Are Recall Elections a Good Idea?

Many people are buzzing about an article at truthout.org by one Mike Lofgren, a longtime Republican staff aide on Capitol Hill who just couldn’t take the crazy anymore, left his job, and produced this buzzy (and quite well-written) lamentation about his party’s tactics and goals. If you haven’t read it, you must

The Lofgren piece is full of harsh observations and accusations, but here’s just a little sampling:

• The debt-ceiling debate was an act of “political terrorism,” in which the GOP concocted a crisis and used it to ensure that the party's unprecedented demands were met. He writes: “Everyone knows that in a hostage situation, the reckless and amoral actor has the negotiating upper hand over the cautious and responsible actor because the latter is actually concerned about the life of the hostage, while the former does not care.”

• The August FAA reauthorization fight was another instance such of hostage-taking: “Republicans were willing to lay off 4,000 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employees, 70,000 private construction workers, and let FAA safety inspectors work without pay, in fact, forcing them to pay for their own work-related travel—how prudent is that?—in order to strong arm some union-busting provisions into the FAA reauthorization.”

• The GOP plan to discredit government in the people’s eyes is very conscious: “A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.”

• As for belief as opposed to tactics, the party basically really cares only about the rich. Actually, Lofgren doesn’t say “basically.” He says “solely and exclusively.” And he explains how they’ve camouflaged this with talk of protecting small businesses and so on.

There is much, much more. He’s not very happy either about his party’s militarism, its cynical use of religion, its total opposition to doing anything about the environment, and other matters, but most

programs so they will be there in the future."

Eggman of CO 10:50PM September 06, 2011

Recall elections for ALL CONGRESS SENATE AND THE PRESIDENT!! they are all f#@k ups and making things worse for the people!! DO NOT PUT POLITICIANS IN CHARGE OF ONE CENT!

OVER of CA 4:58PM August 09, 2011

Recall elections work - look at Wisconsin where recall elections are the only way to reclaim the government from bait and switch politicians trying to privatize the people's assets to enrich their croynies.

Republicans in Wisconsin wasted a half million dollars by forcing primaries with running fake Democrats. A desperate GOP delay tactic to stop the inevitable dismissal of the corrupt WI senate and the corrupt WI governor.

It didn't work and voters came out strong to vote for the real Democrats who won by landslides.

Come August voters in Wisconsin will take back the Senate for Democrats and the people, and in another six months bye-bye Walker and good riddance.

Anyone who doesn't like recalls must not like democracy either. Mitch McConnell doesn't like democracy and he said he wants to amend the Constitution to do away with elections essentially (he's asking for an obstructionist balanced budget amendment where it would take supermajority to do anything).

We are a government of the people and Mitch McConnell is calling for an amendment to keep the people in check because he said elections don't work (or at least elections don't work for fascists who don't care what the people want).

Hal of IL 4:35PM July 13, 2011

The right wing extremist Republicans in Wisconsin can't be recalled soon enough. They are now rushing through a slate of laws that will only harm Wisconsinites. The latest law making its way through the legislature? One that says that local municipalities will no longer need to provide clean and tested drinking water to the people living there. So we will now be getting sick from the water as well as from listening to Walker and his cronies.

molly brown of WI 5:15AM May 15, 2011