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Afghanistan: Civilian and Military Casualties Aren’t a Zero-Sum Game

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
Jim Arkedis


Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.

by Jim Arkedis

Sarah Holewinski and Jim Morin–two of my friends through the Truman National Security Project –have an excellent op-ed in today’s Christian Science Monitor on a issue that may haunt and confuse many Americans. First, Holewinski and Morin restate something that may still be missed in the public debate–that our forces are primarily in Afghanistan to protect Afghan civilians from the Taliban, not to fight the Taliban directly. This then begs a question Holewinski and Morin ask–if our forces are primarily concerned with protecting Afghans from the Taliban, does that mean more of our guys will die as a consequence?  Here’s their take:

Military families back home want to know: Are troops walking into hell with one hand tied behind their backs? Are civilian lives being spared in exchange for military ones?

The answer to both questions is no.  [...]

Protecting the population isn’t political correctness; it’s a vital military objective and a distinct advantage over an enemy that uses civilians as shields. The drop in civilian casualties is a mark of success.

Allied troop fatalities have meanwhile increased, but efforts to spare civilians are not the cause. Rather, troops are fighting the insurgents where they live – as in Marjah. Taking on the Taliban requires taking that risk. American and allied forces may be walking into hell, but given the right strategy and purpose, they remain free to fight effectively. [...]

Combat is violent, frightening, and confusing, and troops on the ground have both the instinct – and the right – to protect themselves. The critical role for commanders is to convey the lesson taught by the US Army’s Counterinsurgency Field Manual, drafted under Gen. David Petraeus: “Sometimes the more you protect your force, the less secure you may be.”

Military tactics are always balanced against strategic objectives, force protection, and humanitarian imperatives. In Afghanistan, international forces have had more than eight years to figure out what hasn’t worked and what will. The new emphasis on civilian protection is a welcome move toward striking the right balance.

In the Army there is a saying, “Mission First, Soldiers Always.” Safeguarding civilians and taking care of soldiers are not mutually exclusive. We owe our troops as much training, operational guidance, and moral certainty as modern war will allow.

This issue highlights how policy can be distorted and create bad political optics.  This is a nagging problem with the Afghanistan debate.  For example, the public discourse on President Obama’s decision on the war centered on two issues: how many troops, and the right’s false charge that he was “dithering” on what to do.  In that regard, the White House let the debate get away from it because, frankly, thousands of troop numbers grabs headlines in ways that strategy discussions don’t.

So, progressives should heed this op-ed and use it to push back when charges come–from either the left or right–that our troops are dying because we’re allegedly more concerned with Afghans.  There will be casualties, of course, but we have to understand that Afghan casualties vs. American casualties aren’t a zero-sum game.

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Can Charlie Crist Switch and Survive?

Wednesday, March 10th, 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

One of the more interesting ongoing spectacles this year has been the crashing and burning of Republican Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, the once invincible political titan who now appears destined to lose, perhaps badly, a U.S. Senate primary to conservative Tea Party favorite Marco Rubio. Initially, Rubio was considered more or less a nuisance candidate who would keep Crist from straying too far off the conservative reservation. Now, according to a new PPP poll of Florida Republicans, Rubio is trouncing Crist 60-28.

Echoing earlier complaints among Florida Republicans that Crist should have just run for re-election, there’s been talk that the heavily tanned incumbent might switch to the governor’s race (qualifying doesn’t end until April 30). Others have suggested he should get some revenge on conservatives by staying in the Senate race but running as an independent. At 538.com, Nate Silver explores these alternatives, and concludes that Crist should probably either hang it up or run for the Senate as an indie, assuming he’s not interested in a future in the GOP. Turns out switching to the governor’s race isn’t promising:

The same PPP poll that found Crist trailing Rubio by 32 points also found him trailing Bill McCollum, the leading Republican candidate for governor, by 14. That’s not quite as bad a deficit to overcome, but it doesn’t account for the additional annoyance voters might feel if Crist switched races, which could come across as entitled and presumptuous. In addition, the general election could get tricky, as Crist’s approval ratings are tepid and as Democratic candidate Alex Sink — although now trailing McCollum in most polls — is considered a decent candidate.

On the other hand, says Nate, some polls have shown Crist running reasonably well as an indie against Rubio and likely Democratic Senate candidate Kendrick Meek, essentially creating a three-way tie.

Either “switch” by Crist, it’s clear, would be good news for Florida Democrats, giving them a better chance in November while promoting GOP ideological warfare.

