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Politics and politicians ’
Thursday, October 21st, 2010
Mark Reutter
PPI Fellow Mark Reutter is the former editor of
Railroad History and author of
Making Steel: Sparrows Point and the Rise and Ruin of American Industrial Might (2005, rev. ed.).
by Mark Reutter
1993. That’s when both Switzerland decided to construct a low-elevation rail line through the Alps and New Jersey committed itself to a new train link to Manhattan under the Hudson River.
But here the similarities end. Switzerland is now celebrating the breakthrough of the Gotthard Base Tunnel – at 35½ miles, the longest rail tunnel in the world – while New Jersey waits to see if Republican Gov. Chris Christie will officially kill a much shorter tunnel that began construction only last year. (His decision is expected shortly following a two-week review requested by federal officials.)
Chalk up the contrast – mission accomplished vs. mission barely begun before halted – to the cumbersome and increasingly dysfunctional way America handles infrastructure projects.
The problems in New Jersey began with the enormous array of legal and environmental hoops required to get the tunnel – dubbed Access to the Region’s Core or ARC – through local, state and federal approval processes. These “soft costs” added years of delay and were a major cause of the cost overruns that Gov. Christie cited as the reason for his decision to cancel the tunnel.
But the real hurdle was not bureaucratic red tape but the absence of a government entity that structures, strategizes and finances infrastructure projects free from the transient squabbles of politicians and their appointed minions.
Swiss Precision
An orderly system was developed for the biggest infrastructure project in Swiss history. An infrastructure fund was established with long-term financing based on taxes approved by voters. A single minister, Moritz Leuenberger, has been responsible for guiding the tunnel project through the shoals of Swiss politics as well as negotiating a bilateral agreement with the European Union.
When completed in 2019, the tunnel and related improvements will funnel about 300 high-speed passenger and freight trains (the latter running upward of 99 mph) beneath the Alps every day. The line is expected to serve as a key overland corridor between northern and southern Europe for the rest of the century.
The ARC tunnel is considerably less ambitious in scope, but nevertheless critical to the future of one of the most economically important regions in the U.S. The double-track rail line into Manhattan, opened in 1910 by the Pennsylvania Railroad, is now saturated to capacity with Amtrak and NJ Transit trains. ARC would add two more tracks, doubling the number of trains that could pass under the river and terminate at a new underground station in Manhattan.
Breaking a Campaign Promise
Serious study of the project began in 1993 as a venture between NJ Transit, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The MTA bowed out and the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) stepped in more recently.
The three agencies have been uneasy partners, cooperating on the engineering side of the project while simultaneously seeking to limit their share of the costs. The FTA has committed $3 billion, but says it doesn’t have more because of Congress’ failure to pass a new surface transportation authorization bill.
The Port Authority has also pledged $3 billion, but with a growing lack of enthusiasm after Bill Baroni was appointed deputy executive director of the Port Authority by Christie. (Baroni is a prominent New Jersey Republican with no background in infrastructure or transportation policy.)
And then there’s Christie himself, who inherited the project after defeating ardent tunnel advocate, Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine, last November.
Christie supported the project during the gubernatorial race, but now says he began doubting the project’s financial viability last winter. After a cursory report from a committee that included Baroni and other Christie appointees, the governor concluded that the tunnel could cost between $2 billion and $5 billion over its current price tag of $8.7 billion.
Armed with that headline figure, Christie announced two weeks ago that he was canceling the project because “I can’t put taxpayers on a never-ending hook.” Admitting that he was breaking a campaign promise, he added coolly, “This is a mathematics question. We’re broke. I’m not going to be contributing to that and put us further into debt for a project if we can’t afford it.”
Nearly $500 million has already been spent, and a $583 million contract was awarded for the design of the Manhattan side of the tunnel. New Jersey is on the hook for about half of the already expended funds.
Following the announcement, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood met with Christie. He wrested out a concession that the governor would agree to a two-week review of the project by NJ Transit and FTA officials.
Word in the media is that Christie’s resolve has only increased since then. He has refused to consider increasing the state’s gas tax or placing a small surcharge on motorists going into Manhattan to pay for possible cost overruns, eliciting scathing criticism from U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg and other Democratic officeholders.
Nobody (neither federal nor state officials) has informed the public of detailed cost estimates for the project. Indeed, it appears that the two parties are barely talking as mutual distrust and recriminations paralyze the process.
