Kenyon Observerthe

December 5, 2012

Andrew Gabel | page 8

Republicans in the Wilderness

Kenyon’s oldest UndergradUate Political and cUltUral Magazine

Kenyon Observerthe

December 5, 2012

The Kenyon ObserverDecember 5, 2012

From the Editors

Cover Storyandrew gabel

Republicans in the Wilderness

richard pera

TKO ExclusiveAn Interview with Bill McInturff

jacob fass

Jumping Off the LedgeWhy the Nation Needs the Fiscal Cliff

jonathan green

Head, Meet SandWhen a Bent Frame Breaks

stewart pollock

The Golden DawnA New, Dark Day for Greece

ryan mach

The Mach AccordsA 7-Step Plan to Peace in the Middle East

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The Kenyon Observer is a student-run publication that is distributed biweekly on the campus of Kenyon College. The opinions expressed within this publication belong only to the writers and do not necessarily reflect the opin-ions of the Observer staff or that of Kenyon College.

The Kenyon Observer will accept submissions and letters-to-the-editor, but reserves the right to edit for length and clarity. All submissions must be received at least a week prior to publication. Submit to Sarah Kahwash (kah-washs@kenyon.edu) or Gabriel Rom (romg@kenyon.edu).

Cover Art by Peter Falls Quotes Compiled by Megan Shaw

Editors-in-Chief Gabriel Rom and Sarah Kahwash

Managing EditorYoni Wilkenfeld

Featured Contributors Jacob Fass, Andrew Gabel,

Jonathan Green, Richard Pera and Stewart Pollock

Content EditorsSarah Kahwash, Sofia Mandel,

Gabriel Rom and Yoni Wilkenfeld

Layout/Design Sofia Mandel

IllustrationsPeter Falls, Nick Nazmi and

Ethan Primason

CoordinatorMegan Shaw

Faculty Advisor Professor Fred Baumann

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Dear Prospective Reader,

The Kenyon Observer is proud to present our final issue of the semester. We begin with Richard Pera’s in-terview with Republican pollster Bill McInturff, followed by Andrew Gabel’s skeptical take on Republican doomsayers. Jacob Fass then questions conventional wisdom about the looming fiscal cliff, and the Ob-server’s editor-in-leave Jonathan Green rejoins us with a critique of GOP electoral tactics. Finally, Stewart Pollock charts the disturbing rise of far-right extremism in Greece.

We invite all members of the Kenyon community to consider the opinions here expressed, which we hope will provoke contemplation and conversation beyond these pages. As always, we welcome letters and full-length submissions, both in response to content and on other topics of interest.

Gabriel Rom and Sarah KahwashEditors-in-Chief

FROM THE EDITORS

Bill McInturff is a partner and co-founder of Public Opinion Strategies, a national political and public affairs survey re-search firm. For the past decade, he has been the lead pollster for the NBC News/Wall Street Journal polling series. In 2008, he was the lead pollster for Senator John McCain’s Presidential campaign. McInturff’s firm currently represents 19 United States senators, six governors, and over 70 mem-bers of Congress. The Kenyon Observer’s Richard Pera interviewed him.

TKO: Why did President Obama win and Governor Romney lose?

BM: First of all, credit has to be given to the quality of the campaign that President Obama ran. Campaigns make a difference. [Obama] had no primary opponent and an extraordinary amount of money, but [campaign staff] did their jobs very well. They did something that is very difficult to do in politics, which is to change the composition of the electorate. The fact that the 18 to 29-year-old turnout was [higher] compared to four years ago surprised me. Also, the percentage of the vote that is non-white increased to 28. And when the President is winning non-whites to an aggregate total of 81 percent, that shift is very different. Num-ber two, the President created a rationale for his re-election. Given how difficult things were four years ago, [Republicans] needed more time to finish the job. And [number] three, we need to recognize that they disqualified Governor Romney and made him not an

acceptable option. In the exit poll, Governor Romney ended up with a negative image, and that is certainly a consequence of the campaign.

TKO: You were the lead pollster for Senator John McCain’s 2008 presidential bid. Were there any dis-tinct parallels or differences in the strategies of the McCain and Romney campaigns?

BM: There were some things in common. When you win a Republican Party nomination, you’re essentially broke. You wake up in April or May and have to reas-semble an election campaign. In a Republican prima-ry, there aren’t large numbers of Latino voters or vot-ers ages 18 to 29, so you’ve been spending two years of your life communicating with a very narrow slice of the electorate that are not the swing voter groups or elastic voter groups where margins matter to who wins the general election. You’re now down to a few months to communicate that message without many resources.