But Charlie probably owes it to his dwindling band of friends in the GOP to make up his mind soon. In neighboring Georgia, the news that U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss and Gov. Sonny Perdue are hosting an Atlanta fundraiser for Crist has not gone over very well in Georgia Republican circles. If Crist is perceived as double-crossing Florida Republicans, he will become truly radioactive for all who have touched him.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

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Win Dixie

Tuesday, March 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 we all understand, Republicans are about to have a pretty good election in November. Much of the GOP excitement revolves around congressional races that could unseat “red-state” Democrats who won during the 2006 or 2008 cycles, along with a number of incumbents (some of whom have decided to retire) who have been around much longer. Ground zero for the Republican tsunami is, of course, the Deep South, where in some areas John McCain did better in 2008 than George W. Bush did in 2004, and where every available indicator shows the president to be very unpopular among white voters.

But beneath this storyline, some odd and counterintuitive things are going on. In three Deep South states, Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina, Democrats have a decent chance of retaking long-lost governorships, in part because of infighting among Republican candidates, and in part because Republican rule in those states has not been terribly successful or popular. It’s far too early to make predictions, but it’s possible that we’re in for a repeat of the astounding gubernatorial Trifecta that Democrats pulled off in those same three states in 1998. That event confounded widespread assessments that the South had become a one-party GOP region, and it could happen again, in even more unlikely circumstances.

Our own appraisal begins in Georgia, with one of the surprise winners of 1998, former Governor Roy Barnes. Barnes lost his reelection bid in 2002 to Sonny Perdue, a party-switching state senator, despite the power of incumbency and a huge financial advantage. Since then, Barnes has regularly admitted his mistakes. And, amazingly enough, in the latest Georgia gubernatorial poll, he’s running ahead of every single Republican candidate.

Meanwhile, Georgia Republicans, who have dominated state politics since 2002, are having some serious problems with their own gubernatorial bench. The consistent frontrunner in the polls, longtime insurance commissioner John Oxendine, is awash in ethics allegations about contributions from the insurance companies that he is responsible for regulating. His record is so blatantly bad that none other than Erick Erickson, the Georgia-based proprietor of the nationally influential, hard-core conservative web site RedState, has said he’d vote for Barnes if Oxendine is the GOP nominee.

Rather pathetically, the alternative to Oxendine and the favorite of some party insiders is Representative Nathan Deal of Georgia’s Ninth District (like Perdue, a party-switcher), who recently said he would resign his congressional seat after a health care vote to concentrate on his gubernatorial campaign. As it happens, Deal’s resignation managed to short-circuit a House Ethics Committee investigation into a no-bid state auto-salvage contract that was awarded to a company which Deal controls. The insider buzz in Atlanta is that Deal was motivated to resign, in part, because of panic among Georgia Republican pooh-bahs who worried that Oxendine would walk away with the gubernatorial nomination on name ID alone.

The rest of the Republican gubernatorial hopefuls are struggling as well. The entire party, and several of the gubernatorial candidates, were tainted by association with disgraced former House Speaker Glenn Richardson, who was forced to resign after a lurid sex-and-lobbying scandal. The one candidate who seems ethically starchy, Secretary of State Karen Handel, has struggled to raise the money necessary to win, and also suffers from the perception that she’s the unpopular Sonny Perdue’s chosen successor.

All these Republican problems could eventually fade, and Roy Barnes must also navigate a Democratic primary against Attorney General Thurbert Baker, a law-’n-order conservative who is one of the nation’s longest-serving African American statewide elected officials (as well as two other lesser but credible opponents). Nevertheless at present, Barnes—or Baker, if he could somehow upset Barnes—looks entirely viable for November.

Next door in Alabama, you’d think that the Democratic gubernatorial frontrunner, Congressman Artur Davis, wouldn’t stand a chance. He’s a member of the much-hated United States Congress; he’s African American; he’s a close personal friend of Barack Obama; and he’s frequently been tagged, like the president, as an Ivy League-educated, twenty-first-century–style black politician. But the sparse public polling available shows Davis in a very strong position for the general election, assuming that he dispenses with a primary challenge from state agriculture commissioner Ron Sparks, who’s been struggling to raise money. Davis, who has long nursed gubernatorial ambitions, carefully tailored his congressional record to Alabama public opinion: He voted against health care reform in the House, and he was also the first Congressional Black Caucus member (and, for that matter, the first one on the Ways and Means Committee) to call for Charlie Rangel to step aside from his powerful chairmanship.

