Re: Why Are Republicans So Keen to Persecute Elizabeth Warren?

The lead was buried.

"The reactions to Warren, both on the right and left, are becoming divorced from 
reality." 


I'd have paid far more attention to this article if it had started out with that 
bit of truth.  She isn't the savior and she isn't the anti-christ, just an all 
powerful bureaucrat intent on acquiring and securing the govt.s' control over a 
corrupt, greedy and all powerful banks/wall street.  Meet the new boss, same as 
the old boss.



Mike F.  


________________________________
From: Lance McLain <[email protected]>
To: DADL-OT (Mailing List) <[email protected]>
Sent: Wed, May 25, 2011 9:37:55 AM
Subject: [DADL-OT] Why Are Republicans So Keen to Persecute Elizabeth Warren?

naked capitalism 
May 25, 2011 5:00 AM 
by Yves Smith
Why Are Republicans So Keen to Persecute Elizabeth Warren?

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee session today with the 
Republican’s favorite punching bag, Elizabeth Warren, managed to notch abuse up 
to a level that is politely described as unseemly or more accurately called 
Republican Derangement Syndrome.

The fact that Republicans’ last effort to use screechy and mean against Warren 
failed to deter her has not led them to improve their game. Two months ago, a 
nasty two hour Congressional hearing with Warren was the culmination of weeks of 
right wing media attacks, with the Wall Street Journal leading the pack. We 
noted:

The last time I can recall the Journal becoming quite so unhinged about an 
individual was over Eliot Spitzer. And since Warren seems pretty unlikely to be 
found to have similar personal failings, the specter of the right throwing what 
look to be ineffective punches at her makes for a peculiar spectacle. What is 
the real aim behind this drama?

The reactions to Warren, both on the right and left, are becoming divorced from 
reality. She has assumed iconic status as a lone mediagenic figure in the 
officialdom who reliably speaks out for the average person, a Joan of Arc for 
the little guy. And she drives the right crazy because she is rock solid 
competent and plays their game better than they do. She sticks to simple, 
compelling soundbites and images without the benefit of Roger Ailes and Madison 
Avenue packaging, and she speaks to an even broader constituency, Americans done 
wrong by the banks, than they target. No wonder they want to burn her at the 
stake.

Today’s spectacle had the Republicans looking like idiots who resorted bullying 
when their initial salvos failed to hit their target. Chairman Patrick McHenry 
came off like a an angry amateur, trying ineptly to play prosecutor by demanding 
yes and no answers to questions that were clearly setups or couldn’t be answered 
that simply. The problem is that this tactic works only if you have legitimate 
questions and keep your cool.

Another Republican, Trey Gowdy, tried this trick and when Warren patiently 
explained why a yes or no answer couldn’t be accurate, he simply got more and 
more pissy. Earth to base: you won’t find “pissy” on any map of moral high 
ground.

And do these Republicans have the foggiest understanding of Dodd Frank or 
banking regulators? It appears not, which means they also must have incompetent 
staffers, since any good subordinate’s job is to keep his boss from looking 
stupid. For instance, Representative Ann Marie Buerkle had a long windup 
question (meaning she was largely speechifying) criticizing Warren for having 
job postings where the pay levels were considerably higher than those for 
similar-skill-level Federal jobs. Warren explained that the compensation levels 
were set not by her but by Dodd Frank, using the salary grades in place for 
other Federal banking regulators. Buerkle simply refused to listen to Warren’s 
response and simply rephrased her question as a more pointed accusation that 
Warren was being irresponsible and wasting government money. One of her 
constituents wrote me:

I really want to punch my rep. She was second in line, pretty damn good for a 
freshman who forgets to pay her property taxes. All loaded questions/statements.

The Republicans also demonstrated ignorance of the process by which legislation 
is interpreted and implemented (they seem to see Warren as some sort of 
“decider”) and accused the CFPB of having unprecedented power when in fact it is 
the only banking regulator that is hobbled by the need to get approval from the 
FSOC and a budget ceiling. The most peculiar bit was her being hectored for 
things that were not her doing, such as the five year term for the CFPB director 
and the fact that it is self funded (both part of Dodd Frank and the norm for 
banking regulators), the afore-mentioned pay scales, or for CFPB directives 
drafted by Congress. Adam Levitin provided a useful summary which the Oversight 
Subcommittee members might familiarize themselves with (click to enlarge):



Warren appears to have riled them further with her deliberately-paced, detailed 
answers. At points it did look like an effort to run the clock out a bit (not 
unreasonable given the puerile questions and open hostility), but it was at 
least as much Warren’s native communications style, which is to speak in a way 
that mainstream Americans new to this topic could understand. Warren simply 
outclassed her opponents, which was further fuel for the fire.

The Democrats were trying hard, perhaps a bit too hard, to back her up in the 
face of gratuitous nastiness. They for the most part got good substantive points 
in but sometimes came off as fawning.