You’d read these stories in July about how Romney has $100 million in the bank. The point is that that money isn’t money he can spend before he is the of-ficial nominee, meaning that he had to wait until after the convention. And I think the [Romney campaign] was relatively cash-poor, and so during that period when Obama was starting his negative campaign as-sault, the Romney folks did not have the adequate re-sources to defend and define Romney, and I think that

TKO Exclusive

RICHARD PERA

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“Politics is the art of controlling your environment.” Hunter S. Thompson

AN INTERVIEW WITH BILL McINTURFF

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had consequences in this election.There were things that were different as well. In

McCain’s case, it was after eight years of a Republi-can President. You talk about a terrible confluence: you’re trying to run for what is essentially another Re-publican term when you have Iraq, consumer confi-dence dropping to recession levels in April of 2008, the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September and then the enormous disparity in resources between the two campaigns because McCain took public financ-ing. So McCain was representing the functional in-cumbent party. And there’s no question that Romney had significant assets in that Obama’s been President for four years and had high unemployment [and] a dif-ficult economy. All of that gave Romney a status in terms of people hearing a message that was very dif-ferent from the Obama campaign. I think on balance, the differences [between the McCain and Romney] campaigns outweigh their similarities. TKO: The nature of the electorate has greatly shifted over the past eight years. How did these changes af-fect the Republican Party and how must it adapt in the future?

BM: It’s demography. The majority of kids under two [years old] in America are African-American, Hispan-ic or Asian. The country is changing at a very large [rate]. It means that the Republican Party has to be more inclusive and must do a radically different job in

communicating to people across ethnicity. My own guess is that in 2016, I would be very surprised if the Republican ticket includes two white guys. I think as America is changing, the Republican Party will change. We have a female Latino governor in New Mexico, a female governor in South Carolina, [an Indian Gover-nor] in Louisiana and [a Hispanic Senator in Florida in] Marco Rubio. Our party has terrific candidates to break the stereotypical “old white guy” mode, and it’s that generation of candidates that are going to be the face of the Republican Party in 2016.

Now it’s not just the face of the party. There has to be an openness, inclusion, and some recognition that people believe they are a part of that party’s coali-tion. That’s a lot of work, but my guess is that if we are going to be successful on a national level in 2016, then our nominee and ticket is going to have to be [different] because these trends are going to continue. The white vote will drop again in four years. I’m a Republican because I believe in the power of markets, and the market is that the Republicans have lost the popular vote in four out of five of the last Presidential campaigns. We’ve now had almost five cycles in a row where the Democrats have essentially won 230 to 240 electoral votes worth of states. It’s very, very hard to win elections when you open the campaign doors and the other [candidate] is sitting on 230 to 240 electoral votes. If you believe in the power of markets, then you presume that, over time, Republicans will shift to keep up with those changes.

“Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.” H.L. Mencken

TKO

Comments? Complaints? Differing opinions?

Get your voice in print by submitting a Letter to

the Editors or full-length article to TKO@kenyon.edu

TKO

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ANDREW GABEL

Elections have a way of making the present seem perennial and the future inevitable. Who can forget the President Bush’s “permanent Republican majority” pre-dicted after his 2004 victory, only to be followed by the “permanent Democratic majority” theory used to help explain Democratic gains in 2006 and 2008? Of course this “emerging Democratic majority” contention of 2008 was then promptly disproved in the 2010 midterm elections, according to many pundits at the time, but now has fallen back in light of Obama’s 2012 victory. Simply put, every election cycle since 2004 has been used by the victorious party as proof of an impending and everlasting dominance.

Unsurprisingly, Governor Romney had barely fin-ished his concession speech on election night when these same pundits already begin writing the epitaph of the Republican Party: too old, too white and too out-of-touch. This past election has indeed exposed key vulnerabilities for the GOP. For example, Romney won independents by 10 points in critical Ohio only to lose the state due to minority turnout. Across the country, the picture was similar: losing youth (60 to 37 percent overall) and minorities (Blacks 93 to 7 percent, Hispan-ics 71 to 29 percent) by margins even winning indepen-dents cannot overcome. Furthermore, in consideration of the fact that Romney surpassed McCain in the final vote tally, the myth of “the missing Republican voter” (a theory that pinned Romney’s loss on Republicans’ purported absence at the polls) can finally be shat-tered once and for all. The bottom line is that President Obama received significantly fewer votes than he did in 2008; Romney received more than McCain did in 2008 and the Republicans still lost (and lost handily). That signals structural weakness.