Meanwhile, there is no real frontrunner in the Republican gubernatorial primary, which bids fair to become an ideological flame war. Back in 2002, the “establishment” candidate, state Senator Bradley Byrne, made the fatal mistake of voting for a-tax reform initiative that was soundly defeated in an emphatic expression of Alabamians’ mistrust of government. Tim James, son of former conservative Democratic and Republican Governor Fob James, was one of the main opponents of that initiative, and he will bring it up constantly. Meanwhile Christian Right warhorse Roy Moore, the famous “Ten Commandments Judge,” is actually running second to Byrne in early polls. All of the dynamics in the race will pull the GOP candidates to the hard-right, while Artur Davis continues to occupy the political center; and his candidacy will almost certainly boost African American turnout to near-2008 levels. That means anything could happen in November.

South Carolina is often thought of as the most Republican of Southern states. But Mark Sanford, the disgraced incumbent governor, has complicated his party’s prospects. Meanwhile, an ideological civil war is brewing that reflects the growing tension between the state’s two Republican senators, right-wing bomb thrower Jim DeMint and the more moderate Lindsey Graham (Graham, long suspect among home-state conservatives for his friendship with John McCain and his occasional bipartisanship, has recently been formally censured by two of South Carolina’s county GOP organizations for a variety of sins). As in Georgia and Alabama, the Republican gubernatorial field is a mess: Nobody is a frontrunner and all the candidates are stampeding to the hard right. And I do mean hard right. In a sign of the times, Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer, who has few friends in the state’s Republican establishment, delivered a speech comparing recipients of subsidized school lunches to “stray animals” who should no longer be fed unconditionally. While he took a few shots from fellow Republicans for his indiscreet language, nobody disputed, and some praised, his basic premise that any form of public assistance corrupts its recipients and should come with some sort of reciprocal obligation.

The frontrunners in early polls are Bauer and Attorney General Henry McMaster. Upstate Congressman Gresham Barrett, who must overcome the opprobrium of voting for TARP, is close behind. Meanwhile, Sanford’s protégé, state Representative Nikki Haley (who was even endorsed by the governor’s ex-wife), is trying to push the campaign hard right by opposing any expenditure of federal stimulus dollars in this high-unemployment state. At a recent candidate forum, when the rivals were pushed to call themselves “DeMint Republicans” or “Graham Republicans,” Bauer and Haley flatly identified with DeMint, while McMasters and Barrett dodged the question.

On the Democratic side, a Rasmussen poll in December showed the front-running Democrat, State School Superintendent Jim Rex, actually beating Bauer and running within single digits against other GOP candidates. (State Representative Vincent Sheheen is also a credible Democratic candidate). Again, anything could happen, but the assumption that Republicans have a lock on this state’s elections is as dubious as the same assumption back in 1998.

So, at a time when Democrats are despairing of good news, it’s important to understand that the donkey isn’t quite dead, even in the Deep South. There are consequences to Republican extremism and malfeasance in office. And, when GOP candidates battle for first place on the crazy train of contemporary conservatism, it’s Democrats who stand to benefit.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

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A Wake Up Call on National Security

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
Jim Arkedis


Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.

by Jim Arkedis

Democracy Corps and Third Way continue to hit on a theme I’ve been pushing for the last few weeks. Despite the president’s solid poll numbers on security, the organizations’ research shows that the historic national security gap is reappearing. Just after the president’s inauguration, the gap had closed to well within the margin of error. In early 2009, Democrats trailed Republicans by just three points on the question of which party was better equipped to “keeping America safe.” But in a new survey, Republicans now trump Democrats by 17 points. Ouch.

The poll digs much deeper than most polls, which traditionally lump in questions of national security with a slew of other issues. But this one is a full psychoanalysis of the country’s mood on our safety, and the results are more of a mixed bag than a downright nightmare for progressives. The president maintains stronger national security numbers than his overall approval rating (47 percent), with 58 percent approving of his handling of Afghanistan, 57 percent positive on “leading the military,” and 55 percent liking that he’s “improved America’s standing in the world,” among other similarly positive numbers.

Furthermore — and this is great — the poll continues to confirm that the public rejects accusations by Dick Cheney that Obama’s policies have made the country less secure. Oh yeah, and five percent believe Obama is doing a better job than George Bush against terrorists.

