The Republican Brain

by is Mooney

  The meta-analysis of the Post’s Fact-checker counted each individual item as containing a single rating, unless the author clearly stated that the same grade was being given for separate statements by different people (this often occurred when two individuals made statements on the same topic). However, more than a few times a single rating was handed out for a series of statements, such as when the Fact-checker analyzed 5 different statements made during a half-hour long interview with Newt Gingrich. In a case like this, it wasn’t clear whether to use the final grade for the interview as a whole, or each of the statements; the meta-analysis erred on the side of the former.

  178 Sarah Palin Glenn Kessler, “Sarah Palin Collects a Bushel of Pinocchios on her Bus Tour,” June 3, 2011. Available online at http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/sarah-palin-collects-a-bushel-of-pinocchios-on-her-bus-tour/2011/06/02/AGkNAbHH_blog.html. This item blasts five separate Palin claims from one interview.

  178 Michele Bachmann Glenn Kessler, “Bachmann on Slavery and the National Debt,” January 28, 2011. Available online at http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2011/01/bachmann_on_slavery_and_the_na.html. This item debunks two separate claims by Bachmann from one speech.

  178 Donald Trump Glenn Kessler, “Donald Trump in New Hampshire amid ‘birther’ madness,” April 27, 2011. Available online at http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/donald-trump-in-new-hampshire-amid-birther-madness/2011/04/27/AFrjfEzE_blog.html. This debunks four items from Trump and one minor item from President Obama.

  178 Newt Gingrich Glenn Kessler, “Newt Gingrich’s Pinocchio-laden debut,” May 13, 2011. Available online at http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/newt-gingrichs-pinnochio-laden-debut/2011/05/12/AFf8qb1G_blog.html. This item checks six separate Gingrich claims from one interview.

  178 skyrocket Indeed, there was one item that upbraided three Republican officials, Karl Rove, conservative blogs, and the Heritage Foundation for all wrongly claiming that President Obama had “apologized” for America. Again, we were highly charitable to Republicans and only counted this as one rating. See Glenn Kessler, “Obama’s Apology Tour,” February 22, 2011. Available online at http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2011/02/obamas_apology_tour.html.

  178 failed to bestow a rating Glenn Kessler, “Sarah Palin’s Midnight Ride, Twice Over,” June 6, 2011. Available online at http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/sarah-palins-midnight-ride-twice-over/2011/06/06/AGIsoJKH_blog.html.

  178 “half-Pinocchio” Glenn Kessler, “Obama administration boasting about border security,” The Washington Post, May 11, 2011. Available online at http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/obama-administration-boasting-about-border-security/2011/05/10/AFj71ZkG_blog.html.

  179 consistency across two fact-checking organizations A third highly influential fact-checking organization is FactCheck.org, which is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. To further clinch the case that Republicans are vastly more wrong than Democrats—or, to further prove that fact-checking organizations are all united in a vast liberal conspiracy to embarrass Republicans—I also wanted to undertake an analysis of this organization’s work. However, that was much more difficult to do, because unlike PolitiFact and the Washington Post fact-checker, FactCheck.org does not use a ratings system of a sort that easily lends itself to quantitative analysis.

  Nevertheless, another researcher, Sylvia S. Tognetti, came up with a methodology for analyzing the work of FactCheck.org over the same time period for which PolitiFact was analyzed—January 2010 through January 2011. However, a thorough analysis of this rather large dataset of fact-checks could not be completed by this book’s deadline. I hope to say more about this study, when it is complete.

  180 destabilizing of Greenland John Cook, “What CO2 level would cause the Greenland ice sheet to collapse?” Skeptical Science, March 23, 2010. Available online at http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?p=2&t=73&&n=164.

  180 conservatives who are white and male Aaron McCright and Riley Dunlap, “Cool Dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States,” Global Environmental Change, Vol. 21, 2011, p. 1163–72.

  181 “litmus test” Raymond Bradley, “Global warming is a litmus test for US Republicans,” The Guardian, August 3, 2011. Available online at http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/aug/03/global-warming-republicans.

