Posts Tagged ‘
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Monday, August 9th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
As Congress prepares for a big debate on the fate of the Bush tax cuts, there’s an internal debate breaking out in progressive circles on how to deal with tax rates on the very wealthy, not just those currently in the top income tax bracket.
This debate-within-the-debate is being driven by two external data points: First, the fact that income inequality in the United States during the last two (or arguably, the last four) decades has especially manifested itself in the concentration of wealth at the very top of the income ladder; and second, the fact that higher taxes for “millionaires” consistently polls well.
James Suroweicki explains the first point nicely in a recent column in The New Yorker:
Between 2002 and 2007…the bottom ninety-nine per cent of incomes grew 1.3 per cent a year in real terms–while the incomes of the top one per cent grew ten per cent a year. That one per cent accounted for two-thirds of all income growth in those years. People in the ninety-fifth to the ninety-ninth percentiles of income have represented a fairly constant share of the national income for twenty-five years now. But in that period the top one per cent has seen its share of national income double; in 2007, it captured twenty-three per cent of the nation’s total income. Even within the top one per cent, income is getting more concentrated: the top 0.1 per cent of earners have seen their share of national income triple over the same period. All by themselves, they now earn as much as the bottom hundred and twenty million people. So at the same time that the rich have been pulling away from the middle class, the very rich have been pulling away from the pretty rich, and the very, very rich have been pulling away from the very rich.
The current debate over taxes takes none of this into account.
Thus, framing the tax progressivity question as mainly involving rates for those with incomes well below super-rich levels misses the mark, and, as both Surowiecki and (for months now) Jonathan Chait have pointed out, misses a political opportunity associated with a widespread popular conviction that the very wealthy don’t pay their fair share of taxes.
In terms of the stakes involved in proposing something like a “millionaire’s tax” (essentially a new and higher top rate on very high incomes), Nate Silver has shown at FiveThirtyEight that it could indeed raise some pretty serious federal revenues.
But the political bonus of a “millionaire’s tax” proposal goes beyond the numbers: it would help expose the really dramatic gap between the two parties on the whole concept of progressive taxation.
After all, even as Democrats debate making federal income taxes more progressive, a growing and increasingly dominant segment of Republicans favor “flattening” tax rates to eliminate progressivity, exempting capital and corporate income from taxation, and/or shifting taxation away from income altogether and focusing it on consumption. And even for those Republicans who don’t embrace radical tax proposals, the “thinking” behind them is the rationale for the vague support for high-end or business tax cuts that’s almost universal in today’s GOP, in growing contradiction with conservative demands for debt-and-deficit reduction.
Anything that makes this contrast more vivid, on terms supported by big majorities of the American public, is a pretty good idea for Democrats. So I’d strongly recommend that in the debate over extending or eliminating Bush’s tax cuts for the top bracket, proposals to crate a new bracket for the “super-rich” ought to become an essential ingredient.
This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist
Tags: Congress, Democratic Party, FiveThirtyEight, James Suroweicki, Jonathan Chait, millionaire's tax, Nate Silver, Taxes, The New Yorker, top income tax bracket
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Friday, July 30th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
I know it probably seems like this year’s primary season has been unbearably long. But as July comes to a close, there are 23 state primaries (plus runoffs in, so far, Georgia and Oklahoma, and a special election in West Virginia) still ahead. Next week’s schedule includes primaries on August 3 in Kansas, Michigan and Missouri, and on August 5 in Tennessee. Most of the action is on the Republican side, except in Michigan. Kansas has a close Republican Senate primary and two competitive GOP House contests; Missouri has two big Republican House primaries; and Tennessee has a close three-way Republican gubernatorial contest. In Michigan, both parties have very complex and competitive gubernatorial primaries (including that rarest of phenomena, a Republican candidate campaigning as a moderate), and there’s another strong challenge to Democratic Rep. Carolyn Kilpatrick.
In the chattering classes, there’s been considerable discussion the last few days about Democratic efforts to improve morale, particularly a DCCC memo that denies Republicans have much of a chance of taking over the House. FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver mocked the memo as making slopping assumptions about the number of seats “in play” and also taking for granted four takeovers of Republican-held seats that are far from certain. RealClearPolitics’ Sean Trende takes a somewhat different tack, and concludes that Republicans’ prospects in November could be better than in 1994, because their goal is simply to take back two-thirds of the House seats they controlled prior to 2006. (On a different front, Stu Rothenberg of Roll Call accused Democrats of trying to rationalize likely House losses as attributable to factors beyond their control, which provoked me to respond).
There’s lots of fresh polling data. In California, PPP and PPIC (Public Policy Institute of California) have new statewide surveys out, and both show Democrats Jerry Brown and Sen. Barbara Boxer maintaining steady if relatively narrow leads. PPP has Brown leading Meg Whitman 46-40, while PPIC shows him up 37-34 with a big (23 percent) undecided vote. In the Senate race, PPP shows Boxer increasing her lead over Carly Fiorina by 6 points since the June 8 primary. She’s now up 49-40, and just as importantly, has a significantly better approval disapproval rating than Fiorina (Boxer’s is 44/46; Fiorina’s is 28/40). PPIC places Boxer’s lead at 39-34, with, again, a high-undecided rate of 22 percent.