To sum up, the public approves of the commander-in-chief, but they’ve again become skeptical of generic Democrats. Or as the authors put it:

While ratings for the president may be softening, his party is facing an even more troubling trend. When the questions move beyond the president to Democrats generally, we see that the public once again has real and rising doubts about the Democrats’ handling of national security issues, as compared to their faith in Republicans. This security gap, which has roots stretching back to Vietnam, was as wide as 29 points earlier in the decade. The deficit began to close in 2006, with the Bush administration’s catastrophic mismanagement of Iraq and other national security challenges.

How do we firm this up? Basically, grab the ol’ bull by the horns, just like I’ve been blabbering on about. Seriously — Dems have a good record, now they just have to relay it through effective story-telling that connects with voters’ emotions. Progressives have been sheepishly responding to conservative attacks with wonky facts. But conservatives don’t care about facts — they painted Max Cleland, a Vietnam vet and triple amputee, as unpatriotic. Now that progressives have the facts behind them, they need to get aggressive about telling voters that we’re strong and smart on national security.

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More On ObamaCare/RomneyCare

Monday, March 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

Here’s something to tuck away in your files on both health care reform and 2012 presidential aspirant Mitt Romney, from Tim Noah at Slate (via Jon Chait). Looking at Romney’s new pre-campaign book, Noah observes:

Romney’s discussion of health reform is, from a partisan perspective, comically off-message. (How could he know what today’s GOP message would be? He probably finished writing the book months ago.) Remove a little anti-Obama boilerplate and Romney’s views become indistinguishable from the president’s. They even rely on the same MIT economist! At the Massachusetts bill’s signing ceremony, Romney relates in his book, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., quipped, “When Mitt Romney and Ted Kennedy are celebrating the same piece of legislation, it means only one thing: One of us didn’t read it.”

Noah goes on to mix up some Obama and Romney quotes on health care reform, and challenges the reader to say which is which. Can’t be done.

Back in January, I predicted that Romney’s sponsorship of health care reform in Massachusetts might turn out to be a disabling handicap in a 2012 presidential race, given the shrillnesss of conservative rhetoric about features in Obama’s proposal that are also in Romney’s–most notably, the individual mandate.

Something happened since then, of course, which has been of great value to Romney in protecting his highly vulnerable flank on health reform: Scott Brown, another supporter of RomneyCare in Massachusetts, became the maximum national GOP hero and set off to Washington to try to wreck Obama’s plans. That meant that not one, but two major Republican pols would be promoting ludicrous distinctions between RomneyCare and ObamaCare as though they were actually vast and principled.

But I can’t see this illogical brush-off as working forever. If the Mittster does crank up another presidential campaign, fresh media attention will be devoted to his record and “philosophy” on health care. And more importantly, Romney’s rivals in a presidential race won’t for a moment give him a mulligan on the issue the GOP has defined as all-important. Mitt’s “socialism” in Massachusetts will eventually re-emerge as a big, big problem for him, and arguments that it was just state-level “socialism” won’t quite cut it in a Republican Party that’s moved well to the Right since the last time he ran for president. Before it’s over, they’ll make it sound like he’s the reincarnation of Nelson Rockefeller, money and all.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/newshour/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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The Tea Party’s Retreaded “Ideas”

Friday, March 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

For all the talk about the Tea Party Movement and its demands that America’s political system be turned upside down, it’s always been a bit hard to get a fix on what, exactly, these conservative activists want Washington to do.

To solve this puzzle, it’s worth taking a look at the Contract From America process — a project of the Tea Party Patriot organization, designed to create a bottoms-up, open-source agenda that activists can embrace when they gather for their next big moment in the national media sun on April 15. The 21-point agenda laid out for Tea Partiers to refine into a 10-point “Contract” is, to put it mildly, a major Blast from the Past, featuring conservative Republican chestnuts dating back decades.

There’s term limits, naturally. There are a couple of “transparency” proposals, such as publication of bill texts well before votes. But more prominent are fiscal “ideas” very long in the tooth. You got a balanced budget constitutional amendment, which ain’t happening and won’t work. You got fair tax/flat tax, the highly regressive concept flogged for many years by a few talk radio wonks, that has never been taken seriously even among congressional Republicans. You’ve got Social Security and Medicare privatization (last tried by George W. Bush in 2005) and education vouchers. You’ve got scrapping all federal regulations, preempting state and local regulations, and maybe abolishing some federal departments (an idea last promoted by congressional Republicans in 1995). You’ve got abolition of the “death tax” (i.e., the tax on very large inheritances). And you’ve got federal spending caps, which won’t actually roll back federal spending because they can’t be applied to entitlements.

