John Nichols discusses some shocking results from the latest Gallup Poll on economic and ideological terms. Almost one-quarter of all Republicans have a favorable opinion of the word “socialism.” It has been well know that for a while, the “S” word had lost its scare power. But in the last two years, the number of Republicans who say they like the word has gone up from 17% to 23%. All the other group categories have seen increases in positive reactions to the word, but it is most intense among Republicans and conservatives.

Nichols thinks that the reason for this is the glib way that conservative politicians and pundits throw around the word “socialism.” I’m sure that he’s right. And this effect must be biggest on Republicans because they hear this kind of garbage the most. How else should people react when popular laws and politicians are labeled “socialist”? Remember when Clinton was president? There was blanket coverage in the right wing media calling him a socialist. Now, even or perhaps especially to conservatives, he was a great president. How can that not take some chill off “socialism”?

Most of the article is about the early history of the Republican Party and how radical it was. He even discusses the direct connection of the Republican Party with none other than Karl Marx. This is all straight out of his excellent book The “S” Word, which I reviewed for May Day. I highly recommend reading it; it is filled with forgotten history—or at least history that a large part of those in power wish was forgotten.

I think there is another aspect to all this increasing love for socialism. People make a distinction between “communism” and “socialism.” Communism is that totalitarian system practiced in Russia that collapsed due to its own weight. Socialism is the system they have in Switzerland, Finland, and even the United Kingdom. These are systems that are just as free as ours, but they are “nicer.” People still get rich. Markets still function. Yet the poor aren’t tormented, the sick get treatment, and minorities are protected. At the end of the day, that sounds pretty good. Is there anything great that our nastier system provides that theirs does not? Increasingly, our answer is no.

There is a question that is always floating around the minds of liberals: why don’t perfectly respectable progressive policy ideas get any media attention while wacky conservative ideas get promoted like journalists are being paid by marketing companies? Earlier today, Paul Krugman posted a really great, if short, article that gives an example of this—contrasting what is considered “serious” versus what is not. Raising the Capital Gains and Estate taxes is not serious. Raising the age of eligibility for Medicare is Very Serious indeed.

But here’s the thing. Krugman looks at the total in new revenue that Obama is suggesting: $1.6 trillion over the next ten years. Raising the Medicare eligibility age would save $0.113 trillion over the next ten years. That means that the unserious Obama proposal would raise almost 15 times as much money as the Serious Republican proposal would save.

What’s going on here? Krugman says that a proposal is only considered serious if it is painful for the poor and middle classes. But I think he’s just being glib—although certainly not completely wrong. I do think there is a common mindset in America that the only way a proposal can be effective is if it is painful. This is the “no pain, no gain” philosophy. And I am with Krugman in that this is part of the story. But there is a much more important part.

The most important issue here is that the media are just too cynical to accept that any plan that makes demands of the rich is politically viable. Like everyone else, they are so used to a system that is overwhelmingly tilted toward the rich, that they can’t imagine that things could be any other way. Thus, when presented with a budget proposal that would do much good but demands sacrifice from the rich, it is labeled a non-starter. (See, for example, the People’s Budget.) But a budget proposal that does little good while harming the poorer classes? They’ve seen that before! They know that’s definitely a possibility.

Of course, the media have been completely corrupted. Conservatives have been so successful playing the media, that they no longer even need to call foul—the media will do it for them. And this is what we get from even smart pundits like Ezra Klein who claimed that Obama’s proposal wasn’t serious. C.A. Rotwang in Cliff Notes, offers up what a truly progressive budget proposal would look like. What Obama offered is what would be called a moderate (centrist) proposal in any other developed nation. Here of course, it “unserious” and a “non-starter.”

This is the legacy of our media: only slightly less infatuated with power than fearful of being called “liberal.” The right has done an amazing job with the mainstream media. There are dictators all around the world who dream of such a “free” press. And this is perhaps the biggest reason that Washington continues to pass laws that are more conservative than what the vast majority of the voters want.

Ed Rendell is the prototypical New Democrat. Or as I like to think of him: an Old Republican. He is a good example of what I’m talking about when I say that any Republican of 40 years ago who really believed in what his party stood for would now be a Democrat. Any person still a Republican is either evil or just not that bright. But it goes further than this.

More and more, what it means to be a Democrat is to be socially liberal and economically conservative. And this is not a deal that I’m willing to make. I just don’t care so much about reproductive rights and gay marriage to abandon economic equality for them. But Ed Rendell, like most supposed liberals, depends upon these issues for his reputation. And I will grant him all of this: he is on the right side of all the really vile social issues that the medieval crowd make us fight over.

