PLANK AUGUST 29, 2012
-
Read Later
READ LATERAvailable only to subscribers. SUBSCRIBE TODAY
-
Listen
ARTICLE AUDIO
- Font Size
The editors of National Review are in a swivet (“Who Racializes Welfare Reform?”) about my suggestion (and that of MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and the New York Times’s Thomas Edsall) that Romney is playing the race card by using the welfare issue against Obama. We’re the ones who are playing the race card, NR says, not Mitt. This is a difficult argument to make in light of Romney’s Aug. 27 comment to USA Today that Obama made his workfare waiver decision to “shore up his base.” (The idea that Obama’s “base” would consist of welfare recipients, is, in addition to being racially offensive, numerically preposterous.) NR acknowledges the difficulty of explaining away Romney’s “base” comment (a Romney aide stated, implausibly, that he was talking about liberals, not welfare recipients) by omitting any mention of it from its editorial.
The ones who are always introducing race into political discussion, NR says, are Democrats, not Republicans. “Democrats’ proprietary attitude toward African-Americans is a disgrace,” thunders NR, and so is black America's reciprocal loyalty to the Democratic party. That “nine in ten black voters unfortunately reinforce [the bond] at every electoral opportunity” is, to NR, a baffling mystery.
Allow me to play Sherlock Holmes. Back in the 1960s President Lyndon Johnson passed some civil rights laws that drove segregationist white southern Democrats into the Republican party. Johnson’s successor, Richard Nixon, did his best to encourage that exodus with his “Southern strategy,” and Ronald Reagan pushed it even further with outrageous talk about a heavily fictionalized “Chicago welfare queen” who racked up $150,000 in illegal benefits—the woman, an African American named Linda Taylor, was in fact jailed in 1977 for defrauding the government of $8,000—and by kicking off his 1980 general election campaign with a states-rights speech in Philadelphia, Miss. (where, a decade and a half earlier, Ku Klux Klan members expressed their heartfelt support for states’ rights by killing Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner). Poppy Bush exploited the horrific crimes of Willie Horton in the 1988 election, and ... well, as I mentioned in the piece NR objects to (and as Jon Cohn subsequently elaborated), George W. Bush was, in this respect, a refreshing departure from the post-1964 Republican tradition. (Though not a complete departure, since it was under Dubya that Karl Rove started moving aggressively to disenfranchise likely Democratic voters, including African Americans.) All these actions—along with the GOP’s ongoing opposition to nearly every policy to assist poor people in general and blacks in particular—have tended to persuade America’s black population that the GOP is no longer the party of the Great Emancipator.
As for welfare, why are we even talking about welfare in 2012? The 1996 welfare reform law introduced a work requirement—one I support, though I deeply regret that the federal government never created a federal jobs program to go with it, as advocated by my friend Mickey Kaus in The End Of Equality—and the rolls were drastically reduced. The caseload is now less than half what it was when the reform bill passed. NR claims that “President Obama’s economy is driving more Americans onto President Obama’s swelling welfare rolls,” but the real story here is that Temporary Assistance To Needy Families, the federal government’s main welfare program, has done almost nothing to address a post-2007 surge in poverty brought on not by government dependence but by the Great Recession and a post-2009 recovery during which the typical American household lost even more income than it did during the recession itself. Berate Obama for presiding over a lousy economy, if you like. But I don’t see the logic—well, the non-race-baiting logic—in focusing on idle welfare recipients when unemployment is above 8 percent and rising. It’s like worrying about obesity during a famine.
NR says I’m “disingenuous” to say that Obama is inviting states “to experiment with alternative ways to meet the work requirement” because Nevada, for instance, wants to give the least employable welfare recipients more time than is currently allowed to get a job. (I should mention here that the Health and Human Services department hasn’t actually issued waivers, as I previously, and mistakenly, reported; it has merely invited states to apply for waivers.) Giving Nevada welfare recipients more time isn’t an alternative way to meet the work requirement, NRsays; it’s simply not meeting the work requirement. But NR misses the point. The point is to get people into jobs. Nevada thinks it has an approach that will do a better job of getting people into the workforce. Maybe it will, and maybe it won’t. The feds will require “both a federally-approved evaluation and interim performance targets that ensure an immediate focus on measurable outcomes.” If the outcomes are favorable—if Nevada does a better job of moving people out of welfare and into work--then HHS will deem it a success, and may encourage similar experiments. If they aren’t, it won’t. Or perhaps it will—and if that’s the case it will be legitimate to criticize HHS for weakening the 1996 bill’s workfare requirement through lax enforcement. (Though I’d hope the targets factor in the greater difficulty of moving from welfare to work at a time when unemployment is high.)