Perhaps more disconcerting for the GOP is the fact

that Romney actually ran ahead of many Republican senatorial candidates. Lest anyone rush to blame the Tea Party and Todd Akin, so-called “establishment” candidates ran campaigns equally futile to those of their Tea Party counterparts with both losing big on election night. The monumental failure of Republicans across the board suggests the problem goes beyond a single candidate, campaign strategy or even policy. Any time a party is chucked into the wilderness as the GOP was on Nov. 6, it is incumbent upon that party to engage in a healthy bout of soul-searching. That is the job of Re-publicans right now as a marginalized opposition party with little power or influence: to figure out went wrong, fix it and come roaring back in 2014 and 2016.

The good news is that, perhaps surprisingly, the GOP has a lot going for it. Unlike the Democratic Party, the Republicans have an exceptionally strong bench. Young, dynamic leaders such as Representative Paul Ryan (WI), Senator Marco Rubio (FL) and Governor Bobby Jindal (LA) have shown themselves to be strikingly effective agents of change in their respective positions. All are articulate, knowledgeable and, importantly, untainted by the Bush years (Ryan has served in the House since 1998 but was essentially a backbencher until 2008).

In some ways, it is remarkable the party coalesced around Romney the way it did considering how long, bloody and unsatisfying the Republican primary saga proved to be. On the trail, Romney showed himself to be a clunky campaigner who spoke conservatism as a second language (once referring to himself as “severely” conservative) and who never was quite able to make the philosophical case for free-markets, personal responsi-bility and a strong national defense. The GOP’s 2016 presidential candidate, whoever it may be, will have no such problem. If the 2016 candidate — who may very

“Here’s a very good rule of thumb in politics: losing begets losing.” John Podhoretz

Republicans in theWilderness

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well be a Hispanic or Indian-American — can make even a small dent in Romney’s 2012 minority and youth numbers, it will have enormous significance. Essentially, Republicans don’t need to win these demographics and they likely never will; all they need is to do a little better than Romney did and they suddenly become competi-tive as a party again.

Additionally, Republicans ran an antiquated and at times incompetent (see: Project ORCA and the Repub-lican National Convention) campaign this past cycle. This was in stark contrast to the Obama campaign, which took full advantage of cutting-edge information technology and used it to run an unprecedented data-driven effort. Do not expect such a strong discrepancy going forward. A new crop of young GOP consultants is waiting in the wings, who are frustrated with the Romney campaign’s television-oriented strategic back-wardness and who understand that times have changed since 2004. By 2016, they will be more fully established and, in all likelihood, running the show.

Yet perhaps the greatest advantage Republicans have relative to Democrats over the next few years is on sub-stance. Politically, nothing is inevitable. The same can-not be said for America’s perilous fiscal situation. The fact of the matter is that, whether politicians want to acknowledge it or not, the United States is accelerat-ing towards a sovereign debt crisis. In layman’s terms, because of America’s reckless spending, there is doubt about the government’s ability to pay back its debt and as such investors will eventually stop buying American bonds because they will be considered such risky as-sets. When this happens, the Federal Reserve will likely make up the difference by printing money. This even-tually leads to inflation or hyperinflation, rendering all dollar-denominated assets greatly diminished in value. Such a scenario would wreak havoc on the United States economy, wiping out life savings and making everyday necessities skyrocket in price. Simply put, if nothing is done to change the current U.S. fiscal trajectory, these things will result.

America is rapidly approaching a tipping point and only the Republican Party has taken this issue seriously. For all its problems politically and otherwise, Republi-cans have been the only party to sound the alarm and offer serious policy solutions that address the true driv-ers of the national debt — Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security; these three programs along with welfare and interest on the compromise roughly 60 percent of ex-penditures and are projected rise significantly beyond that in the coming years. Thus far, all President Obama and Democrats have offered in return is demagoguery. Raising taxes on the “rich” would solve nothing; even

confiscating every penny of those making over $250,000 a year would only generate a one-time $938 billion in revenue, against a yearly deficit that is $1.5 trillion and a debt that stands at $16 trillion. Likewise, cutting de-fense is no solution; defense spending comprises less than 20 percent of our budget and, as a percentage of

our economic output, is at near-historic lows hovering steadily at around four percent. In addition to having no meaningful impact on our debt or deficit and poten-tially leaving us weakened and vulnerable, such policies could cripple an already fragile recovery and simply not serious solutions. Also of note is the fact that inter-est rates are essentially at zero percent right now. Even a small increase can explode an already-unaffordable debt. What this means is that the U.S. government, in addition to living off of borrowed money, is also living on borrowed time.