  181 Romney seemed to have gotten back into line Katrina Trinko, “Romney and Global Warming,” National Review, August 25, 2011. Available online at http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/275599/romney-and-global-warming-katrina-trinko.

  181 pitched blog debate See Chris Mooney, “Unequivocal: Today’s Right is Overwhelmingly More Anti-Science Than Today’s Left,” September 27, 2011. Available online at http://www.desmogblog.com/unequivocal-today-s-right-overwhemingly-more-anti-science-today-s-left.

  182 “socialism” Joe Romm, “AEI’s Kenneth Green Pulls a Charlie Sheen, Plays ‘Socialist’ Card in Exchange With Chris Mooney,” September 29, 2011. Available online at http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/09/29/332012/kenneth-green-charlie-sheen-socialist-card-chris-mooney/.

  183 “development, adjustment, and well-being of children with lesbian and gay parents” American Psychological Association Council of Representatives, Research Summary on Sexual Orientation, Parents, And Children. Available online at http://www.apa.org/about/governance/council/policy/parenting.aspx.

  183 “bad sampling techniques” Interview with Charlotte Patterson, May 3, 2011.

  183 “while ignoring God” Quoted in Judge Cindy S. Lederman, Final Judgment of Adoption in the matter of John and James Doe, Circuit Court of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, Miami-Dade County, Juvenile Division, November 25, 2008.

  183 “not consistent with the science” Judge Cindy S. Lederman, Final Judgment of Adoption in the matter of John and James Doe, Circuit Court of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, Miami-Dade County, Juvenile Division, November 25, 2008.

  183 “his own personal ideology” Judge Timothy Davis Fox, Memorandum Opinion in Matthew Lee Howard et al. v. Child Welfare Agency Review Board, Circuit Court of Pulaski County, Arkansas, December 29, 2004.

  184 all of which have been refuted American Psychological Association, “Sexual orientation and homosexuality,” noting, “most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation”; “lesbian, gay, and bisexual orientations are not disorders. Research has found no inherent association between any of these sexual orientations and psychopathology”; and “To date, there has been no scientifically adequate research to show that therapy aimed at changing sexual orientation (sometimes called reparative or conversion therapy) is safe or effective.” See http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/sexual-orientation.aspx.

  184 refuted through epidemiological research For the breast cancer claims see National Cancer Institute, “Abortion, Miscarriage, and Breast Cancer Risk” Fact Sheet, noting, “having an abortion or miscarriage does not increase a woman’s subsequent risk of developing breast cancer.” Available online at: http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/abortion-miscarriage. For the mental disorder claim see Trine Munke-Olsen et al, “Induced First-Trimester Abortion and Risk of Mental Disorder,” New England Journal of Medicine, January 27, 2011, Vol. 364: No. 4, 332–9, noting, “The finding that the incidence rate of psychiatric contact was similar before and after a first-trimester abortion does not support the hypothesis that there is an increased risk of mental disorders after a first-trimester induced abortion.”

  184 adult stem cells can supplant embryonic ones For an overview, see Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science, Chapter 12. For Gingrich, see http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/09/30/332730/gingrich-deceives-stem-cell-research/. For the current scientific consensus, see a statement from the International Society for Stem Cell Research, noting, “it would be unwise to ignore the potential for either adult or embryonic st
em cells to result in a meaningful new approach. Adult and embryonic stem cells are complementary subjects of research and studying them side by side offers the greatest potential to rapidly generate new therapies.” Available online at http://www.isscr.org/Adult_Stem_Cells_Myths_and_Reality/2878.htm.

  184 exaggerating the effectiveness of abstinence only education programs For an overview, see Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science, New York: Basic Books, 2005, p. 223–227. See also Douglas Kirby, “The Impact of Abstinence and Comprehensive Sex and STD/HIV Education Programs on Adolescent Sexual Behavior,” Sexuality Research and Social Policy, September 2008, Vol. 5, No. 3, p. 18–27. Available online at http://www.cfw.org/Document.Doc?id=283.

