!” As Parton says in her article:
“That’s unusual. The millionaires club also
known as the Senate is an unlikely place to hear anyone call out a major
banking institution by name and declare that it should be broken into pieces,
especially one that one they allowed to write legislation to loosen
regulations. One simply doesn’t air the Senate’s dirty laundry that way.”
And
so, Warren aroused the ire of some pundits, who was labeled “the Ted Cruz of
the left.” Parton’s argument was two fold: First, this is just an insane
comparison, as evidenced by Cruz’s comparison of those who refuse to overturn
Obamacare to those who supported or acquiesced in Hitler’s rule. But, second,
she points out that this comparison is “good” because it underlines that
Warren, like Cruz, has power and she has power because she “derives [her] power
[not] from cozy relationships with big business but from [her] cozy
relationship to average people.” And as Parton notes, this is ‘a grave threat
to the system they’ve [the establishment] spent so much money to create for
themselves.”
This
illustrates something that is too often overlooked, viz., that for those with
money to be able to control politicians, it is required that politicians go
along with the ruse that they are in the thrall of those with money. And for
this arrangement to become “a system” requires that it be accepted by almost
all politicians and not spoken of because otherwise, when politicians appeal to
the people and openly point out the collusion between the moneyed and the
powerful, that collusion is almost bound to fail. Warren and Cruz both
illustrate this.
And
then when you read the piece by Elias Isquith’s on Boehner, you learn that
despite reports that “Boehner claim that he’d like to use his new power to
strike a deal with President Obama to cut social insurance spending and raise
taxes,” this is not really what is going on. What is actually going on,
according to Isquith, is that Boehner and his allies are holding out the promise
of such “a grand bargain” in order to keep the 1% in their camp so they, the
1%, will fund the Republicans’ attempt to win the White House in 2016. As
Isquith puts it:
“Boehner and company are fully aware
that the chances of them doing “big things” between now and January of 2017 are
slim-to-none. At the same time, they know that they’ll only be able to enact
major policy changes if a Republican wins the next White House race and if the
GOP maintains control over both the House and the Senate. And, crucially, they
know that they won’t be able to do any of those things unless they continue to
benefit from the 1 percent’s unprecedented political largesse. So what other
option does that leave them than to humor the business class’s desire for a
grand bargain and immigration reform while keeping those fundraising pitches
coming?”
So,
it is the 1% who are being manipulated or used by the politicians and not the
other way round, according to Isquith.
I
would offer two emendations to Isquith’s argument. First, I would emphasize
more than he does that Boehner and his allies are most concerned, not with
winning the White House in 2016, but with protecting their own positions of
power. So, by “failing” to strike “a grand bargain” and contending that such a
bargain is just not doable now, they keep the insurgents in their own party in
check while appearing to bow to their wishes.
Second,
I am less certain than Isquith is that the Republicans like Boehner want to win
the White House “to enact major policy changes.” They are more concerned with
preserving the status quo and, hence, their own power than they are with
enacting major policy changes. To do that might feed the power of the
insurgents like Cruz, thereby displacing the establishment types like Boehner
and, as Parton pointed out in her piece on Warren, upsetting the well-established
and profitable apple cart. And this is why I am not persuaded that these establishment
Republicans worry all that much about not winning the White House in 2016. What
better to preserve the status quo than to extend our “divided” government for
another four years at least?
Still,
it interesting to find two pieces that illustrate the argument that it is the
politicians that are powerful and not merely oligarchs like the Koch brothers.
The latter need the help, the collusion of the former to maximize their power,
and the former are able, because they control the processes of governing, to
milk the latter for money while pretending to do their bidding. It is an
interesting situation.
http://www.salon.com/2015/01/06/gops_grand_con_job_why_its_cynically_scheming_to_dupe_the_1_percent/
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