Barring an unexpected fiscal “grand bargain” that, in D.C.’s current polarized political climate, seems frankly fanciful, there appears to be little reason for optimism. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan has called the coming fiscal storm, “the most predictable economic crisis in history.” He is right, and when the looming debt crisis becomes the actual debt crisis the party of profligacy and denial — in this case the Demo-crats — will instantly lose their credibility. Republicans must therefore continue to hold the line on fiscal dis-cipline, not only because it represents the only hope to avoid an economic meltdown, but because it also serves their long term political interest. Like Churchill in 1940, they may very well be swept into power by the calamity they sought to prevent.

The GOP took a drubbing this November. The sta-tus quo is a losing hand for them and absent reform they will continue to lose. But four years is an eternity in Washington. Republicans have plenty of time reinvent themselves and, once again, become competitive on a national scale. Is it possible that the Grand Old Party is in terminal, irreversible decline? Yes, but color me skeptical.

“Latinos are Republican. They just don’t know it yet.” Ronald Reagan

TKO

“the MonUMental failUre of rePUblicans across the board sUggests the ProbleM goes beyond a single candi-date, caMPaign strategy or even Policy.”

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JACOB FASS

If the media and some politicians are to be be-lieved, Jan. 1, 2013 will bring with it the much-dread-ed “fiscal cliff.” This will result in massive spending cuts and onerous tax increases, grabbing hold of the floundering economy and dragging it, kicking and screaming, into a cataclysmic recession. There seems to be a cottage industry of sorts designed to elicit fear about the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and the large-scale sequester cuts to military and domestic spending, with the hope that it will push Congress toward a grand bargain in the four weeks before the deadline.

But the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. It’s true that the full implemen-tation of the “cliff” would lead to a significant drag on the economy, but this is based on an unrealistic as-sessment of the situation. The fiscal cliff will undeni-ably be resolved in one way or another. The question is whether the cliff will be resolved in the interests of President Obama and the slim but tangible majority of voters who elected him, or instead in the interests of the party that was rejected on Nov. 6.

First, some background: in the summer of 2011, with a newly installed Republican majority in the House of Representatives propelled to office by the

fiery anger of the Tea Party, the Obama administra-tion made the unfortunate decision to negotiate with the Republican accuses over raising the debt ceiling. This was a procedural act that had been once been ac-companied by grandstanding and posturing, but now the House Republicans were using it to force large spending cuts in the middle of a tepid recovery. Fail-ing to raise the debt ceiling would force the Treasury to default on America’s debt, a move that likely would

have actually had devastat-ing and irrevocable conse-quences.

Was it a good idea to re-duce spending in the midst of a fledgling economic re-covery with rock bottom interest rates and declining public employment? Prob-ably not. But having agreed to engage in these hostage negotiations, the President requested that large cuts in

spending, which would fall mainly on middle class and poorer Americans, would be accompanied by some revenue increases that would hit the wealthiest Ameri-cans. The agreed-upon ratio was three dollars in cuts to every one dollar in revenue, an agreement heavily tilted toward the priorities of House Republicans. It called for far less revenue than the vaunted Simpson-Bowles commission did, but it remained unacceptable

“The Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession.” Ben Bernanke

Jumping Off the LedgeWHY THE NATION NEEDS THE FISCAL CLIFF

“now that the election is over, the saMe Players have retUrned to washington. bUt the Policy and Politi-cal contoUrs of the battle have shifted.”

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to large swaths of the Republican caucus. The President and Congressional Republicans were

unable to reach a Grand Bargain on the order of $4 trillion in deficit reduction, but they did agree to raise the debt ceiling. They kicked the proverbial can down the road and set up automatic spending cuts of over $1 trillion in domestic and military programs set to launch in 2013 if Congress were unable to finish the $4 trillion dollar deal. The sequester cuts, though partic-ularly brutal to many domestic and defense programs, exempted entitlements and was designed to spare the most vulnerable Americans. Still, the sequester was particularly unpleasant to the interests of both parties in order to push a more comprehensive deal before the budget axe fell.

Congress and the President completed the deal knowing that nothing would be resolved until after 2012. Now that the election is over, the same play-ers have returned to Washington. But the policy and political contours of the battle have shifted. With the expiration of the Bush tax cuts scheduled to occur as the same time as the sequester cuts, the revenue and spending sides of the equation have been melded together politically as well as policy-wise. If the 2012 election was about anything substantive, it was about ending the Bush tax cuts for the top two percent of earners. The President focused almost myopically on the issue, and down-ballot Democrats in blue states and red states alike echoed his creed of repealing tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. Obama’s victory on Election Day sealed the public mandate for this approach.

