How the GOP Invented Elizabeth Warren

[DonViejo]

Sally Kohn

The senator and would-be presidential contender just wanted to be a Washington bureaucrat. Now, thanks to Republican opposition, she’s become the de facto leader of the left.

In 2007, a Harvard Law School professor wrote an article for the journal Democracy proposing a federal watchdog agency regulating consumer financial products. “It is impossible to buy a toaster that has a one-in-five chance of bursting into flames and burning down your house,” the professor wrote. “But it is possible to refinance an existing home with a mortgage that has the same one-in-five chance of putting the family out on the street—and the mortgage won’t even carry a disclosure of that fact to the homeowner.”

Written in the very early days of what would become the Great Recession, the professor noted that the sub-prime mortgage market was a “stunning example” of the lack of such government oversight, pointing out that 52 percent of all sub-prime mortgages “originated with companies with no federal supervision at all.”

Three years later (PDF), after the economy had collapsed from the weight of crumbling sub-prime mortgage debt, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and established the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Elizabeth Warren, the professor who had originated the idea, was appointed by President Obama to set up the new agency.

But a year later, in 2011, when the agency was ready for a formal head—who would require Senate confirmation—Republicans made their opposition to Warren known. One of Warren’s deputies was, instead, put forward to head the new agency. But by then it was too late—Republicans had turned Warren into a populist hero.

Had Republicans not stood in the way of Warren running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, she would have never instead run for Senate in Massachusetts—which, of course, helped her star rise. In fact, according to Google Trends, Warren was still relatively unknown and uninteresting to the American public until she ran for Senate against GOP golden boy Scott Brown.

Had Warren been appointed to run the CFPB, her preferred choice at the time, she would have likely been relegated to the dusty obscurity of the Washington bureaucracy—making a difference every day in the lives of the American people by retooling the consumer financial market but without the spotlight and bully pulpit of her Senate perch. She almost certainly would not have become what she is today, which is the de facto leader of the American left.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/12/how-the-gop-invented-elizabeth-warren.html

Sally Kohn is a liberal political commentator, community organizer, and founder and chief executive officer of the Movement Vision Lab, a grassroots think tank. Kohn was a contributor for the Fox News Channel.[1][2] Her writing is published in publications like The Washington Post and USA Today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Kohn

[merrily]

1. Another misleading headline from the Daily Beast.

Starting to seem less like accident or incompetence.

It's also a simplistic theory.

[1StrongBlackMan]

5. How is the title misleading? ...

Do you doubt that had the republicans NOT opposed her heading up the Bureau, she would have languished in that bureaucratically pigeon-holed, and easily obstructed, agency?

It is far easier to obstruct, silence, make ineffective, and/or ignore an agency head than a sitting Senator.

BTW, what have you heard from Julian Castro, of late?

[merrily]

6. I know Republicans opposed her. But that is not what the

headline says.

Edison invented the light bulb. (well, maybe. turns out he was a bit of a thief as well as a genius.) That conveys to me it was his idea and his creation, not that he hates light bulbs. Again, please bear in mind, some people read only headlines.

[1StrongBlackMan]

7. "Invented" ... "Saved from bureaucratic obscurity ...

and Propelled to a national platform" ...

Tomato ... to-ma-to.

[merrily]

8. Sure. Those are all synonyms. Let's go with that.

[OKNancy]

2. Thanks Don. Love the last line in the article at the link

Because Republicans can’t help hating Elizabeth Warren and her sensible economic vision, they’ve inadvertently turned her into the biggest public thorn in their side.

[DonViejo]

4. ....

[closeupready]

3. Republicans have bimbos and dumb jocks on their side; Warren has facts, brains, history on her side.

She runs rings around all the morons on the GOP side who tout Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman and voodoo trickle down economics.