Angling for Higher Office
Christie’s decision to withdraw from the project has only solidified his reputation as a darling of the Republican right. In recent weeks Christie was on a national tour backing GOP candidates for governor, two of whom (John Kasich in Ohio and Scott Walker in Wisconsin) have announced their opposition to accepting federal stimulus money to build passenger rail lines.
By scrapping ARC, Christie can burnish his reputation as a cost cutter to deficit-minded Republicans and independents who don’t have to commute to New York. From this point of view, the cancellation is an easy call for a man widely believed to be angling for a slot on the national Republican ticket in 2012 or 2016.
Last Friday, the breakthrough of the shaft of the Gotthard Tunnel was carried live on Swiss television. Since then, an outpouring of praise and admiration has rained down on the country from the world press and politicians. A recent poll found that 67 percent of Swiss residents support the rail project as a way to divert traffic from highways and protect the country’s mountains, lakes and resorts.
Meanwhile, wags in New Jersey have labeled the fruits of 17 years of planning and preliminary construction the “tunnel to nowhere.” Of course, the problem of moving people through one of the most congested parts of the world isn’t going away. Long after Christie leaves office, New Jersey’s economic well-being will suffer, while the costs that the governor says taxpayers can’t afford will only escalate.
But that’s not part of the political hardball now being played along the banks of the Hudson River.
Photo credit: Becka Spence
Tags: Alps, Amtrak, ARC, ARC tunnel, Bill Baroni, Campaigns and elections, Chris Christie, cost cutter, deficit-minded, Democrats, double-track rail, environmental hoops, environmental protection, European Union, federal stimulus, Federal Transit Administration, Frank Lautenberg, freight, FTA, government entity, gubernatorial race, high-speed, highways, Hudson River, independents, infrastructure projects, John Kasich, Jon Corzine, long-term financing, low-elevation rail, Manhattan, Moritz Leuenberger, MTA, national Republican ticket, never-ending hook, New Jersey, New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, NJ Transit, Ohio, Pennsylvania Railroad, Politics and politicians, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Ray LaHood, red tape, Region’s Core, Republican, Scott Walker, soft costs, Swiss, Switzerland, taxpayers, train, Transportation, tunnel to nowhere, Tunnels, U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Wisconsin
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Wednesday, October 20th, 2010
Will Marshall
Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Will Marshall
It’s crazy, I know, but imagine that U.S. political leaders after the midterm election called a truce in the partisan tong wars to work out a compromise solution to the nation’s fiscal dilemmas. The result would probably look a lot like a new fiscal reform blueprint drawn up by two canny policy veterans, Bill Galston and Maya MacGuineas.
In The Future Is Now: A Balanced Plan to Stabilize Public Debt and Promote Economic Growth, Galston and MacGuineas map a radically centrist course to fiscal discipline that demands equal sacrifice from the left and the right, and that doesn’t impede economic recovery. Here’s hoping that President Obama’s deficit commission, which is groping for a politically feasible formula for fiscal restraint, will give this plan a close look.
Reducing America’s swollen deficits and debts is fast becoming an urgent national priority. Since President Obama took office, we’ve added three trillion dollars to the public debt, largely thanks to emergency spending to rescue the banking system and goose a faltering economy. But it’s the zooming growth of health care and retirement spending that really threatens to drown the federal government in debt. For decades, we’ve ignored warnings about the growing funding gaps in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, but with the first wave of baby boomers now reaching retirement age, the future really is now.
We’ve dug ourselves more than a hole – it’s a canyon. So any talk now about balancing the federal budget is pure fantasy. The best we can hope for is to arrest the runaway growth of public debt and bring it back down to a sustainable level.
The administration’s forecasts show public debt, 40 percent of GDP two years ago, rising to more than 100 percent in 2012. The Galston-MacGuineas plan would bring that down to 60 percent of economic output by the end of this decade. It also would slash annual budget deficits from a projected five-to-six percent to around one percent, ensuring that our debts don’t grow faster than the economy.
Inevitably, the plan envisions a 50-50 split between spending reductions and tax hikes. It’s hard to image any other way forward considering liberal resistance to spending cuts, especially for the big entitlements that are driving our long-term debt problem, and the conservative allergy to tax increases of any kind. The hacking and lifting, however, would be phased in gradually to give the economy room to breathe and recover.
More specifically, the plan would:
- Make sizeable cuts in defense spending, and impose a war surtax should our current conflicts extend beyond mid-decade.
- Freeze discretionary spending for three years, such that increases in spending in one area would have to be made up by cuts elsewhere.