  185 wild “Truther” conspiracy theory See Brendan Nyhan, “Why the ‘Death Panel’ Myth Wouldn’t Die: Misinformation in the Healthcare Reform Debate,” The Forum, Volume 8, Issue 1, available online at http://www.dartmouth.edu/~nyhan/health-care-misinformation.pdf. For a longer discussion about why the “Truther” question is posed in a reasonable way in the Scripps-Howard poll, see Brendan Nyhan, “9/11 and Birther Misperceptions Compared,” August 10, 2009. Available online at http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2009/08/911-and-birther-misperceptions-compared.html.

  Chapter Ten

  The Republican War on Economics

  There are people who literally walk across the street when they see me coming.”

  Bruce Bartlett is sitting in an Irish pub in Great Falls, Virginia, explaining how he became a heretic on the U.S. political right. In the course of our conversation, what comes across most clearly is that Bartlett is the kind of person who says exactly what he thinks—which, it seems, was a large part of the problem.

  “It’s absolutely amazing the uniformity of attitudes you hear from conservatives,” says Bartlett. “It’s like they use the same identical words.” Bartlett hews to no such line: When we talked he was coming off a large press blip for calling Texas governor Rick Perry an “idiot” on CNN. (The provocation was Perry’s remark that it would be “almost treasonous” for Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke to launch another bout of quantitative easing prior to the 2012 election.)

  You might think, based on his resume, that Bartlett would have impeccable cred in the conservative movement. Trained as a historian, but frankly an economics wonk, over his career Bartlett has worked in the Reagan White House, the George H.W. Bush Treasury department, on staff for Congressional Republicans (including Ron Paul and Jack Kemp), and on the think tank circuit—Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation. He’s seen all parts of the conservative movement. He’s kicked the tires. “For a long time, I was a very loyal Republican,” he offers.

  But near the middle of George W. Bush’s first term in office, Bartlett began sensing something was very amiss. In late 2003, Bush and Congress created Medicare Part D to pay for senior citizens’ prescription drugs—and did so in a way that not only blocked the government from negotiating with pharmaceutical companies for better prices, but added considerably to federal budget deficits. “I was just absolutely flabbergasted,” says Bartlett, “because any half competent budget analyst knew Medicare was our number one budget problem.”

  Working at that time for the conservative, Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis, Bartlett became increasingly critical of the administration. He made particularly large waves when he was quoted in The New York Times Magazine in late 2004, accusing George W. Bush of “[dispensing] with people who confront him with inconvenient facts . . . Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis.” Bartlett then exercised his own need for analysis in his bestselling 2005 book Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy, which denounced the president for terrible fiscal stewardship—for not being a good economic conservative—but carefully stayed away from criticizing Bush on social and foreign policy.

  “I thought, naively, if I just wrote about only domestic policy and quoted a lot of conservatives, and wrote only stuff that no conservative could disagree with on the substance, and documented it well, then people would be forced to accept it,” Bartlett remembers.

  Instead, the National Center for Policy Analysis dismissed Bartlett after seeing the manuscript. According to a report that soon emerged in The New York Times, the conservative outlet “did not want to be associated with that kind of work.” Bartlett, it seemed, had betrayed the team, the group. He had been far too individualistic, and frankly, too Open.

  The transformation was complete, and now Bartlett no longer calls himself a Republican—though he still insists that, in the Burkean sense, he’s a conservative. “I think we should conserve what’s good,” he explains. But trying to conserve intellectual conservatism has been a losing battle—and like a Kerry Emanuel of economics, Bartlett has grown more and more outspoken about how off-base the right has become on fiscal and monetary policy. To read his work over the past few years is to quickly see that conservatives have become just as anti-economics as they are anti-science. And we’re not talking about debatable or nuanced matters here, like whether you’re a Keynesian or a follower of Milton Friedman, and in what context. As Bartlett explains, the right today doesn’t even follow Friedman—a onetime free market conservative icon and Reagan adviser—any longer.