Republicans and Democrats realize that if Con-gress does nothing, everyone’s tax rates will increase, from waiters’ to private equity investors’. Both parties will strongly agree that taxes should be lower for the vast majority of the population and will move quickly to pass taxes for those citizens, to avoid the wrath of angry middle class voters and to spare the country from the brunt of recession if those higher middle class taxes are allowed to stay in place, just as con-sumer spending and the deleveraging of debt begins to pick up across the country. This will leave Presi-dent Obama in a commanding position. He will be able to determine the size and scope of those middle tax cuts. Congress will also want to reverse some of the immediate spending cuts while focusing more on long term entitlement reform. Again the President will be able to take the lead, pressing for entitlement changes that stem the rising cost of health care, as the Affordable Care Act has begun to do, instead of the arbitrary benefit caps pushed by House Republicans. Most of the tax increases and spending cuts, especially

the defense cuts unacceptable to Republicans, will be quickly reversed. While allowing all these changes to take effect would eventually have devastating impact on the economy, a deal in January will relieve almost all of the fiscal drag.

So while groups like Fix the Debt and financial leaders like Ben Bernanke fret about the impact of the

fiscal cliff, it is obvious that the cliff will never actu-ally be fully implemented. By January 2013, the deficit will be in the unusual position of being too low, and both parties will have been able to reach a deal to raise deficit, which is always a more politically appetizing prospect. But the terms on which the deal would be reached would be very different. They would be far more favorable to the interests of President Obama and Senate Democrats. Why, as talks have taken on the air of Kabuki theater, do House Republicans seem sanguine about the failure of talks? Why aren’t they rushing to negotiate with the President knowing full well they will be in a better position now than after the ball drops in Time Square?

It seems to me that House Republicans and the President realize that they will get different things from the failure to produce a grand bargain before Christmas. The President will able to achieve many of his policy objectives that he campaigned on so vig-orously. The House Republicans will have a political issue; they will be able to campaign on lower taxes without having voted to raise them. Even the much de-spised anti-tax activist Grover Norquist seems to rec-ognize this reality; in a recent speech, he claimed that Republicans would be fine as long as they didn’t have “their fingerprints on the murder weapon,” or the act of voting for higher rates. The only people who seem to desperately want such a quick deal are the mod-erates who supported Simpson-Bowles, the Republi-can Senators who seem to care more about the policy implications than the political consequences, and the processions of so-called “gangs” who want the parties

“The economy is like a supertanker. It doesn’t move on a dime.” Greg Mankiw

“fortUnately, we do not need a Poorly convinced grand bargain in the next coUPle weeKs that relies on Ultra-conservative hoUse of rePresentatives to act he-roically against tyPe.”

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to come together and make the tough choices on fiscal issues. To them, the failure of the talks would be dia-metrically opposed to their interests.

But they are mistaken. If you want comprehensive and serious reform of entitlements and a tax code that is more pro-growth and raises far more revenue, if you worshipped the Simpson-Bowles plan and were disappointed when President Obama did not vigorously campaign on it despite quietly supporting many of its provisions, then you have to be willing to go over the fiscal cliff. When all the taxes rise on Jan. 1, Congress will have a new baseline to work with, a baseline much friendlier to the kind of innovations that would be far superior to our current ill fan-gled tax code. Other-wise, the math simply does not work. Mitt Romney tried fruit-lessly to make it work during the campaign. Even Simpson-Bowles assumed that all the Bush tax cuts would expire before changes to the code could be made.

Sometimes the fo-cus of much the Wash-ington policy estab-lishment on the debt, as the equivalent of our fight with Nazi Germany or the dissolution of the Union, seems to be misguided. Our high short-term deficit is largely a con-sequence of low tax revenue from the vicious recession we just experienced and the costs of the largely success-ful if insufficient efforts to pull the economy out of

this ditch. Despite the investor class’s hand-wringing, its members seem perfectly content buy to buy United States treasury bonds. Interest rates, the worst econom-ic consequence of high deficits, have never been lower.

But in the medium term, our low tax burden and the ever-rising costs of health services will be-gin to become problem-atic, crowding out the more productive activi-ties of both the public and private sector. Taxes will need to go up and the rate of spending on entitlement programs will need to go down.