- Modernize Social Security by indexing the retirement age to longevity, and trimming benefits for affluent retirees in the future. It would also raise the minimum benefit, strengthening the program’s anti-poverty effect, cut the payroll tax and add a new, mandatory savings account.
- Supplement the cost-containment features of President Obama’s comprehensive health plan, by raising Medicare premiums, reducing subsidies and adding tort reform.
- Prune tax expenditures (which cost more than one trillion dollars a year) by 10 percent and limit their future growth. The proceeds would go to lower tax rates and deficit reduction.
- Enact a carbon tax, both to “buy down” the payroll tax and cut deficits.
Many of these proposals, of course, are deemed politically radioactive now, even if they are familiar fixtures on the wish lists of serious fiscal hawks. So why should we expect a package stuffed with political non-starters to advance?
Because the habit of evading even modestly tough choices has allowed the debt problem to reach such ginormous proportions that it can’t be solved in any other way, say Galston and MacGuineas. And if it isn’t solved, it will slow down U.S. economic growth, transfer our wealth to overseas creditors, and limit the federal budget’s fiscal capacity to respond to future emergencies.
The big question is: what impact will the midterm election have on the politics of fiscal evasion? Republicans say cutting taxes is the way to shrink government, but showed little stomach for cutting spending when they were in office. Result: huge public debts. Some Democrats believe deficits should be closed mostly by tax hikes, but aren’t really willing to propose them. Result: huge public debts.
As the Galston-MacGuineas plan shows, solving our fiscal problems doesn’t have to be a political zero sum game. The question is whether our political leaders can rediscover the lost arts of compromise and risk-sharing to advance vital national goals.
Photo credit: Steve Rhodes
Tags: anti-poverty, baby boomers, banking system, big entitlements, Bill Galston, carbon tax, centrist, compromise solution, deficit commission, deficits and debts, discretionary spending, economic recovery, faltering economy., federal budget, fiscal discipline, fiscal hawks, Fiscal Reform, Fiscal Responsibility, fiscal restraint, growth, health care and retirement, liberal resistance, longevity, Maya MacGuineas, Medicaid, Medicare, midterm election, minimum benefit, nation’s fiscal dilemmas, new fiscal reform blueprint, overseas creditors, payroll tax, Politics and politicians, President Obama, Progressivism, public debt, radical center, retirement age, savings account, Social Security, spending reductions, tax expenditures, tax hikes, The Future Is Now: A Balanced Plan to Stabilize Public Debt and Promote Economic Growth, tort reform, U.S. political leaders, war surtax
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Tuesday, October 5th, 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 spin wars continue over polling assessments of the two parties´ prospects nationally and in individual contests, the overall situation remains relatively stable, with a lot of the fireworks in the national news coming from California, where a controversy regarding Meg Whitman´s employment of an illegal immigrant is not exactly helping her gubernatorial campaign.
The most ominous news for Democrats came yesterday, when Gallup’s weekly tracking poll offered a likely voter sample for the first time this year. It showed Republicans with a 13 percent margin among likely voters, much larger than the three percent margin among registered voters.
At 538.com, Nate Silver offers a useful analysis Likely Voter/Registered Voter numbers from all pollsters, showing the Gallup “gap” to be unusually high. But it bears close watching, since likely voter estimates tend to become more accurate the closer you get to election day.
Our regional roundups continue today with the Northeast, the most pro-Democratic region in 2008, and a source of considerable residual Democratic strength today. According to Gallup´s tracking polls, the northeast region gives President Obama his only majority job approval numbers, currently at 51 percent.
There are eight Senate seats currently at stake in the Northeast, seven currently held by Democrats. Two of them—held by Vermont´s Pat Leahy and New York´s Chuck Schumer—are completely safe. Among the other five Democratic seats, Democrats have a robust if not invulnerable lead in three (Gillibrand of New York, Blumenthal of Connecticut, and Coons of Delaware); Republicans have held a steady lead in one (Toomey over Sestak in Pennsylvania); and one is dead even (Manchin versus Raese in West Virginia). Republicans have a strong but not insurmountable lead to hold on to the one (open) Republican seat, in New Hampshire, where Kelly Ayotte leads Paul Hodes.
The best-case scenario for Republicans, which would include Linda McMahon`s dollars making Connecticut truly competitive, is a gain of three seats. Democrats would be happy with a net loss of one.