My favorite on the list is a proposal that in Congress “each bill…identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does.” This illustrates the obliviousness or hostility of Tea Partiers to the long string of Supreme Court decisions, dating back to the 1930s, that give Congress broad policymaking powers under the 14th Amendment and the Spending and Commerce Clauses. This illustrates the literalism of Tea Party “original intent” views of the Constitution; if wasn’t spelled out explicitly by the Founders it’s unconstitutional.

We are often told that the Tea Party Movement represents some sort of disenfranchised “radical middle” in America that rejects both major parties’ inability to get together and solve problems. As the “Contract From America” shows, that’s totally wrong. At least when it comes to policy proposals, these folks are the hard-right wing of the Republican Party, upset that Barry Goldwater’s agenda from 1964 has never been implemented.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bisongirl/ / CC BY 2.0

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Another Bite at the Apple

Wednesday, March 3rd, 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

The president held a press conference today to announce that yes, indeed, he will press Congress to act on health care reform this month. There’s was nothing immensely new about that development, but it’s interesting that Obama used the occasion to lay out, quite succinctly, the three key points he made in his health care summit with Republicans: why comprehensive reform is essential, why the time for “negotiations” is over, and why there’s nothing that unusual about the use of reconciliation (though he did not use the word, a very unfamiliar term to most people outside Washington) to get the job done. He essentially took another bite at the apple of responding to the most effective Republican lines of attack, and will apparently do so some more in appearances on the road this month.

On the other hand, the presidential press conference may get demoted on the nightly news if a possible scandal involving Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) continues to develop. Massa, a freshman from a highly marginal district, abruptly let it be known he was retiring. Some sources say he’s suffering from a recurrence of cancer, but Politico is reporting that he was about to come under investigation by the Ethics Committee for allegedly sexually harrassing a male staffer. If the latter story has a basis in reality, it will be big news tonight.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

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Rick Perry Gets Lucky Again

Wednesday, March 3rd, 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

Texas governor Rick Perry is not what you’d call a statesman, but as the old saying goes, if you can’t be good, be lucky. Perry’s been a very lucky–and opportunistic–politician. He was first elected to the Texas legislature as a Democrat (hard to believe, given his current behavior), and switched parties just in time to take advantage of the rise of the GOP in Texas. In his first statewide race, in 1990, he squeaked by the famous left-populist Jim Hightower to become Agriculture Commissioner; Hightower had not exactly made life easier for himself in Texas by becoming deeply involved in Jesse Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign.

In 1998, Perry hitched a ride to the top of Texas politics as George W. Bush’s running-mate, again very narrowly winning the general election (this time over John Sharp) with a lot of help from Bush associates who were getting ready for W.’s presidential run and didn’t want a Democrat wreaking havoc in Austin when the candidate was out of state. Perry inherited the governorship two years later. His two re-elections haven’t been terribly impressive: in 2002, he beat Rick Sanchez, a political neophyte widely perceived as running a very bad campaign, and in 2006, survived with just 39 percent of the vote in a crazy four-candidate general election.

Perry’s great stroke of luck this year was to run against Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a formidable politician in the past, in absolutely the worst climate imaginable for a United States senator. Hutchison also obliged Perry by running an unfocused campaign with virtually no message (she joined Sanchez on the Houston Chronicle’s list of the ten worst campaigns in Texas history). Moreover, a third candidate, Tea Party activist Debra Medina, self-destructed by going on Glenn Beck’s show and sounding like a 9/11 “truther.” Perry manged to win yesterday with few votes to spare, garnering 51 percent of the vote against Hutchison’s 30% and Medina’s 19%.

We’ll see if Perry’s luck holds one more time in November; his Democratic opponent, former Houston mayor Bill White, is a respected politician who will not roll over and play dead. It says a lot about the incumbent’s residual weakness that he’s not a prohibitive favorite in a state like Texas in a year like 2010.

Perry gets mentioned now and then as a potential presidential candidate in 2012. He would definitely be stretching his luck by taking his act the national level, but don’t rule it out for a guy who had the opportunity to watch George W. Bush up close and personal when he turned privilege and perfect timing into an unlikely rise to the presidency.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eschipul/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

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The Bunning Blockade Ends

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010
Elbert Ventura


Elbert Ventura is the managing editor of the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Elbert Ventura

Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY), who had held up Senate passage of a $10 billion short-term benefits extension for days, finally relented yesterday and allowed the measure to come for a vote. Bunning’s objection to unanimous consent to pass the package resulted in the elapsing of funding for a host of federal programs, including infrastructure projects, unemployment benefits, and Medicare payments.