A new Mason-Dixon poll of NV shows Harry Reid and Sharron Angle in a dead heat; Reid leads 43-42, with the favorable-unfavorable ratios of both candidates also being very similar (Reid: 38-51; Angle: 38-47).
Two new surveys in the under-reported Senate race in New Hampshire show Republican front-runner Kelly Ayotte with a significant but shrinking lead over Democratic Rep. Paul Hodes. PPP now has Ayotte up 45-42; a University of New Hampshire poll shows her leading Hodes 45-37.
Last week PPP created a buzz with a poll showing Democrat Alex Sink taking the lead in Florida governor’s race thanks to a toxic Republican primary between Attorney General Bill McCollum and former hospital chain magnate Rick Scott. Now Quinnipiac has a new survey showing both McCollum and Scott basically tied with Sink, with independent Bud Chiles in double-digits and a very large undecided vote.
And Michigan-based EPIC-MRA has a survey out of both parties’ gubernatorial primaries in Michigan. On the Democratic side, the poll shows labor-backed Lansing mayor Virg Bernero holding a 40-32 lead over state legislative leader Andy Dillon. Among Republicans, EPIC-MRA shows a very close three-way race, with former Gateway exec Rick Snyder, who has been openly appealing for Democratic and independent crossover votes, at 26 percent, while Attorney General Mike Cox is at 24 percent and congressman Peter Hoekstra at 23 percent; the latter two candidates have been battling for the Tea Party/”true conservative” vote.
Ed Kilgore’s PPI Political Memo runs every Tuesday and Friday.
Photo Credit: hlkljgk’s Photostream
Tags: Barbara Boxer, California, Carly Fiorina, DCCC, Democratic Party, FiveThirtyEight, Georgia, GOP, Jerry Brown, Kansas, Kelly Ayotte, Meg Whitman, Michigan, Missouri, Nate Silver, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, primary election, RealClearPolitics, Rep. Carolyn Kilpatrick, Rep. Paul Hodes, Republican gubernatorial, Roll Call, Tennessee, West Virginia
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Friday, July 30th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
In an interesting argument over at OpenLeft about the biggest mistake recently made by Democrats, Chris Bowers suggests that fighting Republican efforts to gut the right to filibuster back during the “nuclear option” debate of 2005 had truly fateful consequences:
[N]ot allowing Republicans to destroy the filibuster back in 2005 is the biggest mistake made by not only President Obama, but by the Democratic trifecta as a whole (and, I admit, my biggest mistake too). This would have resulted in a wide swatch of changes, including a larger stimulus, the Employee Free Choice Act, a better health bill (in all likelihood, one with a public option, and completed in December), an actual climate / energy bill, a second stimulus, and more. If Democrats had tacked on other changes to Senate rules that sped up the process, such as doing away with unanimous consent, ending debating time after cloture is achieved on nominations, eliminating the two days between filing for cloture and voting on cloture, and restricting quorum calls, then virtually every judicial and administration vacancy would already be filled, as well.
I agree with the general argument that Democrats who got all nostalgic about Senate traditions in 2005 when Republicans were threatening to eliminate filibusters against judicial nominations were not thinking strategically. In particular, those who cheered the Schoolhouse Rock-inspired “Phil A. Buster” ads run by the progressive Alliance for Justice would now probably cringe at the memory.
But for the record, it’s important to remember what was actually going on in 2005, in the Republican effort to force Senate floor votes on Bush judicial nominations. The GOP argument was not against filibusters tout court, but against judicial filibusters. And their argument was that such filibusters were unconstitutional on grounds that they violated the provisions requiring Senate advice and consent for judicial nominations. Indeed, the “nuclear option” they threatened was simply a ruling by the vice president, as presiding officer of the Senate, that Rule XXII governing the terms for ending debate was unconstitutional with respect to judicial nominations. Ending filibusters altogether was never on the table, barring some see-you-and-raise-you Democratic tactic of offering Bush his judges in exchange for a more radical step towards majority rule in the Senate, which was never seriously contemplated.
Sure, Republicans have had some fun over the last couple of years quoting Democrats who made pro-filibuster comments in 2005, and it’s true that some Democrats didn’t try very hard back then to make the specific case for judicial filibusters (a case that could have been made on grounds that lifetime appointments to the federal bench require greater Senate scrutiny than the routine legislation that Republicans now routinely block, creating a virtual 60-vote requirement for Senate action). But Democrats need not spend too much time regretting the failure to take advantage of an opportunity that never really existed in 2005.
Photo Credit: displacedtexan’s Photobucket
This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.