In the gubernatorial races, Democrats currently hold six governorships that are up this year (Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland) and Republicans three (Vermont, Rhode Island and Connecticut). According to the Cook Political Report, all but two of these nine gubernatorial races are currently tossups, with Democrats heavily favored to hold onto New York and Pennsylvania being rated “lean Republican.” Polling shows Republicans leading in Maine as well as Pennsylvania, and Democrats leading in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Maryland; Vermont appears to be very close. The range of possible outcomes is very broad, but in gubernatorial races, the northeast appears to rival the West as the most promising Democratic region, in no small part because Dems are likely to pick up some Republican seats.
In House races, New York and Pennsylvania seats make the northeast a potential source of major Republican gains. Two New York and four Pennsylvania Democrats are in races considered toss-ups by Cook; four more New York districts and another in Pennsylvania are rated “lean Democratic,” vulnerable to a last-minute pro-GOP wave. Both New Hampshire seats, now held by Democrats, are also tossups, along with an open seat in West Virginia and Frank Kratovil`s seat in Maryland. The region does include a rare probable Democratic House pickup, in Delaware. In general, the Northeast is the region where the size and scope of Republican House gains will most be determined.
Photo credit: Peter Miller
Tags: 538.com, Blumenthal, California, Campaigns and elections, chuck schumer, Connecticut, Cook Political Report, Coons, Delaware, Frank Kratovil, Gallup, Gillibrand, governorships, illegal immigrant, Kelly Ayotte, lean Democratic, lean Republican, linda McMahon, Maine, Manchin, Maryland, Massachusetts, Meg Whitman, Nate Silver, New Hampshire, New York, Northeast, Pat Leahy, Paul Hodes, Pennsylvania, Politics and politicians, pro-Democratic, Raese, Rhode Island, Toomey, tossups, Vermont, West Virginia
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Monday, October 4th, 2010
Lee Drutman
Lee Drutman is a senior fellow and the managing editor for the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Lee Drutman
A National Infrastructure Bank is an idea whose time has come. The politics are tricky, but there is clear recognition from leading public and private sector thinkers that we need to make big investments in infrastructure, and that we need to make those investments in a rational way.
These were the key takeaway points from Friday’s second panel on the question of “Financing Future Growth,” which was part of the Progressive Policy Institute’s Second Annual North American Strategic Leadership Infrastructure Leadership Forum in Washington, DC.
The panelists were: U.S. Representative Rosa L. DeLauro (D-CT), Sponsor of National Infrastructure Development Bank Act of 2009 (H.R. 2521); Chris Bertram, Assistant Secretary for Budget and Programs and C.F.O., U.S. Department of Transportation; Leo Hindery, Jr., Investor, Managing Partner of InterMedia Partners VII; former President and CEO of AT&T Broadband; former President, Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI); and Everett Ehrlich, Economist, President of ESC Company; former Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs. PPI President Will Marshall moderated.
Rep. DeLauro set the tone for the panel by underlining the urgency for doing something big. “We need to be serious about a growth strategy,” DeLauro told a packed audience. “This is not stimulus, this is not recovery, this is whether we can grow and create jobs to compete with the economic power centers of the world. China invests nine percent of its GDP in infrastructure. India invests five percent. We invest less than two percent.”
And yet, Rep. DeLauro’s bill to create a National Infrastructure Bank and turn a chaotic ad-hoc infrastructure appropriations process into a rational national strategy has attracted only 60 co-sponsors – and not a single Republican.
“Resistance is internal to Congress,” said Hindery. “They would give up so much grant and earmark authority. Members are hesitant to see that move into an independent entity.”
Hindery argued that the key was leadership, and that the President wasn’t doing enough of it. “It has to be a stated priority,” he said. “It can’t be a proffered idea with tepid support.”
Ehrlich, who wrote a PPI Policy Memo on how an infrastructure bank should operate, was optimistic that this is an idea whose time has come. “This is a remarkable moment in infrastructure,” he said. “We are finally at a place where all the communities know the current programs are brain-dead…Local planners are wondering where the funds are going to come from, private investors are circling around the periphery of the area, looking for a way in.”
Hindery also noted that both the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable – both of whom have been largely resistant to any form of domestic spending – have come out in favor of an infrastructure bank. However, DeLauro said her Republican colleagues in Congress were not hearing this.
DeLauro highlighted that there is strong public support for making big investments in infrastructure: about 80 percent of Americans say they’d be willing to pay extra for more infrastructure.
Hindery also argued that in order for the proposal to pass, it would need to have a buy-American component, so that they unions would be on board. He also thought that making it explicitly a “jobs bill” would be effective. There was general agreement on this point.