Fortunately, we do not need a poorly con-vinced grand bargain in the next couple of weeks that relies on ul-tra-conservative House of Representatives to act heroically against type. Despite their clashing, politicians of both par-ties have inadvertently ensured that incentives line up perfectly to deal with some of our rev-enue and spending prob-lems early next year. President Obama is fond of saying that the arc of history is long but it bends toward justice. At times it seems that the system in Washington is actually constructed to lead to senseless and unjust outcomes, but sometimes things turn out differently. Even as commentators warn of catastrophe as the dead-

line approaches, in a few weeks the country can bend the arc of history toward some measure of economic and fiscal sanity. That sanity, more than the illusion of bipartisan consensus, would truly make for a sweet new year.

“In our country, learned ignorance is on the rise.” Paul Krugman

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“If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.” Albert Einstein

Mainstream Republicans around this country, and by extension the Republican Party itself, took it on the chin last month. Not only did they lose the election, but they were also presented with a new reality that they had pre-viously been able to ignore. In this new reality, negative $5 trillion plus “we’ll see” does not equal zero; preg-nancy resulting from rape is neither impossible nor the divine will of God; socialism, fascism and communism are three different things (none of which accurately de-scribe a progressive tax code); and pollsters, reporters and the Bureau of Labor Statistics are not joining forces in a mass liberal conspiracy to make George Soros feel better.

Perhaps it was predictable that the Republican Party would so readily latch on to conspiracy theories sur-rounding the polls in the recent election cycle. They have found it so easy to deny basic facts about national issues recently that denying relatively trivial facts like poll data seems like a piece of cake. But the fact that the party’s fantasies surrounding skewed polls were so thoroughly disproven should serve as a wakeup call for them on a host of other, far more serious issues. The Republican Party’s big takeaway from this election should be that you cannot make up numbers to make yourself feel bet-ter, as Megyn Kelly lacerated Karl Rove for doing during her election night coverage on Fox News.

So before President Obama is inaugurated for the second time, America needs to get a few things straight. Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, he is not a Muslim and he did call the attacks in Benghazi an act of terror. Evolution is not a lie “straight from the pit of hell.” Wind is not “God’s way of balancing heat.” ACORN does not even exist anymore, so it is not stealing elec-tions. Cutting employee hours because of supposed in-creased costs while simultaneously giving away millions of dollars worth of promotional material does not make you a shrewd businessman; it makes you a jerk. And, most importantly, drastic cuts to public services that make life harder for middle and lower-income Ameri-cans do not boost the economy.

In a healthy American political system, the two major political parties present competing sets of ideas to tackle the challenges the country faces. Cynics call this “bring-ing your own set of facts to the table,” sets of facts that combine to solve problems through debate and eventual compromise. But this system only works if both sides bring sets of facts to the table. This campaign season, the Republican Party brought a set of fantasies to the table and tried to convince the rest of us to go along for the ride.

When real issues like climate change, electoral reform and national defense are turned into fantastical play-things by Republican candidates and elected officials who refuse to accept the premise of the debate in the first place, the whole country is worse off. Not only is it impossible to have a serious conversation when, as Barney Frank would say, the conversation is “like argu-ing with a kitchen table,” but the fact that such a con-versation is possible causes the public to lose faith in the system. Why should we trust Washington to get anything done when half of our leaders refuse to acknowledge that assault weapons kill people? America is responsible for 25 percent of the world’s oil consumption, yet it controls four percent of the world’s oil reserves; it’s hard to blame the public for not trusting Washington to solve energy issues when half of our elected officials believe that we can drill our way to energy independence.

Americans voted for facts this election, which was good for liberals, but more importantly, great for the country. Forcing the Republican Party to accept the elec-toral reality that running against the real world is a losing proposition will restore Americans’ confidence in our political system and produce more effective government on the whole. We are already seeing serious discussion in Washington of taking a balanced approach to reducing the debt, reforming our immigration system and stream-lining the process by which Americans vote—discus-sions that would have been impossible mere months ago.

In 2008 Americans voted for hope and change. In 2012, they may finally get them.

Head, Meet Sand

JONATHAN GREEN

WHEN A BENT FRAME BREAKS

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STEWART POLLOCK

Nowhere has the Eurozone crisis been felt more deeply than in Greece. The Hellenic republic’s rising debt and weak economy have turned what used to be one of the region’s most l ively nations into an auster-ity-ravaged wreck, where riots are a daily occurrence and faith in the government is al l but nonexistent.