Tags: Chris Bowers, Democratic Party, filibuster
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Tuesday, July 27th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
If it’s Tuesday, there must be another primary election, and today’s is in Oklahoma, where both parties are holding gubernatorial primaries, and there are a couple of congressional contests of interest.
I’ve got a preview up at FiveThirtyEight for those who want a serious run-down. The bottom line is that Attorney General Drew Edmondson is favored to defeat Lt. Gov. Jari Askins for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, in what’s been a very civil contest; while Rep. Mary Fallin is almost certain to defeat Tea Party advocate Randy Brogdon for the GOP nod. Meanwhile, Blue Dog Dan Boren will turn back an underfunded progressive primary challenge, and Republicans will go to runoffs in his district and in Fallin’s.
Oklahoma’s one of those states with a pretty hardy Democratic tradition (registered Dems still outnumber registered Republicans) that’s been trending Red for some time. Hanging onto the governor’s office and a congressional seat, particularly in this kind of year, would be quite an accomplishment. Today’s primary will help determine whether that happens.
Photo Credit: Wright914’s Photostream
This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.
Tags: Campaigns and elections, Dan Boren, Democratic Party, Drew Edmondson, Jari Askins, Mary Fallin, Oklahoma, Randy Brogdon, Republican Party, Tea Party
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Friday, July 23rd, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
I won’t go through the all the results for Tuesday’s Georgia primary, since an earlier P-Fix post covered the basics. But I will mention a few details that I omitted in the quick piece I did on Wednesday.
In the gubernatorial contest, while Democrat Roy Barnes looks highly competitive for the general election (particularly if the Republican runoff gets as nasty as it looks like it may), it’s worth noting that turnout for the GOP primary was just under 700,000, while turnout for the Democratic side was just under 400,000. While turnout in both parties was terrible, and some of the disparity was attributable to the more competitive nature of the GOP battle (and the attendant television ads), it’s a reminder that this state which didn’t have a Republican governor from the early days of Reconstruction until 2002 now has a decided red tint. To win, Barnes will need to run a very good campaign (he’s certainly reconfirmed his reputation as an outstanding fundraiser), while taking advantage of the opportunities the GOP has created in eight years of lackluster governance of the state, and in the extremism of the primary messages of its candidates this year. If Barnes does win, he would interrupt what would otherwise certainly be a blatant Republican gerrymandering effort, made all the worse by Georgia’s acquisition of an additional congressional district.
A second observation is that this is one GOP primary where geography seemed to matter more than ideology or the association of this or that candidate with the Tea Party or some national conservative figure. I’ve posted a fairly elaborate analysis of this topic at FiveThirtyEight, but suffice it to say that Karen Handel finished first more because she is from vote-rich metro Atlanta than because she was endorsed by Jan Brewer and Sarah Palin. The endorsements definitely helped her overcome a financial deficit by generating free media, but in the end half the primary vote was cast in her base region, and that was the most important difference. And that’s also why she has to be considered a heavy favorite in the runoff, since her opponent, Nathan Deal, did well only in his north Georgia base, which provides a much smaller segment of the GOP vote. It’s a measure of the importance of geography that Handel trounced Deal in the Atlanta suburb of Cobb County, home of Deal’s padrone, Newt Gingrich.
Perhaps because of this disadvantage, Deal looks likely to spend the three-week runoff attacking Handel for insufficient conservatism, which won’t be easy given her Palin association and her own harsh record on issues ranging from taxes (she wants to abolish the state income taxes and rely instead on regressive consumption taxes to finance state government) to immigration (as Secretary of State, she initiated a harsh voter ID system that ensnared a good many native citizen voters on primary day). So far Deal has mainly pounded Handel for supporting a rape-and-incest exception to an abortion ban, which used to be an acceptable conservative position, and for making a small contribution to the Log Cabin Republicans back when she was running for office in culturally tolerant Fulton County (Atlanta). Since Handel’s main attack line on Deal has involved ethics allegations, this could be a truly nasty culture-war dominated runoff that could drive up both candidates’ negatives.
In terms of the congressional races, there will be four Republican runoffs on August 10, two in safe Republican districts, one in a safe Democratic district, and one to choose an opponent for theoretically vulnerable Democrat John Barrow (D-GA) (though he is likely to have a big financial advantage and Barack Obama carried his district).
Down-ballot, there will be a highly contentious Republican runoff for Attorney General that could boost statewide turnout. And though it’s not directly connected to the primaries, the general election will be complicated by the fact that outgoing GOP Gov. Sonny Perdue is backing an independent candidate for State School Superintendent because the Republican nominee opposes accepting Race to the Top dollars.
The next primary is in Oklahoma on July 27, where there are competitive gubernatorial contests in both parties.