So even though the exchange that garnered media attention occurred when McHenry 
accused Warren of being dishonest, the entire Republican performance was only a 
hair’s breadth above this level:



It’s instructive to see the context (they spar a bit a starting at 56;00 and 
really gear up at 1:02 till 1:09). Gawker has made the Warren reaction an 
official “How to Respond When a Congressman Calls You a Liar” And it was McHenry 
that was way off base; I found out shortly after Warren was pilloried that the 
schedule had been changed four times by the Committee, including one move made 
via a staffer late last night.

I’m not sure what the Republicans are trying to accomplish. This move backfired 
on them. It’s given Warren more media time. But the New York Times is so loath 
to look like it was supporting Warren that its story comes awfully close to 
damning her with faint praise (doubters should contrast it with the more 
evenhanded account in the Wall Street Journal). It starts with two paragraphs of 
McHenry’s charges and does not give the Warren rebuttal its due (they say she 
“denied…saying that she clearly stated in March” when she read from a letter she 
had sent in March). It also, in too many cases, quotes McHenry directly (which 
makes him sound more forceful) and summarizes Warren’s replies. It also 
dignifies this rant by reproducing it:

Mr. McHenry did not back down. After the meeting broke, he said in a statement: 
“I was shocked by Ms. Warren’s blatant sense of entitlement. She was apparently 
under the assumption that she could dictate a one-hour time limit for her 
testimony to Congress, and that we were there at her behest instead of the other 
way around. This is just further example of her disregard for Congressional 
oversight.”

A full nine paragraphs later, at the very end of the article, we finally see a 
defense:

Those exchanges led a Democrat on the subcommittee to apologize “for the rude 
and disrespectful behavior of the chair.” Representative John Yarmuth, a 
Kentucky Democrat, said to Ms. Warren that Mr. McHenry’s accusation “indicates 
to me that this hearing is all about you, because people are afraid of you and 
your ability to communicate in very clear terms the threats to our consumers.”

So why is the Times so generous to this Republican nonsense? The article makes 
it clear that it is simply echoing orthodox Democratic thinking, which to move 
Warren into another role. By implication, she is obtusely refusing to play ball:

Faced with strong opposition to Ms. Warren, a Harvard professor, President Obama 
has not nominated her to lead the new bureau. In fact, officials in the 
Democratic Party are trying to pressure her to return to Massachusetts to run 
for the United States Senate in 2012/

The “not nominated her” remark is true but disingenuous. Team Obama hasn’t found 
anyone credible who will take the job, particular now that the Republicans have 
made it clear they will torture anyone who dares take the post seriously. And 
given that the agency head is required to be in place by July 21, an impossible 
timetable for a normal confirmation process, any chief will have to be a recess 
appointment. (And the continued descent of Congress into bipartisan rancor makes 
the idea of becoming a Senator far less appetizing than it would otherwise be).

The whole point of turning Warren into an advisor to the Administration was to 
get her inside the tent pissing out. That was important because she is so well 
liked by journalists and so effective on TV that the Administration wanted her 
out of the limelight. But these Congress-administered beatings are the polar 
opposite of that strategy, and serve to increase her profile and credibility.

I don’t see how Warren wins this game near term. Obama has cast his lot in so 
firmly with the banks that he seems very unlikely to appoint her, particularly 
with him all too willing to use Republican brinksmanship and threats of further 
hamstringing the CFPB as an excuse to do what he wants to do anyhow, which is 
move to the right. But that strategy is looking less sound, particularly in 
light of an upset Democratic House victory in a normally secure Republican 
district, the hot button issue apparently being proposed Medicare cuts. 
Nevertheless, Warren at a minimum will make Obama’s and Geithner’s refusal to 
have her lead the CFPB visible proof of their cravenness.

To have her success be leaving the Administration with a Pyrrhic victory may 
seem a foolish and unworthy goal. But she has already put important processes in 
place even in the start-up phase, which will influence how the agency operates 
in its early days and could prove to be durable. Even more important, consider 
what our reader Richard Kline has said about the nature of political change:

The nut of the matter is this: you lose, you lose, you lose, you lose, they give 
up. As someone who has protested, and studied the process, it’s plain that one 
spends most of one’s time begin defeated. That’s painful, humiliating, and 
intimidating. One can’t expect typically, as in a battle, to get a clean shot at 
a clear win. What you do with protest is…you change the context, and that change 
moves the goalposts on your opponent, grounds out the current in their machine.

Warren’s opponents both inside and outside the Administration see power only in 
institutional terms: that if she ultimately does not head the CFPB, she cannot 
have much impact. But they miss the fact that the more they fight with her, the 
more they enhance her status as spokesman for ordinary Americans. No matter what 
she does next, her most potent weapon is her ability to continue reframing the 
debate.

      

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