The Kentucky senator, who is retiring after this year (with a helpful nudge from his fellow Republicans), had demanded that Democrats find offsets in the budget for the legislation. Democrats retorted that the bill was a short-term emergency measure that did not fall under “pay-go” rules. (Democrats, on a party-line vote, reinstituted “pay-as-you-go” rules in January.)

The Bunning blockade proved to be a heaven-sent illustration of Republican obstructionism and heartlessness. McClatchy came up with a handy graphic depicting its state-by-state effects:

Even as the blockade stretched over the first couple of days of this week – leaving about 1.2 million unemployed people high and dry, 2,000 Department of Transportation workers furloughed, and numerous projects halted – some of Bunning’s colleagues actually voiced their support for his actions. Sen. John Cornyn (TX) said:

It’s not fun to be accused of having no compassion for the people who are out of work, the people for who these benefits should be forthcoming, and I believe will be forthcoming. But somebody has to stand up, finally, and say enough is enough, no more inter-generational theft from our children and grandchildren by not meeting our responsibilities today.

Meanwhile, Sen. Jon Kyl (AZ), in response to Bunning’s filibuster of unemployment compensation, helpfully noted: “In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.” Even newly minted Sen. Scott Brown gave Bunning’s efforts a thumbs-up:

The perception in Massachusetts and other parts of the country is that Washington is broken. And if it takes one guy to get up and make a stand, to point out that we need a funding source to pay for everything that’s being pushed here, I think that speaks for itself.

Here’s the best part: Bunning, along with every Republican in the Senate, voted against “pay-as-you-go” legislation. Republicans had thundered that the pay-go bill was a political fig leaf and that Democrats weren’t really serious about budget sanity. Considering that previous pay-go rules elapsed in 2002 under the Republicans’ watch, and that they also presided over the ballooning of the deficit, I suppose they’re experts on the subject.

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About Those “Green Shoots” of Moderation

Tuesday, March 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

Yesterday I wrote about the conservative effort to convince the news media and others that crazy people were being kept under control by the Tea Party Movement and the Republican Party. There’s an even less credible media narrative kicking around that was pursued the same day by Janet Hook of the Los Angeles Times: Republican moderates are making a comeback!

If you understandably missed this development, here’s how Hook puts it:

With healthcare legislation mired in partisanship, “tea party” activists on the march and GOP leadership dominated by conservatives, Capitol Hill looks like a parched landscape for the withered moderate wing of the Republican Party.But green shoots are sprouting in Washington and on the campaign trail. A small band of Republican moderates in the Senate broke a logjam on jobs legislation. They added to their ranks with the arrival of another New England Republican, Scott Brown. And several moderate Republicans are in a good position to win Senate seats in November.

The article is loaded with qualifiers of this dubious proposition, but not enough of them. The jobs bill where “Republican moderates” — including Tea Party favorite Scott Brown — offered a few votes for cloture was a vastly watered-down $15 billion measure that included a payroll tax credit for employers long beloved of Republicans (indeed, that’s why it was in the bill). Once cloture was invoked, 13 GOPers voted for the bill, including such decidedly non-moderate senators as James Inhofe (OK), Richard Burr (NC) and Hatch (UT). Indeed, the only reason the bill was even controversial for Republicans is that it was offered by the Democratic leadership in lieu of a much more expensive and tax-cut laden bill worked out between Sens. Max Baucus (D-MT) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA)  that most Democrats intensely disliked. Anyone expecting this development to lead to an outbreak of bipartisanship or a breakdown of Republican obstruction is smoking crack.

Hook’s optimistic spin on “moderate Republican” prospects for election to the Senate is equally off-base. She cites Rep. Mark Kirk (IL), Rep. Mike Castle (DE), Gov. Charlie Crist (FL), former Rep. Tom Campbell (CA), and former Rep. Rob Simmons (CT) as potential additions to the “moderate” ranks. Kirk moved hard right to win his primary, and is running even with his Democratic opponent. Campbell is best known at present as the object of primary opponent Carly Fiorina’s cult favorite “demon sheep” web ad; I’d bet serious money he doesn’t win his primary, and the winner likely won’t beat Democrat Barbara Boxer, either. Simmons is struggling against a well-financed primary opponent, and is trailing Democrat Richard Blumenthal by double digits. Crist is political toast. I’ll grant that Castle is in good shape, and has a quite moderate record (so far). But even if Castle and Kirk win, their election would no more than offset the retirements of George Voinovich and Judd Gregg in the less-than-loudly-conservative ranks. And Hook also doesn’t mention that at least two GOP senators who occasionally cooperate with Democrats, Bob Bennett and John McCain, could get purged in primaries.