But the big issue is economic. We have ridiculous levels of inequality. This has led to far less tax revenues and thus deficits and debt. A big part of this is under-funding Social Security and Medicare—programs that the rich pay almost nothing into. And the solution for people like “liberal” Ed Rendell is simple: fuck the poorer classes!

Jonathan Valania writes about this in The Philly Post, Ed Rendell Is on the Wrong Side of the Class War. He starts by noting that he likes Rendell. I alway hate this kind of thing. So what? Andrew Breitbart seems to have been a personable guy, but the world is a much better place since he died. I care about Rendell only as much as he makes the world better, and it just doesn’t matter how many minor issues the man is right on. When it comes to the big issues, he is wrong.

Valania points out that in addition to being a corporate cheerleader for an investment bank (which somehow is never worth disclosing during any of his endless appearances on MSNBC), he a chairman of the steering committee of Fix the Debt. So the next time you see Rendell on the TV machine, ask yourself, do all of his nice words about marriage equality really make up for the fact that he wants to fuck the poorer classes with cuts to Social Security and Medicare?

I have never read any of John le Carré’s books. But I have seen two movies based upon his books. The first was many years ago: The Little Drummer Girl. It is an interesting film, but not all that good. It is probably worth revisiting, especially with the continuing problems between the Israelis and Palestinians. The movie goes along with my many years of experience in academia: taken out of the Middle East, Israelis and Palestinians love each other. Why? Because they are the same fucking people!

Last night, I watched The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Unlike The Little Drummer Girl, it is a great film. Above all, the film is beautiful to look at. I really love the lighting and camera work of Oswald Morris (Look Back in Anger). But also, the story is stronger, and acting better, and the film just reeks of Cold War tension.

On a basic level, these two films are the same: individuals matter and states are just evil institutions. In The Little Drummer Girl, this is more implicit. Of course, it was written 20 years latter. Apparently, when le Carré first published The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, it created quite a stir. People were used to the James Bond crap and thought of spies as cowboys (Western) and Indians (Eastern). Le Carré was more sophisticated, saying in effect, “They’re all assholes.”

It was funny watching The Spy Who Came in from the Cold last night. This story, created almost 50 years ago, evidences so much more nuanced an understand of foreign affairs than we get today even in serious reporting. I think we’ve taken a big step backwards. If The Spy Who Came in from the Cold were released today, it would be savagely attacked on Fox News. And this is after Dick Chaney and company said publicly what Control says in the film: they need to be as evil as the other side.

Of course, if this is all that le Carré had on offer, both these movies would be nothing more than exercises in extreme cynicism. But they aren’t. This is because they provide the one defense we have against an evil world: our individual relationships. This is what makes the ending of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold so noble, if sad.

I’m a big fan of Liberal Viewer (see the link on the sidebar below). Still, I don’t think he has ever created as good a video as he did yesterday on Fox News’ coverage of the “War on Christmas.” Check it out:

This morning Ezra Klein wrote, The Reality of Tax Reform: Less Charity, Smaller Homes, Higher State Taxes. It gets to the heart of politics, but most especially Republican politics. It’s all about vagueness of proposals.

The reason I associate it with Republicans is that their policy prescriptions are generally unpopular. So rather than say “cut popular deductions” they say, “Let’s broaden the tax base.” That sounds great, right? Broaden the tax base! It sounds like getting other people involved in paying taxes. What it means is making you pay more in taxes.

Klein quote Peter Orszag, who notes that 90% of all deductions (or “base broadening,” if you prefer) is in the form of three deductions: home interest, charitable giving, and state and local taxes. The home interest deduction was put in place to encourage home ownership. In general, I’m not in favor of it. Home ownership tends to tie workers down and make them more compliant. In fact, I think this was the main purpose of it; the government doesn’t really give a rat’s ass about who owns property; someone will own it who will pay taxes.

I also don’t think much about the charitable giving tax deduction. I tend to think that people give to charities because they want to. The fact that they get a deduction is just icing on the cake. The state and local taxes deduction, on the other hand, is very important. These taxes tend to be regressive or at least not progressive. Providing a federal tax deduction limits some of the harm that these taxes cause.

The main thing to notice about these tax deductions is how much they would affect the middle class. This gets back to the Tax Policy Center’s analysis of Mitt Romney’s budget proposal. The problem was that there just weren’t enough upper class deductions to pay for the upper class tax cuts. Of course, Romney knew that. He just didn’t think that anyone else would notice.