Bertram, speaking for the administration, said that the President was serious about pushing an infrastructure bank. “I think the President is very interested in changing how we talk about these issues.”
DeLauro, who has been introducing legislation to create an infrastructure bank since 1994, was optimistic that the moment for it to pass was rapidly coming.
“We’re facing an economic crisis now, and we’re looking for ways to grow our economy,” said DeLauro. “Infrastructure is one of the pieces that makes sense for national growth. I believe it can be done. It’s not easy, but nothing is easy. And I’ll continue with this for as long as it takes.”
Tags: AT&T Broadband, Budget and Programs, Business Roundtable, C.F.O., Chamber of Commerce, China, Chris Bertram, Department of Transportation, domestic spending, ESC Company, Everett Ehrlich, Future Growth, growth strategy, Inc, India, InterMedia Partners VII, jobs bill, leadership, Leo Hindery, National Infrastructure Bank, National Infrastructure Development Bank Act, New Projects, Politics and politicians, PPI, President, private investors, Progressive Policy Institute, Public opinion, public support, Rosa L. DeLauro, Second Annual North American Strategic Leadership Infrastructure Leadership Forum, Tele-Communications, Transportation, Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs, Will Marshall
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Friday, September 24th, 2010
Will Marshall
Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Will Marshall
Ordinarily, U.S. presidents don’t make headlines by extolling liberty and democracy before an international audience. But when President Obama did just that yesterday at the United Nations, it signaled a welcome shift from his previous reticence on these themes.
Here’s the key passage:
Yet experience shows us that history is on the side of liberty; that the strongest foundation for human progress lies in open economies, open societies, and open governments. To put it simply, democracy, more than any other form of government, delivers for our citizens. And I believe that truth will only grow stronger in a world where the borders between nations are blurred.
For sure, in his 2009 Cairo speech and elsewhere, the President has argued that individual freedom and democracy are universal aspirations. But in general, the administration’s voice has often seemed muted when it comes to standing up for liberal values.
Critics, for example, have cited Obama’s apparent downgrading of human rights in relations with China; U.S. eagerness to “reset” relations with Russia even as that country slides back into authoritarianism; and, the White House’s failure to offer full-throated support to Iran’s “green” movement which arose in protest over a rigged 2009 election.
The administration’s ambivalence about America’s responsibility to abet the spread of liberal democracy is no mystery. It’s a reaction to George W. Bush’s ill-conceived “freedom agenda”, which seemed to conflate U. S. democracy promotion with the use of force in Iraq and threats of “regime change” in hostile countries like Iran and North Korea. Bush’s unmodulated, even messianic, rhetoric about supporting democratic revolutions everywhere rattled America’s foes but also unnerved our friends as well.
President Obama has devoted his first two years to reassuring the world that America is returning to its tradition of cooperative internationalism, and he’s largely succeeded. The U.S. “brand” has been refurbished and America’s global approval ratings have risen.
But in rectifying its predecessor’s mistakes, this administration sometimes leaned too far in the opposition direction. At times it seemed to embrace foreign policy “realism”, which emphasizes material interests and geopolitics and downplays the role of political values and structures in shaping countries’ international conduct. In a telling omission, the administration has organized its foreign policy around the “three Ds” – diplomacy, development and defense – conspicuously excluding a fourth D for democracy.
But realism is antithetical to liberalism, which is why it has been most often associated with Republicans like Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, George H.W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft. From Woodrow Wilson’s day on, Democrats have argued that America can best advance its interests and ideals by throwing her weight on the side of individual rights, economic freedom and democracy. Their guiding philosophy is not realism but liberal internationalism, which holds that a freer world is a safer, more prosperous world.
Obama seemed to reaffirm that outlook yesterday. At the same time, the President continued to be clear that his administration’s approach to supporting democracy would be nothing like Bush’s. Picking up a theme introduced in recent speeches by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he promised greater U.S. support for embattled civil society organizations in authoritarian countries.
Finally, Obama stressed that promoting democracy is not something America should do unilaterally, but in concert with new democracies as well as old allies. That was a pointed challenge to countries like South Africa and some Latin American countries, who have been reluctant to speak out against human rights abuses and tyrannical rule in their own neighborhoods.