As for the forward-looking optimism of Hooks’ “green shoots” metaphor, it should be noted that Castle is 70 years old; Simmons is 67; Campbell is 56; Crist is 53; and Kirk is 50. Even by the geriatric standards of the Senate, this group ain’t exactly the wave of the future. They also don’t look much like America.

Sure, if the Republlican caucus in the Senate expands significantly this November, it is going to include a handful of members who don’t regularly howl at the moon about “socialism.” But any suggestion that the ancient tribe of moderate Republicans is much more than an anthropological curiosity these days is just not credible. It says a lot of the direction of the GOP that the early 2012 presidential favorite of “moderates” appears to be Mitt Romney, who spent the entire 2008 cycle campaigning as the “true conservative” in the race.

If words like “moderate” have any real meaning, it’s not a word that should be applied to any major faction in today’s Republican Party.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

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The Republican Civil War: Your Guide to This Year’s Primaries

Tuesday, March 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

All across the country, Republicans are fantasizing about a gigantic electoral tide that will sweep out deeply entrenched Democratic incumbents this November. In their telling, this deep-red surge will be so forceful as to dislodge even legislators who don’t look vulnerable now, securing GOP control of both houses of Congress.

But could this scenario really come to pass? That will depend, in part, on what type of Republican Party the Democrats are running against in the fall.

Hence the importance of this year’s Republican civil war. In a string of GOP primary elections stretching from now until September, the future ideological composition of the elephant party hangs in the balance. Many of these primaries pit self-consciously hard-core conservatives, often aligned with the Tea Party movement, against “establishment” candidates — some who are incumbents, and some who are simply vulnerable to being labeled “RINOs” or “squishes” for expressing insufficiently ferocious conservative views.

Below is your guide to this year’s most important ideologically-freighted GOP primaries and their consequences. Confining ourselves just to statewide races, let’s take them in chronological order:

TEXAS, MARCH 2: Today’s showdown is in Texas, where “establishment” Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison is challenging conservative incumbent Governor Rick Perry. Perry, who won only 39 percent of the vote in a four-candidate race in 2006, spent much of the last year cozying up to Tea Party activists and occasionally going over the brink into talk of secession. He seemed to have the race against the Washington-tainted Hutchinson well in hand, until a third GOP candidate, libertarian/Tea Party favorite Debra Medina, started to surge in the polls early this year.

Medina’s candidacy once threatened to knock Perry into a runoff or even displace Hutchison from the second spot. But then Medina went on “Glenn Beck” and expressed openness to the possibility that the federal government was involved in the 9/11 attacks. Still, it’s not clear Perry will clear 50 percent. An expensive and potentially divisive runoff would weaken him against the Democratic candidate, Houston Mayor Bill White, who looks quite competitive in early polling.

INDIANA, MAY 4: In the Hoosier State, right-wingers are flaying each other. Former Senator Dan Coats, a relatively conservative figure with strong “establishment” support, faces three even more conservative rivals in the race to succeed Evan Bayh. Coats is a longtime favorite of religious conservatives and an early member of the evangelical conservative network which author Jeff Sharlet dubs “The Family.” He’s secured early endorsements from D.C.-based conservative leaders Mike Pence and James Bopp (an RNC member who authored both the “Socialist Democrat Party” and “litmus test” resolutions). But his Beltway support has created a backlash in Indiana, and some Second Amendment fans recall that Coats voted for the Brady Bill and the assault-weapons ban. Coats is also smarting from revelations that he’s been registered to vote in Virginia since leaving the Senate, and working in Washington as a lobbyist for banks, equity firms, and even foreign governments (his firm represented—yikes—Yemen).

With the vote coming so soon, hard-core conservatives probably won’t have time to unite behind an alternative; some favor Tea Party-oriented state senator Marlin Stutzman, while others are sticking with a old-timey right-wing warhorse, former Representative John Hostetler. But if they do, and Coats loses, it will probably spur a headlong national panic among “establishment” Republicans, even well-credentialed conservatives who haven’t quite joined the tea partiers. Indiana Democrats have managed to recruit a strong Senate nominee in Rep. Brad Ellsworth, who might hold onto Bayh’s Senate seat.