  “Now all the kooks have gone over to bashing the Fed, going for the gold standard,” says Bartlett. “Somehow Ben Bernanke should be strung up for even thinking about increasing the money supply. That used to be the standard conservative response, and now it’s not even allowed to be discussed.”

  “Milton Friedman, if he were alive, he’d be saying, ‘you’re all nuts,’” says Bartlett.

  Economics has long been the one academic discipline that conservatives feel they own. To hear a Bartlett or David Frum tell it, the period from the 1970s up through the Reagan years was a time of intellectual ferment and excitement on the right, precisely because of the introduction of new and heretical thinking in economics.

  But whether conservatives can still make such a claim to the field is dubious. Even though they’re less liberal than experts in some other fields, academic economists today are liberal by nearly a 3:1 margin, according to the research of sociologists Neil Gross and Solon Simmons discussed earlier. Even if you sample the average citizen, rather than the expert class, liberals do not appear any worse at basic economic reasoning than conservatives.

  For instance, in a 2009 survey that tested the public’s “economic Enlightenment” by asking 17 questions—some clearly designed to trap liberals, and some clearly designed to trap conservatives or libertarians—the two groups performed equally poorly on the specific questions that were crafted to trip them up. For instance, liberals and progressives didn’t do so hot when asked to agree or disagree that “Rent-control laws lead to housing shortages” (they do) and “Free trade leads to unemployment” (it doesn’t, overall). But conservatives and libertarians didn’t do so hot when asked to agree or disagree that “Gun-control laws fail to reduce people’s access to guns” (they don’t fail). And conservatives in particular did much worse when asked to agree or disagree that “Making abortions illegal would increase the number of black market-abortions” (it obviously would).

  Less important than the flubs made in surveys, though, are the wrongheaded economic claims now fully embraced and repeated endlessly by conservative elites—elected representatives, think tank mavens, and commentators. We’re talking about assertions that are rejected by a consensus of economic experts, or that are just outright false, but that we nevertheless find conservatives wedded to and unwilling to let go of because they backstop core beliefs. These are everywhere nowadays, and they’re hugely consequential falsehoods to boot. They lie at the very center of public debate over fiscal policy and the state of our economy.

  It isn’t just misinformation about taxes, deficits, and how our economy came to ail so badly—though there’s plenty of that. But we’re also talking about putting the entire U.S. economy and way of life in
jeopardy on the basis of questionable economics, the way the Tea Party debt ceiling deniers did. And now they’ve begun an ill-informed attack on the one institution above all that must remain above politics in this country: The Federal Reserve.

  Without saying that liberals and Democrats have never gotten anything wrong on economics, then, we can safely say this—they don’t show the same denial of reality today. Nor do extreme left-wing economic positions have any real sway at present.

  “The problem with left wing economics,” says Bartlett, “is really that you never hear it.”

  To show how Republicans have embraced faith-based economics, let’s start with one whopping false claim that we’ve already encountered in these pages. When it was directly refuted right before their eyes in Brendan Nyhan’s and Jason Reifler’s motivated reasoning study, conservatives were apparently so affronted that they showed a “backfire effect.”

  I’m referring to the claim, straight from George W. Bush’s mouth and the mouths of many members of his administration, and many other conservatives, that tax cuts increase government revenue—or, as Bartlett puts it, “pay for themselves.” Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, put it like this in 2010:

  That’s been the majority Republican view for some time. That there’s no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue. They increased revenue, because of the vibrancy of these tax cuts in the economy. [Italics added]

  McConnell himself asserts that most Republicans believe this—and if that’s true, then it’s very strong evidence for this book’s argument. Because the claim is completely without foundation.

  It’s true that tax cuts can stimulate the economy and cause growth. And this may, in turn, ultimately lead to some increase in tax revenue. But no serious economist thinks tax cuts (especially the Bush tax cuts) stimulate the economy enough to fully replace the revenue lost to the government from cutting taxes in the first place.