In economically and socially tumultuous times l ike these, inspirational leaders often emerge to re-invigorate their nations’ spirit. It is abundantly clear that these f igures — the FDRs and Nehrus of the world — have l itt le in common with Greece’s current f lail ing leadership under President Karolos Papou-lias and Prime Minister Antonis Samaras. With its f lagging economy and apparent inabil ity to stabil ize a soaring debt, Greece’s leadership could be more accurately compared to Herbert Hoover at his worst — impotent, uninspired and unable to motivate its coalit ion governments. Recent events, however, in-spired a much darker parallel from the depression era: Paul Von Hindenburg.

The reason for such an alarming comparison to the notorious f inal leader of Weimar Germany is simple: the growing clout of the People’s Association party, more commonly known as the Golden Dawn. This far right polit ical party, now the third most powerful in Greece’s parl iament after it won seven percent of the vote in this year’s election, has become an em-blem of what is wrong with Greece and an ominous sign of what will come if Greece remains unable to right its l ist ing economy. As Greece has fallen, the party has risen, capital izing on growing social ten-sion to spread its message of nativism and xenopho-

bia. Although it once confined itself to spouting an-ti-immigrant vitriol, the Golden Dawn has become increasingly violent in action as well as speech, at-tacking immigrants, women, l iberals, anarchists and others who oppose it.

The Golden Dawn has its origins in the murky years following the Balkan Wars, during which many Greeks fought for the Serbs as mercenaries. Its lead-er, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, was a former Commando who was dishonorably discharged from the Greek

military. Michaloliakos, who openly admires Hitler and the Third Reich, has shifted the Party’s focus several t imes throughout its tumultuous history. As the party’s clout rose following their victories in elections last spring, Michaloliakos and other lead-ers attempted to downplay their violent reputation. Michaloliakos told reporters, “No one should fear me if they are a good Greek cit izen,” but added, “if they are traitors, I don’t know. Those who are traitors, it is for them to be afraid. We are coming.” Although the Golden Dawn official ly denies that it is a neo-Nazi

“If you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” Abraham Lincoln

The Golden DawnA NEW, DARK DAY FOR GREECE

“liKe so Many other Move-Ments foUnded on aniMos-ity and chaos, the golden dawn’s greatest eneMies are tiMe and Progress.”

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party, its actions tell another story; one tell ing ex-ample is its emblem, the Maender, an ancient Greek symbol that resembles a modified swastika.

Last month, an Egyptian man in Athens was near-ly beaten to death by Golden Dawn supporters armed with clubs when they found him sleeping behind a building. In another incident, a Pakistani shopkeeper was attacked and beaten by a mob shouting Golden Dawn slogans after they heard about an unrelated mugging involving an allegedly black perpetrator. Furthermore, the Golden Dawn routinely passes through slums, demanding that dark-skinned shop-keepers present their immigration papers or else have their wares destroyed.

It is bad enough that the police have been unable to stop the country’s rising tide of anti-immigrant violence. Worse, there is a great deal of evidence that both the police and the powerful Greek Orthodox Church are al igned with the party, whose support was recently gauged at close to 22 percent nation-wide. Greece’s justice minister, Antonis Roupakiotis, warned that the group was creating “conditions for the growth on neo-fascist practices.” In October, a senior police official told The Guardian in con-fidence that the Golden Dawn had infiltrated the Greek police “at the highest levels” and was using the party to wage a proxy war against anarchists, who they view as a greater threat. On the individual level, many police are sympathetic to the group for purely practical reasons: “These policemen feel unappreci-ated and isolated. They are badly paid, they work un-der the worst conditions and they look for support,” added the anonymous source. Unfortunately, they of-ten f ind this support in the Golden Dawn.

Indeed, the real threat of the Golden Dawn may be its skil lfulness in providing an alternative to the increasingly scant public services offered by the gov-ernment. According to the Washington Post, the Gold-en Dawn has set up several “pure” blood banks that only accept ethnically Greek donors. Golden Dawn activists can often be seen providing food and oth-er goods to Greeks on the street while other party members hand out pamphlets about the organization. This strategy of using panem et circenses to appeal to the masses has paid off. The bulk of those who support the Golden Dawn do not subscribe to its neo-Fascist ideology, or even its strong anti-immigrant stance, but instead see the Dawn as the only group providing effective leadership and fulf il l ing basic needs.

The alleged involvement of the Greek Orthodox Church with the Golden Dawn is as bad, if not worse than that of the police. In a country where approxi-mately 95 percent of the population is nominally Or-

thodox, the Golden Dawn has effectively instil led its events with pseudo-Christian overtones. New re-gional offices are typically blessed by priests and the Golden Dawn is pressing for more stringent enforce-ment of Greece’s rarely-used blasphemy laws.