In polling news, PPP has had some interesting assessments of the Florida governor’s race. The late but free-spending entry of controversial former hospital executive and health reform opponent Rick Scott in the GOP contest has upset a lot of apple carts. A primary survey shows Scott beating long-time front-runner and party warhorse Bill McCollum 43-29, mainly by driving McCollum’s approval ratio among Florida Republicans to a dismal 26-40. But a general election poll shows Democrat Alex Sink beating either Republican (along with independent candidate Bud Chiles). And in the general electorate, Scott’s approval ratio is 23-41 and McCollum’s a truly disastrous 16-51. Like Georgia, this is a state where a Democratic gubernatorial victory could have major implications for redistricting.
In non-candidate polling news, Mark Blumenthal of pollster.com has a solid and very thorough critique of the new Politico “Power and the People” surveys by Mark Penn comparing the views of Americans generally with those of “D.C. Elites.”
Ed Kilgore’s PPI Political Memo runs every Tuesday and Friday.
Photo credit: Chuck “Caveman” Coker’s Photostream
Tags: Alex Sink, Atlanta, Barack Obama, Bill McCollum, Bud Chiles, Campaigns and elections, Democratic Party, FiveThirtyEight, Florida, Georgia, GOP, Jan Brewer, John Barrow, Karen Handel, Mark Blumenthal, Mark Penn, Nathan Deal, Newt Gingrich, Oklahoma, Politics and politicians, Republican Party, Rick Scott, Roy Barnes, Sarah Palin, Sonny Perdue
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Wednesday, July 21st, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
I’ve found this year’s primaries in my home state of Georgia to be very interesting. Clearly, Georgians do not agree. Despite a host of competitive contests in both parties, total turnout in yesterday’s primaries was about 22 percent, which is pretty pathetic.
In any event, the consequences wrought by those few voters were pretty interesting. On the Democratic side, former governor Roy Barnes took the next step in his attempted redemption from a huge stumble in 2002, when his grossly overconfident re-election campaign was upset by a party-switching good ol’ boy named Sonny Perdue. This time around Barnes impressively defeated an African-American statewide elected official by a three-to-one margin, doing especially well in heavily African-American urban areas. Two Democratic congressmen, Hank Johnson and John Barrow, survived primary challenges.
Republicans set themselves up for some potentially wild-and-crazy runoffs. Sarah Palin’s candidate, Karen Handel, will face Newt Gingrich’s candidate, Nathan Deal, on August 10. All kinds of nastiness between these two candidate broke out late in the primary contest; Handel has basically called Deal a crook and Deal has basically called Handel a godless liberal. It’s not likely to get more civil in the runoff.
The Republican congressional primaries produced some odd results, too. You have to have some sympathy for 9th district congressman Tom Graves. He won his gig after a special election in May and then a runoff in June, all because Nathan Deal resigned the seat to (take your pick) devote more time to his gubernatorial campaign or short-circuit an ethics investigation. Then he had to run for a full term in yesterday’s primary, and once again, he’s in a runoff against the same candidate, Lee Hawkins. So Graves and Hawkins will be facing each other for the fourth time in three months.
Then you’ve got state Rep. Clay Cox (R-GA), who was endorsed by a who’s-who of Georgia Republican politics in his bid to succeed the venerable right-winger John Linder in a safe GOP district. Cox dutifully endorsed Linder’s hobby-horse, the “Fair Tax” proposal, and did everything else expected of him. But he finished a poor third, losing not only to Linder’s former chief of staff, Rob Woodall, but also to talk radio host Jody Hice.
In general, the August 10 runoffs will be mostly a Republican affair, and in that rarefied company, we can expect a lot of more-conservative-than-thou one-upsmanship. Looking forward to the general election, Democrats are in reasonably good shape to do relatively well in this red state, in this bad year.
This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.
Photo credit: 55thstreet’s Photostream
Tags: Campaigns and elections, Clay Cox, conservatives, Democratic Party, Fair Tax, Georgia, Hank Johnson, Jody Hice, John Barrow, John Linder, Karen Handel, Lee Hawkins, Nathan Deal, Newt Gingrich, Politics and politicians, Republican Party, Rob Woodall, Roy Barnes, Sarah Palin, Sonny Perdue, Tom Graves
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Tuesday, July 20th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
Today’s major primary is in Georgia, and I covered the Peach State contests pretty thoroughly last week (for more detail, see this preview at FiveThirtyEight). An update, though: one late poll of the Republican gubernatorial race, by Magellan Strategies, shows Karen Handel blowing out to a big lead and long-time front-runner John Oxendine fading fast, with Nathan Deal and Eric Johnson battling for a runoff spot.
The primary calendar going forward includes Oklahoma on July 27; Kansas, Michigan and Missouri on August 3; Tennessee on August 5; and Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia (runoffs) and Minnesota on August 10. The general election calendar for November picked up an additional contest, with West Virginia formally scheduling a special election for the late Sen. Bob Byrd’s seat. The candidates are expected to be West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin, a Democrat, and Republican Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), with the special election statute enabling the latter to run concurrently for re-election and for the Senate.