You have to ask yourself why states’ rights, a sacred conservative principle when used to deny black people equal access to water fountains, is suddenly not-so-sacred when the issue is whether to cut states a little slack in getting black people off the dole. (Welfare recipients are disproportionately, though not majority, black.) Two of these states, it’s worth pointing out once more, have Republican governors. (Now that it’s become the central issue in Romney’s campaign, both are furiously attempting to backtrack.) The Republican paranoid fantasy, repeated by NR, is that Democrats want to keep poor people on welfare in order to make them feel dependent on government and therefore vote Democratic. If so, they’ve been doing a very poor job of it since the Democrat Bill Clinton signed welfare reform into law 16 years ago. The Democrats gave away more than half their “base”! If NR wants to demonstrate sincere support for African Americans and the poor generally, it should take the Republican party to task for a2012 platform that endorses requiring photo ID at the polls and bans elections by mail. The purpose of these and other crackdowns on a nonexistent epidemic of “voter fraud,” it’s beenrepeatedly stated by Republican participants themselves, is to chase African Americans and other Democratic voters away from the voting booth. Do Democrats poison black voters’ minds by telling them that Republicans have it in for them? They don’t have to. Republicans volunteer this information.
18 comments
It's these increasingly bizarre Straw-Men the Republicans keep putting up as "Democratic Motives" that make me fear for the Republican Party. Seriously, I too have heard "Democrats want to keep poor people on welfare in order to make them feel dependent on government and therefore vote Democratic". Well golly, as a Democrat I think that's just awful too -- except it isn't happening, and as you point out if it were happening the results wouldn't help much. When the truth is that the Republicans abuse the poor and minorities in between elections, then when they need their votes trot out these "tsk, tsk, tsk, isn't it awful they just don't like us, I wonder why" arguments just before the election. Then AFTER the election go back to the abuse.
- AllanL5
August 29, 2012 at 4:59pm
The whole thing is disgusting. Shame on Romney and shame on the GOP.
- Claris
August 29, 2012 at 5:06pm
Excellent post!
- Fishpeddler
August 29, 2012 at 11:26pm
Nicely done rebuttal Tim.
- jet
August 30, 2012 at 2:28am
Eisenhower named Earl Warren of "Brown v Bd of Ed" fame to the Court; he also sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock to enforce it and speeded up the integration of the armed forces. LBJ got more Republican votes for his civil rights legislation than Democrat. You can't even cash a Social Security check without photo i.d., but should be able to weigh in on who runs the government? Seems to me less voter suppression and more an organizing opportunity for activists. Republicans aren't against Blacks, they're against the poor. It's about class, not race. In any case this aberration is fast running out of time in the face of demographic reality. The coming election is going to make that unmistakably clear.
- Robert Powell
August 30, 2012 at 4:41am
Robert, spot on. I am poor; Jewish only after the Nazis arrive; a pale face because my neighbor in the woods is Sioux; "pastor" of the first disunited atheist "church" on my island where no man or woman is; grandfather to a child with two mommies in Seattle and two daddies in Chicago. If Jesus returns I will have harsh words for him because his Daddy has a lot to answer for. Be afraid. Be very afraid. My hero is Satan. Let loose the hordes of Hell. We are taking over and legalizing abortion.
- skahn
August 30, 2012 at 9:01am
"You can't even cash a Social Security check without photo i.d., but should be able to weigh in on who runs the government? Seems to me less voter suppression and more an organizing opportunity for activists." I'm running out of ways to respond to this without sounding like an adult condescending to a teenager: "You'll understand when you're older". To anyone who has actually been paying attention to the long, long history of attempts to suppress the black vote, comments like Robert's seem stunningly naive. It's like being a teacher for many years, returning to the classroom after an absence to find none of the students turned in their homework, and a note from the sub saying, "These unfortunate kids all had their homework eaten by their dog".
- Fishpeddler
August 30, 2012 at 10:13am
Noah is good friends with David Chalian no doubt Noah, How do you explain the verifiable fact that Republicans contribute much much more to charity for the poor than Democrats, even when adjusted for disposable income and religious/secular giving. Then of course, you have the fact that Republicans pay a much greater share of Net Federal Income tax than Democrats -- Republicans more successful and much higher concentration in private sector So those racist Republicans give to the poor and fund the safety net in proportions far greater than the selfish, parasitic, moonbat Democrats. Go wonder.
- mr_rationale
August 30, 2012 at 10:18am
The government doesn't issue very many social security checks, Robert. They require direct deposit of new recipients, and have since 2011. In March, they will cut and print NO checks.