Like the police, the church’s support is in part due to a fear of anarchism, which it sees as threatening the entirety of Greek society. In fact, many in the church disagree with the Golden Dawn and some prominent leaders have spoken out against the party. One such crit ic is Metropolitan Pavlos of Siatista, who in an interview told the Greek Reporter that “[The Golden Dawn] have nothing to do with ancient Greek civi-l ization nor the Gospel…We all have to take a clear stand on the Golden Dawn issue…We have to preach the word of God, which has nothing to do with the acts committed by members of Golden Dawn.”

The Golden Dawn is unfortunately not unique amongst European parties. Nationalist, far-right par-ties l ike the United Kingdom’s Brit ish National Party or France’s Front Nationale have been around for decades, usually confined to the fringes of society and denied access to the legislature. However, with its not-insignif icant electoral successes, the Golden Dawn is harder to dismiss as a fringe group. The cri-sis facing Greece is severe, and in desperate t imes, people are often driven to desperate measures. If the Greek economy rights itself, or more l ikely is right-ed by foreign intervention, then the Golden Dawn’s fall may be more meteoric than its rise. Their elec-toral victories do not ref lect a real support for most of their extreme policies, but instead are indicative of right-wing Greek voters f leeing the sinking ship that is the ruling New Democracy party. The support of many within the Church and police force are also tied to the economic crisis. Like so many other move-ments founded on animosity and chaos, the Golden Dawn’s greatest enemies are t ime and progress.

This does not mean the party should be dismissed out of hand: if Greece continues a downward spi-ral into debt and is forced to exit the Eurozone, the Golden Dawn may continue to gnaw at the country, distracting Greeks from their problems whilst using immigrants and foreigners as scapegoats. Perhaps the worst case scenario — a Greek republic resem-bling the German Weimar republic — is unlikely. At the very least, Greece’s democratic neighbors would probably be unwill ing to work with a Golden Dawn-led Greek government. But while it continues to draw misguided support from Greeks more concerned with their next meal than their country’s future, the Golden Dawn is a fundamental threat to the people and leaders of the world’s oldest democracy.

“In Greece, wise men speak and fools decide.” George Santayana

TKO

On Nov. 21, 2012, an eight-day stretch of death and violence was ended by a truce between the Israeli gov-ernment and the Palestinian militant organization. The truce, brokered by the recently formed Islamist Egyptian government, resulted in a tentative agreement to end both the rocket attacks that threaten much of Israel’s popu-lation as well as the Israeli military’s campaign in Gaza to stop said attacks. Though this agreement has forestalled a full-scale ground invasion of the region, civilian deaths on either side have continued and there is little public confidence in both populations that the truce will last. Indeed, the most contentious issues of the conflict were left unsettled by the armistice, including the Israeli embargo. With the total death toll having risen past 100 by the end of negotiations, the potential dangers of this military rivalry have never been more apparent.

In the wake of this horrific violence, I again found myself won-dering why the New York Times has refused any and all of my op-ed submissions regarding my bold, insightful suggestions for returning eternal peace to this war-torn region. In my frustration, I submitted the following ideas to this publication instead.

1. Have we tried putting Israel somewhere else? I think maybe it would be better if the Jewish homeland were somewhere more hos-pitable. The climate is so dry out there, anyway.

2. Have we tried putting Palestine somewhere else? They’re not even recognized as a sovereign nation yet; I’m sure there’s still time for them to set up shop elsewhere. Again, so dry.

3. Has anyone suggested just getting rid of religion? It’s the source of pretty much all warfare in history, dude. Think about it.

4. Two words: timeshare. It’s affordable, it’s practical and everybody gets a reasonable slice of the holy land pie. No pets.

5. Maybe if we start funding and arming Palestine with tax dollars it won’t look like we’re playing favorites. Perfect way to wipe our hands clean of the whole thing, if you ask me.

6. Stipulate that each and every member of the Palestinian commu-nity be bar mitzvahed. They won’t have such a negative opinion of the Jewish faith when that fat $36 check from grandpa is sitting in the pocket of their blazer.

7. Let’s just send Jimmy Carter over there and let him be King of Hamas, if he thinks he knows so much.TKO

RYAN MACH

The Mach AccordsA 7-STEP PLAN TO PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

“The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.” Wallace Stevens

Illustration by Ethan Primason