Second-quarter fundraising figures for federal contests have been trickling out during the last week, and the number that drew the most attention was probably the 4.5 million haul brought in by Florida Republican Senate candidate Marco Rubio, more than doubling the funds raised by apostate Gov. Charlie Crist. On the other hand, a new PPP survey of the Florida Senate contest shows Crist maintaining a 35-29 lead over Rubio in a three-way race with Democrat Kendrick Meek (who has 17 percent); 52 percent of Crist’s support is from Democrats. In Nevada, controversial Republican nominee Sharron Angle outraised Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) by $400,000 ($2.6 million to $2.2 million), though again, the latest poll, from Mason-Dixon, showed Reid now up by 44-37. And in CA, incumbent Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) had a very good second quarter, raising $4.6 million. Her Republican challenger, Carly Fiorina, raised $3 million, but $1.1 million of that total was a loan from her own personal wealth. The latest poll there, from Rasmussen, shows Boxer up by seven points, 49-42. The largest disconnect between money and public opinion is in Arkansas, where incumbent Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) outraised Republican John Boozman by a four-to-one margin (though a lot of that was to finance her primary and runoff battles with Bill Halter); even Lincoln’s own polling, from Benenson, shows her trailing Boozman 45-36, while other polls have her down 2-1.
Poll Watch
In other polling news, Rasmussen has Democrat Richard Blumenthal maintaining a 53-40 lead over Republican Linda McMahon in the Connecticut Senate race; and shows Republican Paul LePage holding a 39-31 lead over Democrat Libby Mitchell (with independent Eliot Cutler at 15 percent) in the Maine gubernatorial contest. A Glengariff Group poll for the Detroit News of the Michigan Republican gubernatorial primary shows a close three-way race among congressman Peter Hoekstra, Attorney General Mike Cox, and businessman Rick Snyder. The little-known “outsider” Snyder seems to have a lot of momentum. And in non-election polling news, an ABC/Washington Post survey on Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court nomination shows support for her confirmation continuing to lead opposition by a 53-25 margin.
Photo credit: Hjl’s Photostream
Ed Kilgore’s PPI Political Memo runs every Tuesday and Friday
Tags: Barbara Boxer, Bill Halter, Blanche Lincoln, Bob Byrd, Campaigns and elections, Carly Fiorina, Charlie Crist, Colorado, Connecticut, conservatives, Democratic Party, Elena Kagan, Eliot Cutler, Eric Johnson, FiveThirtyEight, Georgia, Harry Reid, Joe Manchin, John Boozman, John Oxendine, Kansas, Karen Handel, Kendrick Meek, Libby Mitchell, linda McMahon, Magellan Stategies, Marco Rubio, Michigan, Mike Cox, Minnesota, Missouri, Nathan Deal, Oklahoma, Paul LePage, Peter Hoekstra, Politics and politicians, progressives, Republican Party, Richard Blumenthal, Rick Snyder, Sharron Angle, Shelley Moore Capito, Tennessee
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Monday, July 19th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
It’s been obvious for quite some time–dating back at least to the fall of 2008–that the Republican Party is undergoing an ideological transformation that really is historically unusual. Normally political parties that go through two consecutive really bad electoral cycles downplay ideology and conspicuously seek “the center.” Not today’s GOP, in which there are virtually no self-identified “moderates,” and all the internal pressure on politicians — and all is no exaggeration — is from the right.
But as Jonathan Chait notes today, there are two distinct phenomena pulling the GOP to the right this year: there’s ideological radicalism, to be sure, but also what he calls “tactical radicalism:”
Obviously the conservative movement is intoxicated with hubris right now. Part of this hubris is their belief that the American people are truly and deeply on their side and that the last two elections were either a fluke or the product of a GOP that was too centrist. It’s a tactical radicalism, a belief that ideological purity carries no electoral cost whatsoever.
This is what I’ve called the “move right and win” hypothesis, and it’s generally based on some “hidden majority” theory whereby every defeat is the product of a discouraged conservative base or some anti-conservative conspiracy (e.g., the bizarre “ACORN stole the election” interpretation of 2008). As Chait observes, there is a counterpart hypothesis on the left, but is vastly less influential, and anyone watching internal party politics these days will note the vast difference in tone between Democratic primaries where moderation is a virtue and Republican primaries where it’s a vice.
While many Democrats (including Chait in the piece I’ve linked to) are interested in the short-term implications of tactical radicalism, such as the possibility that GOP candidates like Sharron Angle or Rand Paul could lose races that should be Republican cakewalks, there’s a long-term factor as well that no one should forget about for a moment. If, as is almost universally expected, Republicans have a very good midterm election year after a highly-self-conscious lurch to the right, will there be any force on earth limiting the tactical radicalism of conservatives going forward? I mean, really, there’s been almost no empirical evidence supporting the “move right and win” hypothesis up until now, and we see how fiercely it’s embraced by Republicans. Will 2010 serve as the eternal validator of the belief that America is not just a “center-right country” but a country prepared to repudiate every progressive development of the last century or so?