In all, it was an important speech that realigned U.S. foreign policy with core values that have defined it at its best, and led to its greatest triumphs.
photo credit: transplanted mountaineer
Tags: America’s responsibility, authoritarianism, borders between nations, Brent Scowcroft, Cairo speech, China, civil society organizations, cooperative internationalism, defense, democracy, Democratic Party, development, Diplomacy, economic freedom, freer world, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Henry Kissinger, Hillary Clinton, human progress, Human rights, human rights abuses, in concert, individual freedom, individual rights, Iran’s “green” movement, Iraq, Latin American, liberal democracy, liberal internationalism, liberal values, liberty, messianic rhetoric, new democracies, North Korea, open economies, open governments, open societies, Politics and politicians, President Obama, promoting democracy, realism, republicans, Richard Nixon, Russia, Secretary of State, South Africa, three Ds, tyrannical rule, U.S. foreign policy, U.S. presidents, unilaterally, United Nations, universal aspirations, Woodrow Wilson, “freedom agenda”
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Thursday, August 5th, 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
So let’s say you’re a Republican politician who’s been working the far right side of the political highway for years, getting little national attention other than the occasional shout-out in Human Events. Or let’s say you’re a sketchy business buccaneer with a few million smackers burning a hole in your pocket, and you’ve decided that you’d like to live in the governor’s mansion for a while, but you can’t get the local GOP to see you as anything more than a walking checkbook who funds other people’s dreams.
What do you do? That’s easy: Get yourself in front of the loudest parade in town by becoming a Tea Party Activist!
There has been incessant discussion over the last year about the size, character, and intentions of the Tea Party rank-and-file. But, by and large, the political discussion has passed over another defining phenomenon: The beatific capacity of Tea Party membership, which enables virtually anyone with ambition to whitewash his hackishness—and transform from a has-been or huckster into an idealist on a crusade.
After all, to become a “Tea Party favorite” or a “Tea Party loyalist,” all a politician has to do is say that he or she is one—and maybe grab an endorsement from one of many hundreds of local groups around the country. It’s even possible to become indentified as the “Tea Party” candidate simply by entering a primary against a Republican who voted for TARP, the Medicare Prescription Drug bill, or No Child Left Behind. It’s not like there’s much upside to distancing oneself from the movement. Most Republican pols are as friendly as can be to the Tea Party; and it’s a rare, self-destructive elephant who would emulate Lindsey Graham’s dismissal of it all as a passing fad (in public at least).
Here, we’ll take a look at two specific types of politicians who have been especially eager to embrace the Tea Party movement: the fringier of conservative ideologues, for one, and also the self-funded ego freaks who can easily pose as “outsiders,” because no “insiders” would take them seriously. Let’s call these, respectively, the windbags and the moneybags.
By “fringier” conservative ideologues, I mean those who have argued, year in and year out, sometimes for decades, that even the conservative Republican Party simply is not conservative enough. Many of these politicians would be considered washed-up and isolated, or at least eccentric, in an era when “Party Wrecking” was still treated as a cardinal GOP sin. But now it’s as if they’ve been granted a license to kill. One classic example of this type is South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, who was considered such a crank in the Senate that he was often stuck eating lunch alone as recently as 2008. His views, for example that Social Security and public schools are symbols of the seduction of Americans by socialism, were not long ago considered far outside the GOP mainstream. Now, in no small part because of his identification with the Tea Party Movement, DeMint has become an avenging angel roaming across the country to smite RINOs in Republican primaries, his imprimatur sought by candidates far from the Palmetto State.
Then there’s the new House Tea Party Caucus, chaired by Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, best known for suggesting that House Democrats be investigated for treason. Its members include a rich assortment of long-time conservative cranks, including Steve (“Racial profiling is an important part of law enforcement”) King, Joe (“You lie!”) Wilson, Paul (“We’ve elected a Marxist to be President of the United States”) Broun, Dan (Vince Foster Was Murdered!) Burton, and Phil (National Journal’s Most Conservative House Member in 2007) Gingrey. The key here is that these are not freshly minted “outsiders”: Burton has been in Congress for 28 years, Wilson for ten, King and Gingrey for eight. The oldest member of the House, Ralph Hall of Texas, who has been around for 30 years, is also a member of the caucus.
Even some of the younger Tea Party firebrands didn’t exactly emerge from their living rooms on April 15, 2009, to battle the stimulus legislation and Obamacare. Marco Rubio of Florida, after all, was first elected to the state legislature ten years ago and served as House Speaker under the protective wing of his political godfather, Jeb Bush. Sharron Angle first ran for office 20 years ago, and was elected to the Nevada legislature twelve years back. And of course the Pauls, father and son, are hardly political neophytes—they have just begun to look relevant again because the Tea Party movement has shifted the GOP in their direction.