And so the Republican Party continues on with their vague plans to “broaden the tax base.” This is because they know that “screw the middle class” would not be very easy to sell. But that’s what it is. If someone will not give you details, it is because it is a bad deal. In this case, it is a bad deal.

Update (30 November 2012 10:23 pm)

I just saw Ezra Klein hosting The Last Word. He noted that people making over $200,000 per year give 20% of the nation’s total charitable giving. This represents about the top 2.5% of income earners. But let’s look at the top 1%, because I have data on them. They earn 24% of the total yearly earnings. They own 40% of all the wealth in the country. My point here is that the rich apparently don’t give to charities at as high a level as their income and wealth would indicate. As usual: fuck the rich. They are a bunch of selfish assholes. Ezra Klein needs to stop pointing out the large absolute value of their giving and put it into perspective.

Richard Barry over at The Reaction writes, How the Republican Party Could Save Itself. In it, he discusses a Time magazine article by Mike Murphy, Can This Party Be Saved? Barry, like most liberals, holds out some hope that we might some day get a reasonable opposition party. And Murphy’s idea does sound good. But I think it is meaningless.

There are two kinds of non-crazy Republicans in America.[1] The first kind is exemplified by David Cay Johnson, who aligns with Republican ideals but doesn’t seem to agree with them on any actual policy and rarely votes for them. Then there are the others. Many of these people seem reasonable, but like David Frum, they still managed to convince themselves that Mitt Romney would make a better president than Barack Obama. Simply: anyone still voting Republican is either evil or just not paying attention.

Murphy tells us there are two competing definitions of conservatism:

The problem here is that he’s just described the Republican and Democratic parties. And this is the problem with “moderate” Republicans: they are always calling for a party that already exists. The fact that they could solve all their problems by switching parties means one of two things. Either they are too partisan to see the truth or they secretly like what the Republicans are doing but want to be more discrete. I’m sure there is some of the former. Thomas Friedman certainly seems to fall in this category, and I don’t think he is even a Republican. But most people fall in the latter category: they just want to talk nice about vile policy.

I’m with Richard Barry: I’d like to see Republicans turn into a more reasonable party. But I have little hope of this. It all comes down to the very definition of conservatism. The movement is bound by the idea that the way things are is the way that things should be. Any change to the status quo would be bad. The same people who once argued that slavery was all part of God’s plan now argue that teenage motherhood, the nobility of the rich, and religious wars are all part of God’s plan.

Contra what all conservatives believe in their souls: we have not reached the end of history. There is so much that we could do to create a more egalitarian world that does a far better job of maximizing happiness. But for all the talk of people like Murphy, they only want progress that keeps things as they are. And it is the oxymoronic quality of this thinking that will stop the Republican Party from ever becoming reasonable.

[1] There are two kinds of people in the world:

Jean-Luc Mélenchon rocks. From campaigns past, but the song is great:

I tend to think that Republicans are more evil than stupid. But sometimes I wonder. Take today: Republican operatives have leaked Obama’s initial offer to deal with the “austerity bomb” (which is a much more accurate term than “fiscal cliff”). That’s fine, but their reason for doing it is foolish. They think they can attack the president as not taking the negotiations seriously. No one other than Fox News is going to accept that narrative.

Instead, most people are reacting like Ezra Klein, who wrote this evening, Obama to GOP: I’m Done Negotiating With Myself. In fact, Klein even says that he agrees that the offer isn’t serious. But I don’t see this at all. Thus far, the only thing the GOP has said is that they wouldn’t accept increases in tax rates at all. And this is coming from the party that has no real leverage. If no deal is reached, taxes go up by $500 billion dollars per year—most of that on high income earners.

Not all liberals are happy. Robert Reich thinks that Obama has already given away too much. He thinks there should have been no signaling of a willingness to raise the top tax bracket to some level less than the Clinton rate and that cuts to Medicare should have been completely off the table. I agree with him on the first point. On the second, the administration claims that these savings will not come from reduced benefits, so I will go along with them.

Overall, I’m pleased that the offer looks as good as it does. (Even Digby seems moderately pleased, and these days that’s saying something!) As may others, I am glad to see that that the president is not pre-negotiating. What’s more, let’s not lose sight of the most important thing here: the Republicans screwed themselves. Over the last two years, they’ve been unwilling to make extremely lopsided deals with the president, thinking that he would not win re-election. Well, now that he’s won re-election, they should know what the situation is. Those earlier deals were insurance and they decided to go on without it. Those are the breaks.

But it is wonderful to watch the Republicans running around so obviously desperate and making total fools of themselves. They are reaping what they sowed. And it is soooo richly deserved.