That could well be the conviction some conservatives carry away from this election cycle, and if so, what would normally pass for the political “center” will be wide open for Democrats to occupy for the foreseeable future.
Photo Credit: Steve Rhode’s Photostream
This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.
Tags: Campaigns and elections, Conservatism, conservatives, Democratic Party, ideology, Jonathan Chait, Politics and politicians, Rand Paul, Republican Party, Sharron Angle, tactical radicalism
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Friday, July 16th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
As alert readers know by now, Robert Bentley won the Republican gubernatorial runoff in Alabama, with Terri Sewell winning the 7th district Democratic congressional nomination (tantamount to election), and Martha Roby turning back viral ad icon Rick Barber for the Republican nomination in the 2nd congressional district. My write-up of the results can be found here.
The next big primary state is Georgia, where voters go to the polls next Tuesday, July 20. There are competitive primaries for governor in both parties; and competitive Republican primaries for Congress in no fewer than six districts, with two Democratic congressional primaries that have drawn some attention. Georgia has a 50 percent nomination requirement, which means many contests will go to a runoff on August 10. This is also a state with a history of substantial early voting, though as of last week, mail-in and in-person ballots were down from prior elections, perhaps indicating a low turnout.
The Republican gubernatorial race (incumbent Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue is term-limited) has heated up in the last week, with a bunch of polls, sharp exchanges between candidates, and interventions by national figures. For most of the cycle, the front-runner has been State Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine, though he’s been considered vulnerable because of long-pending ethics investigations of alleged illegal contributions to his campaign by insurance companies. Three other candidates—former Secretary of State Karen Handel, former congressman Nathan Deal (who has some ethics issues of his own, which appeared to speed his departure from Congress), and state senator Eric Johnson—have been jockeying for a runoff position opposite Oxendine, though at least two polls now show the front-runner slipping into third place. Handel, whose campaign message closely resembles that of South Carolina gubernatorial nominee Nikki Haley (a “conservative reformer” fighting the “corrupt good old boys”), has been the candidate on the move of late, and got priceless attention this week from a Facebook endorsement by Sarah Palin. Deal countered with an endorsement from Georgian Newt Gingrich. Both Oxendine and Deal have been pounding Handel for alleged heresy on abortion and gay rights. And meanwhile, Johnson has been heavily running television ads, and has moved up into the teens in at least one poll. In other words, just about anything could happen on Tuesday, though Handel looks almost sure to have a runoff spot.
In terms of issues, all the GOP candidates have been competing to show avid support for an Arizona-style illegal immigration crackdown (Deal’s made this a signature issue, while Handel has sported an endorsement from Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer), and two candidates, Oxendine and Handel, have proposed abolition of the state’s income tax, reflecting the wild popularity of national “Fair Tax” proposals among Georgia Republicans. And all the candidates are hard-core conservatives on cultural issues, though Handel got into a fight with Georgia Right-to-Life by opposing its proposal to restrict IV fertilization procedures.
On the Democratic side, the big question all along has been whether former Gov. Roy Barnes, who lost to Perdue in a big upset eight years ago, can win the primary without a runoff, as most recent polls have suggested he will. Barnes’ most prominent challenger, Attorney General Thurbert Baker, got off to a very late start in television advertising, and is now trying to attract enough support from his fellow African-Americans to deny Barnes the win (African-Americans typically cast close to half the votes in Democratic primaries in Georgia). Baker got a significant boost earlier this week with an endorsement from President Bill Clinton (Baker was a big Human Rights Campaign supporter in 2008), and has been promoting legalization of electronic bingo as a way to raise money for K-12 education. But Barnes has strong African-American support of his own; just today he was endorsed by Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed. Other significant candidates who could soak up some votes include former Secretary of State David Poythress, who’s been running an under-the-radar web-focused campaign, and former state House Democratic leader Dubose Porter, whose wife, Carol, is the odds-on favorite to win the Democratic nomination for Lt. Governor.
On the congressional front, the state’s two white (and Blue Doggy) Democratic House members, Jim Marshall and John Barrow, are as usual considered vulnerable in November. Marshall, whose district went solidly for John McCain, has drawn a strong opponent in state representative Scott Austin, who should win the GOP nomination easily on Tuesday. Barrow, whose district is marginally Democratic even in presidential years, has for the second time drawn a primary challenge from former state representative Regina Thomas, whom he beat 3-1 in 2008. Thomas got some help from in-district anger at Barrow’s vote against health care reform, but his massive financial advantage should get him over the line. Meanwhile, Tea Party-backed candidate Ray McKinney is favored over former fire chief Carl Smith for the right to oppose Barrow, though that race could easily go to a runoff.
There are big and active Republican primaries in the districts of African-American congressmen David Scott and Hank Johnson (who also faces former Dekalb County executive Vernon Jones, something of a party renegade, in the primary but isn’t expected to lose), who has had recent health problems, but Republicans would have to get very lucky to become competitive in either place.