And, in addition to the hard-right pols who’ve emerged into the sunshine of GOP respectability, the “outsider” meme surrounding the Tea Party movement has also created running room for well-funded opportunists—the “moneybags.”
These are epitomized by Rick Scott of Florida, who probably would not have passed the most rudimentary smell test in a “normal” election year. While there are always self-funding egomaniacs running for office—California’s Meg Whitman comes to mind along with Connecticut’s Linda McMahon—the former hospital executive presents a unique test case for the whitewashing power of Tea Party identification. He has managed to overcome a deeply embarrassing embroilment in the largest Medicare fraud case in history by taking his golden parachute from Columbia-HCA and becoming a right-wing crusader against health care reform, helping to make that a central cause for the Tea Party movement. (Scott was forced out of his position as head of the for-profit hospital chain, which he tried to build into the “McDonald’s of health care,” and the organization was fined $1.7 billion for overcharging the federal government.)
Pushed out of his job after the fraud decision, Scott decided to found the Conservatives for Patients’ Rights (CPR) group that exploded onto the national scene early in 2009 with a series of inflammatory TV ads attacking health reform, employing the same firm that crafted the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth spots against John Kerry in 2004. CPR also played a major role in organizing the town hall meeting protests in the summer of 2009, which marked the Tea Party movement’s transition from a focus on TARP and the economic stimulus bill to a broader conservative agenda.
So when Scott (a Missouri native who moved to Florida in 2003) suddenly jumped into the Florda governor’s race early in 2010, the cleansing power of tea had already transformed his image among conservatives, making his improbable campaign possible.
On the wrong side of this dynamic was Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, a former congressman and sturdy, if conventional, conservative who had paid his dues by twice running unsuccessfully for the Senate. McCollum had apparently all but locked up the nomination when Scott, in mid-April, leapt into the ring with ads calling himself a “conservative outsider” who would “run our state like a business,” while tarring McCollum as the candidate of “Tallahassee insiders” responsible for “the failed policies of the past.” Then came a torrent of advertising from Scott ($22 million by mid-July, more than anyone’s ever spent in Florida in an entire primary/general-election cycle) blasting McCollum for alleged corruption, for insufficient hostility toward illegal immigration, for being soft on abortion providers. The assault voided a lifetime of McCollum’s toil in the party vineyards, vaulting the previously unknown Scott into the lead in polls by early June. Worse yet, from a Republican point of view, Scott drove up McCollum’s negatives, and increasingly his own, to toxic levels, handing Democrat Alex Sink the lead in a July general election poll. And now McCollum, fighting for his life, is striking back, drawing as much publicity as he can to Scott’s questionable past, especially the Medicare fraud case against Columbia-HCA.
So the question is: Would Rick Scott have been in a position to carry out what is beginning to look like a murder-suicide pact on the GOP’s gubernatorial prospects if he hadn’t been able to identify himself as an “outsider conservative” with close ties to the Tea Party? That’s not likely, but it’s no less likely than the remarkable epiphanies that have made career pols of marginal relevance such as Jim DeMint and Sharron Angle into apostles of an exciting new citizens’ movement. So the next time you hear a candidate posturing on behalf of the Tea Party, squint and try to imagine what they were like in their former lives. Many of them have only found respectability through the healing power of tea.
This item is cross-posted at The New Republic.
Photo Credit: Hatters!’s Photostream
Tags: Alex Sink, Bill McCollum, Campaigns and elections, conservatives, Dan Burton, House Tea Party Caucus, Jeb Bush, Jim DeMint, Joe Wilson, John Kerry, linda McMahon, Lindsay Graham, Marco Rubio, Meg Whitman, Michele Bachmann, Paul Broun, Phil Gingrey, Politics and politicians, Ralph Hall, Rand Paul, Republican Party, Rick Scott, Ron Paul, self-financing, self-funding, Sharron Angle, Steve King, Tea Party
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Monday, August 2nd, 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
Anyone who has been active in politics since the prediluvian era of the 1990s can probably remember a time when a central event of every weekday was the arrival on the fax machine of The Hotline, once the Daily Bread of the chattering classes.
You can revisit those days–or, if you are younger, discover them–via a long article at Politico by Keach Hagey that examines The Hotline’s past, present and future in some detail. It certainly does bring back memories:
Howard Mortman, a former columnist and editor at The Hotline, remembers the first time he saw the process — a blinking frenzy of subscribers dialing in by modem, one by one, to get their pre-lunch politics fix.
