Chris Reed: Don’t blame ‘special interests’ for strong views on guns, abortion

Aug. 8--Last weekend's appalling slaughters in El Paso and Dayton triggered enormous angst and anger on social and regular media -- along with an eagerness to blame a particular special interest. As The Hill reported ...

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-New York) on Monday knocked President Trump's remarks on two recent mass shootings ... . "It took less than three hours for the president to back off his call for stronger background check legislation. When he can't talk about guns when he talks about gun violence, it shows the president remains prisoner to the gun lobby and the NRA," the two Democratic leaders said in a joint statement, referring to the National Rifle Association.

Some Vox writers have long empathized with this view, with one writing in 2015 that gun control measures often stall because of the gun lobby:

The NRA has an enormous stranglehold over conservative politics in America.

Advertisement

This view is one of the reasons so many liberals are infuriated with the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 finding that laws restricting corporations (and unions) from paying for political advertising violated their First Amendment speech rights. Last year, a Salon politics writer declared ...

The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision empowered the gun lobby to bankroll politicians on a grand scale.

But there's a big problem with this formulation. The NRA simply isn't the free-spending juggernaut that the media would have us believe. The Open Secrets website lists the organizations that are the biggest political donors, counting contributions from political action committees, employees and organizational treasuries. In the 2018 election cycle, the NRA didn't crack the top 50. Nor did it in the 2016 cycle. Nor did it in the 2014 cycle. Nor did it in the 2012 cycle.

Yes, of course, the NRA is powerful. Its letter grades of candidates and its mass emails can make a big difference in local, state and national campaigns. But the strength of the gun rights movement isn't built on NRA manipulation. It's built on the fervent belief of millions of gun owners that liberals really do loathe them and want to do away with the Second Amendment, and that gun control really is a slippery slope. As an excellent Politico essay by Austin Sarat and Jonathan Obert published Sunday noted ...

Advertisement

One of the most authoritative and interesting surveys of the attitudes of gun owners was conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2017. That survey shows the vast majority of Americans who own guns are not members of the NRA and that most favor some form of gun control.

However, most refrain from pushing for greater regulation of guns because they neither trust the government nor believe that it will protect them. They often resent the disdain for their way of life of the kind expressed by President Barack Obama when he suggested they "cling to guns or religion" as a way of expressing "antipathy to people who aren't like them ... as a way to explain their frustrations."

To be clear, I'm not a gun owner. I buy the argument that the level of gun violence in society reflects how many guns there are in circulation, and that of course assault-style weapons should be banned and that of course background checks must be all-inclusive, automatic and comprehensive. But the NRA didn't hype the slippery slope argument into existence. It's occurred spontaneously to multitudes of gun owners who listen to their critics.

But what's striking is that the same dynamic exists for another big issue in which one side thinks the other side is manipulated into its beliefs -- except the roles are reversed.

Conservatives are firmly convinced that the reason the abortion rights movement is so resilient isn't because 20 percent or more of Americans have believed for decades that all abortions -- in any circumstances, including nine months into a pregnancy -- should be legal. Instead, they say it's because of the malign influence of Planned Parenthood, NARAL (now just NARAL but originally the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws) and other elements of the "abortion lobby."

Last year, Timothy P. Carney, commentary editor at the conservative Washington Examiner, illustrated this view of how U.S. politics works:

In the Washington press corps, we often speak of special interests, behind-the-scenes power brokers and third rails. What reporters don't do a good enough job explaining: The abortion lobby is perhaps the single most powerful special interest on the left half of Washington.

What did he base this far-reaching claim on -- Democrats' support for third-trimester abortions? Congressional subpoenas harassing anti-abortion activists? A resolution lamenting the prosecution of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, the baby murderer who ran a Philadelphia abortion clinic and is now in prison without parole? Nope. It was the firing of a single conservative journalist by The Atlantic.

Advertisement

To be clear, I understand why people are passionately against abortion. I thought the emergence of ultrasound technology showing babies moving around in the womb would change the debate more than it did. But anti-abortion groups with crass views of their opponents' motivations just don't have a case. In February, for example, the Students for Life group's website declared that the Democratic Party is "deeply in the pocket" of big-bucks groups devoted to murder of the unborn. It cited $1.07 million in donations in the 2018 election cycle from Planned Parenthood and NARAL. Cue the Dr. Evil and "Austin Powers" jokes. One meel-yun dollars!

For perspective, let's once again check out the numbers from the Open Sources database. Counting contributions from their political action committees, employees and organizational treasuries, neither Planned Parenthood or NARAL ranked among the top 50 donors in the 2012, 2014, 2016 or 2018 election cycles.

This column isn't meant to downplay the power of special interests. Among the most disheartening staples of American journalism are the reports out of state capitals and Washington about Republicans carrying energy bills written by oil industry lobbyists and Democrats carrying education bills written by teacher union lobbyists. Rent-seeking -- economists' term for how special interests use campaign donations to buy favorable government treatment and protection -- isn't just undemocratic and obnoxious. In 2015, economist Dean Baker published a well-regarded study that found that income inequality had bloomed in part because of the ability of corporations to shape how they are regulated -- not just because of a growing emphasis on elite job skills.

Yet it's problematic to always see politicians' decisions as motivated by the desire to maximize donations and improve their chances of re-election. That creates a default level of cynicism that makes meaningful compromise far more difficult to achieve. I'm not talking about gun or abortion rights, which are such freighted issues in the U.S. that compromises may prove impossible. For two examples of many, consider taxes and immigration.

On the first issue, even though Democratic President John F. Kennedy famously once proposed broad tax cuts, in the current climate, Republicans' push for even growth-promoting tax reforms -- not huge, deficit-creating cuts -- are routinely depicted by Democrats as pathetic attempts to further enrich their wealthy contributors.

On the second issue, even through Republican President George W. Bush famously once proposed creating a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants, in the current climate, Democrats' push for even modest immigration reforms -- not "open borders" -- are routinely depicted by Republicans as pathetic attempts to bring in immigrants who will vote for Democrats.

So much for respecting the opinions of others. "I'm holier than thou" is not a good way to start a political debate.

But at this point, it's the American way. For worse or worse.

Advertisement

Reed, who is sanctimonious about sanctimony, is deputy editor of the editorial and opinion section. Column archive: sdut.us/chrisreed. Twitter: @chrisreed99. Email: [email protected].

___

(c)2019 The San Diego Union-Tribune

Visit The San Diego Union-Tribune at www.sandiegouniontribune.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.