An open seat in the north metro Atlanta 7th district has spawned a mammoth eight-candidate Republican primary to succeed John Linder, with every single candidate endorsing Linder’s “Fair Tax” proposal. Former state representative Clay Cox and former Linder chief of staff Rob Woodall are the favorite to make a runoff, though Christian Right figure Jody Hice also has some support.
And up in the North Georgia 9th district, until recently represented by gubernatorial candidate Nathan Deal, the winner of last month’s special election, Tea Party favorite and former state representative Tom Graves, must face pretty much the same field of opponents in the primary, but is expected to win.
In non-Georgia political news, the big development was probably the implosion of the Colorado gubernatorial campaign of former congressman (and GOP front-runner) Scott McInnis, accused of plagiarizing portions of a think-tank paper for which he was grossly overpaid a few years ago. Colorado Republicans are in a quandary; the only other candidate on the primary ballot, Don Maes, has struggled to raise money, and has, ironically, also been cited for campaign finance violations. To hand-pick another viable candidate, party leaders would have to wait for the primary to occur and then beg the winner to step aside.
Ed Kilgore’s PPI Political Memo runs every Tuesday and Friday
Photo credit: Airno’s Photostream
Tags: Alabama, Bill Clinton, Campaigns and elections, Carl Smith, Carol Porter, Clay Cox, Colorado, conservatives, David Poythress, David Scott, Democratic Party, Don Maes, Dubose Porter, Education, Eric Johnson, Facebook, Georgia, Hank Johnson, Human Rights Campaign, immigration reform, income tax, Jan Brewer, Jim Marshall, Jody Hice, John Barrow, John Linder, John McCain, John Oxendine, Karen Handel, Kasim Reed, Martha Roby, Nathan Deal, Newt Gingrich, Nikki Haley, Politics and politicians, Public opinion, Ray McKinney, Regina Thomas, Republican Party, Rick Barber, Right-to-Life, Rob Woodall, Robert Bentley, Roy Barnes, Sarah Palin, Scott Austin, Scott McInnis, Senate, Sonny Perdue, Taxes, Tea Party, Terri Sewell, Thurbert Baker, Tom Graves, Vernon Jones
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Wednesday, July 14th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
Going into yesterday’s Alabama runoffs, the Republican gubernatorial contest revolved around rumors of a big, teacher-union-generated Democratic crossover vote in favor of Dr. Robert Bentley, along with speculation that his opponent, Bradley Byrne, might have gained crucial momentum by accusing Bentley of being a Democratic or union stooge.
Bentley beat Byrne 56-44, and a cursory look at the returns shows no evidence of any massive Democratic crossover vote. In fact, turnout was down 6 percent from the primary, with no apparent relationship between Republican turnout numbers and those counties with or without significant Democratic contests to keep Democrats on their side of the line. Moreover, Byrne did quite well in most of the counties with a big Democratic constituency. There was some anecdotal buzz yesterday about Democratic crossover in isolated locations (e.g., Madison County, where Republican turnout actually dropped 17 percent), but most election officials said it didn’t seem to be happening.
The much more likely explanation is that Bentley got the bulk of voters who cast ballots for Tim James and Roy Moore in the primary, hardly a stretch since both their campaign managers endorsed Bentley. James voters in particular probably discounted Byrne’s attacks on Bentley as no more credible than Byrne’s earlier attacks on their candidate.
In any event, future Republican candidates who think demonizing teachers unions is a failsafe strategy should take a close look at Alabama.
In the two congressional runoffs, nothing that unusual happened, either. In the 2nd district Republican contest, “establishment” candidate Martha Roby easily dispatched Tea Party activist Rick Barber 60-40, beating him nearly three-to-one in their common home county, Montgomery, where the fiery pool hall owner did not gather his armies effectively. Roby will now face Democratic incumbent Bobby Bright in what is expected to be a close race in November.
And in the 7th district Democratic contest, where the Democratic nomination really is tantamount to election, Terri Sewell, who had superior financial resources and significant national support, defeated Shelia Smoot 55-45, with the key being Sewell’s 54-46 margin in Jefferson County, where local races boosted turnout.
Photo credit: Roadside Bandit’s Photostream
This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.
Tags: Alabama, Bobby Bright, Bradley Byrne, Campaigns and elections, Democratic Party, Madison County, Martha Roby, Republican Party, Rick Barber, Robert Bentley, Roy Moore, Shelia Smoot, Tea Party, teacher union, Terri Sewell, Tim James
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Monday, July 12th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
Seyward Darby has an amusing piece at the New Republic’s site with some of the loonier provisions found in state Republican Party platform documents.
It’s all good clean fun, but does this craziness matter? No, suggests the CW; party platform committees these days, at any level, are a sandbox dominated by ideological activists, producing turgid documents that candidates feel free to ignore.