- ReganaD
August 30, 2012 at 11:20am
I'm not against blacks OR the poor. But every program for "the poor" however defined, should have as its goal to give the poor the tools to make them un-poor. Traditioanlly, the Ds miss the goal, and the Rs don't want to spend the $$. if there is a long effort to suppress the black vote, it's the most unsuccessful effort in the history of US politics. When blacks don't vote, it has squat to do with "suppression efforts." Maybe not enough walking around $$, I don't know. A photo IDrequirement is evil? Right.
- butchie b
August 30, 2012 at 11:47am
If the R's don't have a race problem, then why is their black support almost nonexistant (even in years when the D candidate isn't black)? Surely NR isn't suggesting that blacks can't tell "real" racism from "fake" racism, right? That would be condescending towards blacks, which NR and the R's vehemently contend they are not.
- ATLeft
August 30, 2012 at 12:26pm
In addition to being naive, Mr. Powell is also (willfully?) ignorant of history. Yes, Eisenhower put Warren on the Supreme Court and sent troops to Little Rock. Yes, Republicans did vote for LBJ's civil rights legislation. But also, the Dixiecrats fled the Democratic Party as a result, and they had an open invitation from Goldwater (and later Nixon) to join the GOP. Why do you think George Romney stormed out of the 1964 Republican convention? As a result, the Dixiecrats have spent a 50 year effort to purge the GOP of all the moderate Eisnehower Republicans that supported civil rights. This is no longer the Republican Party of the 1950s, and it is, yes, naive, to pretend it is.
- zardoz67
August 30, 2012 at 1:49pm
Thank you Mr. Noah! Mr. Powell, c'mon. I do agree with you on one point: the GOP is against the poor. That's a fact. But they consistently use race, directly or indirectly, to whip up their base, instill fear, and create an us/them paradigm. And, their attacks on Obama - the birtherness, the feature- length "documentary," Obama's "rage," his otherness - that is racist. Now I grant you they aren't only against black people. They also don't like Native Americans, Latinos/Hispanics, non-Christians or women unless they reinforce this ultra macho, aggressive, militarist view of America that constitutes our "exceptionalism," and also, behave.
- Sophia
August 30, 2012 at 5:00pm
You are waaaay overthinking this. Go back to age 5, when your brother called you were a big fat baby.....I know you are, so what am I, over and over, till you go tell mom. GOPers may be aging demographically but they are regressing mentally in solidarity with all the fetuses they are protecting, I guess. I keep waiting to hear that one of those gun-toting Paulies or a teabagger has decided to pack heat and check out that "stand your ground law" to keep their delegates. I think someone forgot to lock some of the cages under that big ole GOP circus tent in Tampa.
- smabry03
August 30, 2012 at 11:05pm
Noah demonstrates some sleight of hand in describing Obama'a base. He says it does not "consist" of welfare recipients. True, but it does include them. (And Romney didn't say "consist," that's Noah's word.)So if Romney says Obama's support of welfare dependency "shores up" his base, that can be accurate. You can shore up a base by advocating for a part of it. As for the work requirement of welfare, surely an expert like Noah knows that it doesn't apply to children. Surely he has heard of WIC, Women, Infants, & Children, the loophole that continues welfare unchanged. Single adult men always had a work requirement. Cutting them off in 1996 had no effect on the underclass.
- raygun
August 31, 2012 at 7:32am
Senator Graham pretty much obliterated NW claim with his confirmation statement to the Washington Post that GOP can't generate angry white males fast enough to win much past this election. So NW, we do not believe GOP values us all equally. Rich, white, male. So talk to the chair because it is the only one buying your love for anyone other than the Rich, White, Male.
- smabry03
August 31, 2012 at 8:55am
By coincidence, today's post on vdare, in an essay by Peter Bradley, deals w/the NR editorial and Chris Matthews' response. It also deals w/statistical facts about welfare dependency by ethnicity. To the dismay of Noah, he is not even mentioned.
- raygun
August 31, 2012 at 1:46pm
Let's see if I have this right. Because TNR thinks "welfare" is a synonym for "aid to African-Americans," any criticism of a welfare policy change that could potentially dilute the work requirement is playing the race card. Indeed, any criticism of welfare policy that hints at strengthening requirements would be playing the race card according to TNR. What kind of criticism of welfare policy would not be playing the race card? Yeah, it is true that Romney's ads exaggerate the welfare/work issue to the point of falsity, but what do you expect from a guy who kills women with cancer by closing the firm their husbands worked for five years earlier. When I first heard of Obama's decision to allow states to petition for a change in the work requirement, race was not what occurred to me because I don't think in terms of liberal code words. I thought of the economy: a work requirement is crazy when unemployment is greater than eight percent and has been for four years. It's the least Obama can do for those otherwise eligible for welfare.
- halaby
August 31, 2012 at 6:03pm