“We would publish at 11:30, and you could go downstairs and see the lights flicker as people downloaded The Hotline from the telephone bulletin board,” he said. “At that time, in 1995, that was cutting-edge technology.”
Today, The Hotline is still putting out its exhaustive aggregation of cleverly titled political tidbits at 11:30 a.m., though subscribers hit a refresh button instead of a fax number to get it. But the sense of cutting-edge technology and unique content is gone, eclipsed by an exponentially expanding universe of political websites, blogs, Twitter feeds, Google alerts and mobile apps that offer much of what a $15,000 annual office membership to The Hotline offers — but faster and for free.
In effect, Hotline was the first “aggregator,” and as a result was an exceptionally efficient and even cost-effective way to obtain political news at a time when clipping services were the main alternative. And for all of Hotline’s gossipy Washington insider attitudes, it did cover campaigns exhaustively, from coast to coast, in a way that was virtually unique at the time.
If you are interested in the process whereby The Hotline has struggled to survive in the online era, or in the cast of media celebrities who got their start there, check out the entire article, with the appropriate grain of salt in recognition of the fact that Politico views itself as a successor institution.
The takeaway for me, though, is the reminder that for all the maddening things about blogs and online political coverage generally, it’s really remarkable how much is now available to anyone, for free, 24-7–material that is shared by the DC commentariat and, well, anybody who cares to use it. In The Hotline’s heyday, its subscribers (concentrated in Washington but scattered around the country) really did represent a separate class with specialized access to information that created and sustained a distinct culture.
If you have money to burn, there are still paywalls you can climb to secure a privileged perch from which to observe American politics, just as you can obviously learn things living and working in Washington or frequenting its real or virtual watering holes that wouldn’t be obvious to others. But we have come a long way. And it’s actually wonderful that the entire hep political world no longer comes to a stop shortly before noon, in some sort of secular Hour of Prayer, in anticipation of The Word rolling off the fax machine.
This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.
Photo Credit: Grass Compass Church’s Photostream
Tags: Howard Mortman, Keach Hagey, paywall, Politics and politicians, The Hotline, Washington D.C.
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Monday, July 26th, 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
Colorado is without question a key target for the GOP this year. It’s a traditionally “purple” state where Democrats captured the governorship and legislature in 2006, and then carried the state for Barack Obama in 2008. With incumbent Gov. Bill Ritter stepping down voluntarily, and with a competitive Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate between appointed Sen. Michael Bennet and former House speaker Andrew Romanoff, GOPers have definitely been seeing an opening. Polls have been showing close general election races for both the governorship and the Senate.
But somebody up there must not like Colorado Republicans, because they are in the midst of a plague-of-frogs series of misfortunes. As I noted here recently, the campaign of the front-running GOP gubernatorial candidate, Scott McInnis, imploded upon allegations that he plagiarized big chunks of a report he supposedly wrote to justify a very lucrative think-tank contract just a few years back.
As Colorado GOPers tried to figure out what to do, the wingiest nut of them all, former Rep. Tom Tancredo (last seen calling for the President’s impeachment on grounds that he is a “dedicated Marxist”) publicly demanded that the two Republicans officially in the race advance to drop out after the August 10 primary (enabling the party to name someone else), or he’d run for governor himself on the Constitution Party ticket. Presumably the answer didn’t come fast enough, and Tancredo duly announced his third-party candidacy, following that up with a public shouting match with the state Republican chairman.
But the weirdness has not been confined to the gubernatorial race. In the Senate primary, district attorney Ken Buck, a big Tea Party favorite who’s recently moved ahead of “establishment” candidate Jane Norton in the polls, got caught saying this into a live microphone:
[W]ill you tell those dumbasses at the Tea Party to stop asking questions about birth certificates while I’m on the camera?
Boy, what a quandry for Buck: he now has to eat a big plate of crow to avoid offending his own base, but in doing so he will appear intimidated by a Birther contingent that he obviously considers stupid. And he’s already in some hot water for earlier blurting out that he was a better candidate than Norton because “I don’t wear high heels.”
All in all, it would have been a good week for Colorado Republican officials–and their various candidates–to have taken a vacation.
Photo Credit: QualityFrog’s Photostream
This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.
Tags: Andrew Romanoff, Bill Ritter, Campaigns and elections, Colorado, Jane Norton, Ken Buck, Michael Bennet, Politics and politicians, Republican Party, Scott McInnis, Tom Tancredo
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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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