Fair enough, I guess, but what about those states where ideological activists have an unusually important role? How about, say, Iowa, whose caucuses often all but dictate one or the other party’s nominating process?
I strongly suggest a reading of the Iowa Republican Party Platform by anyone who accuses “liberals” or “the media” of exaggerating the extremism of today’s conservatives.
This 367-plank, 12,000-word document, adopted just last month at the Iowa State Republican Convention, is relentlessly kooky. Right up top, before the “statement of principles,” the platform features a long, ominous quote from Cicero about “traitors.” It’s not made clear whether said traitors are Democrats, RINOs, or Muslims, but treason sure seems to be a major preoccupation for Iowa Republicans.
Once you get to the “statement of principles,” it’s hard to miss principle number seven, which would have satisfied Ayn Rand even on one of her crankier days:
The individual works hard for what is his/hers. Therefore, the individual will determine with whom he/she will share it, not the government. No more legal plunder. Legal plunder is defined as using the law to take from one person what belongs to them, and giving it to others to whom it does not belong. It is plunder if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what that citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.
Given that principle, it’s not surprising that elsewhere the platform flatly calls for the abolition of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (along with minimum wage laws), and of the federal departments of Agriculture (!), Education and Energy. It also appears to oppose any anti-discrimination laws of any sort.
Beyond such basics, the Iowa GOP Platform is essentially a compilation of every right-wing consipracy theory-based preoccupation known to man. In a nod to Glenn Beck, the statement of principles mentions “Progressivism” along with “Collectivism, Socialism, Fascism, [and] Communism” as ideologies incompatible with the Founding Fathers’ design. There’s a birther plank. There’s a plank about the “NAFTA Superhighway.” There’s a plank about ACORN. There’s a plank about the “fairness doctrine.” There’s plank after plank after plank opposing the nefarious activities of the United Nations. There’s a plank calling for abolition of the Federal Reserve System. Needless to say, there are many, many planks spelling out total opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage in excrutiating detail, and attacking any limitation on campaign activities or use of tax dollars by religious organizations.
The very end of the platform holds that Republican candidates should be denied party funds if they don’t agree with at least 80% of the platform, as determined by questionnaires asking about every single crazy plank. This is something we should all be able to get behind; I’d love to see not only Iowa Republican gubernatorial candidate Terry Branstad, a notorious fence-straddler on many issues, but the entire 2012 GOP presidential field, have to check boxes next to solemn items like:
We oppose any effort to implement Islamic Shariah law in this country.
If all this madness is really out of the mainstream of Republican thinking, then perhaps the adults of the GOP should expend the minimum effort necessary to say so very explicitly.
Photo credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapita.com’s Photostream
This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.
Tags: Ayn Rand, Clean energy and technology, Conservatism, Democratic Party, Education, Glenn Beck, Iowa, Iowa Republican Party Platform, Medicaid, Medicare, Muslims, New Republic, Politics and politicians, Progressivism, Republican Party, RINO, Seyward Darby, Social Security, Terry Branstad, United Nations
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Thursday, July 8th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
As regular readers might recall, back in May I did an analysis which predicted that the furor over immigration policy touched off in Arizona would have its greatest political impact not in the southwest or west coast, but in the Deep South, where a combination of new and highly visible Hispanic populations, low Hispanic voting levels, and red-hot Republican primaries would likely bring the issue to the forefront.
Nothing that’s happened since then has made me change my mind about that, though southern Republican unanimity on backing the Arizona law and replicating it everywhere has reduced the salience of immigration as a differentiator in some GOP primaries, most notably in South Carolina (where in any event the Nikki Haley saga eclipsed everything else).
But in Georgia, whose primary is on July 20, immigration is indeed a big issue in the gubernatorial contest, as reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Jim Galloway:
For the next 13 days, all stops are off when it comes to debating the issue of illegal immigration.
The Obama administration’s court challenge to the Arizona law that gives its peace officers the authority to stop and impound undocumented residents is already serving as a stick to a wasp nest in Georgia’s race for governor.
Former congressman Nathan Deal’s first TV ad of the primary season on Wednesday focused on illegal immigration and a promise that Georgia would soon have an Arizona-style law.
On the answering machines of tens of thousands of GOP voters, former secretary of state Karen Handel left a message of endorsement from Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer. Expect to see Brewer at Handel’s side before the July 20 vote.
The climate doesn’t brook dissent. Democrats have been uniformly silent on the Arizona issue.
As it happens, Deal and Handel are battling for a runoff spot. Handel and long-time Republican front-runner John Oxendine are also proposing radical changes in the state tax code, abolishing income taxes entirely, but so far that momentous issue is not getting the kind of attention generated by the action of another state on immigration three time zones away.
Photo credit: Th.omas’ Photostream
This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.
Tags: Arizona, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Georgia, GOP, Immigration, Jan Brewer, Jim Galloway, John Oxendine, Karen Handel, Nathan Deal, Nikki Haley, Republican Party, South Carolina
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