October 6 – Going Inside the GOP to Understand the Shutdown; The Real Motives Behind the Shutdown; A Critique of the Peace Movement’s Double Standard

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with “Inside the GOP: a report on focus groups with Evangelical, Tea Party, and Moderate Republicans” which finds that you can not understand the government shutdown unless you understand what is going on inside the GOP. An author of the report, Stanley Greenberg, the former pollster to President Bill Clinton, joins us to explain the contradiction that some polls indicate the Republicans are hurting themselves to the point they may lose the House in 2014, while Senators Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell were overheard saying “we’re gonna win this thing”.

Part 2

Then we examine the economic illiteracy underlying the Tea Party base of the GOP who feel it is necessary to take drastic steps to shut down the government in order to get our fiscal house in order, even though the deficit they cite as the reason is going down at record speed. Michael Lind, the Policy Director of the New America Foundation’s Economic Growth Program and author of “Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States” joins us to discuss his latest article at Salon.com “Tea Party Radicalism is Misunderstood: Meet the Newest Right”.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Danny Postel about his article at The Huffington Post “Mission Accomplished? Syria, the Anti-War Movement, and the Spirit of Internationalism”. He co-edited the new book “The Syria Dilemma” and we discuss his critique that the peace movement is celebrating victory over stopping the bombing of Syria while remaining silent over the continued killing of over 100,000 civilians and the displacement of one third of Syria’s population.