UTAH, MAY 8: Utah Senator Bob Bennett, the bipartisan dealmaker, is in trouble. He voted for TARP, he has been a high-visibility user of earmarks, and, worse yet, he co-sponsored a universal health-reform bill with Democratic Senator Ron Wyden. So right-wingers want his head. Bennett’s defeat has become an obsession of influential conservative blogger Erick Erickson of Red State, and the Club for Growth, the big bully of economic conservatism, has attacked Newt Gingrich for speaking on his behalf.

Bennett’s first test will come on May 8, when delegates to Utah’s state GOP convention will vote on a Senate nominee. If he fails to get 60 percent, he’ll be pushed into a June 22 primary. Bennett faces three potentially credible right-wing challengers, but the “comer” seems to be Mike Lee, a former law clerk to Justice Samuel Alito, who has been endorsed by Dick Armey’s powerful FreedomWorks organization. Since this is Utah, there is no Democrat in sight who is strong enough to exploit such a right-wing “purge.” Bennett’s defeat would only make the Republican Party more conservative, and provide another object lesson to any GOP-er thinking about cosponsoring major legislation with a Democrat.

Bennett’s first test will come on May 8, when delegates to Utah’s state GOP convention will vote on a Senate nominee. If he fails to get 60 percent, he’ll be pushed into a June 22 primary. Bennett faces three potentially credible right-wing challengers, but the “comer” seems to be Mike Lee, a former law clerk to Justice Samuel Alito, who has been endorsed by Dick Armey’s powerful FreedomWorks organization. Since this is Utah, there is no Democrat in sight who is strong enough to exploit such a right-wing “purge.” Bennett’s defeat would only make the Republican Party more conservative, and provide another object lesson to any GOP-er thinking about cosponsoring major legislation with a Democrat.

KENTUCKY, MAY 18: Kentuckians will choose a nominee to replace crotchety conservative Senator Jim Bunning, who, as of this writing, has succeeded in temporarily killing unemployment insurance and COBRA health care benefits in order to protest federal spending. This Republican primary matches conservative Secretary of State Trey Grayson against Rand (son of Ron) Paul. Paul has surprised Grayson’s establishment allies—a list that includes Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell—by surging to a sizable lead. A conspiracy theory-addled ophthalmologist with no political experience, Paul rivals Florida’s Marco Rubio as a Tea Party favorite—which is why Grayson decided to go after him from the right, hitting Paul for wavering on the need for federal action to ban abortion. But Rand has obtained cover on the social conservative front from a champion of anti-abortion politics, Sarah Palin, who endorsed Rand last month. The upshot for Democrats is that one of their candidates, Lieutenant Governor Dan Mongiardo or Attorney General Jack Conway, could have a decent shot at taking over a Republican seat.

IOWA, JUNE 8: This gubernatorial primary has implications for 2012. The big question is whether social conservative hardliner Bob Vander Plaats—who was Mike Huckabee’s Iowa campaign chairman in 2008—can upset former Governor Terry Branstad, a venerable figure who led the state for 16 years before retiring in 1998 (and who has surrounded himself with Mitt Romney acolytes). Branstad, who has a big lead in early general election polls against incumbent Democrat Chet Culver, is no favorite of the right. One leading conservative group, the Iowa Family Policy Center, has pledged to sit out the general election if Branstad is the nominee. The Democrats’ candidate, Chet Culver, is in deep trouble if Branstad wins; but he’s running even or ahead of Vander Plaats in the polls.

ARIZONA, AUGUST 24: Former congressman and talk show host J.D. Hayworth is threatening John McCain, a pariah to many conservatives for championing of immigration reform, among other sins dating back to 2000. (McCain recently gave Hayworth a gift by claiming he had been “misled” by Bush administration officials about the basic purpose of TARP funds in 2008. Not a terribly credible assertion, and it recalls George Romney’s famously self-destructive statement that he was “brainwashed” into supporting the Vietnam War.) McCain will probably survive, given his longstanding popularity in Arizona and help from Sarah Palin. But there’s a wild card: If attorneys for the state Republican Party succeed in overturning Arizona’s open primary law, McCain could go down, providing a graphic illustration of the GOP’s rightward trend since 2008.

FLORIDA, AUGUST 24: McCain’s buddy, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, is sinking like a stone. He’s trailing national conservative superstar Marco Rubio in recent polls, with the trend lines pointing straight down. Conservatives aligned with state’s real power, Jeb Bush, never liked Crist. But he went from “squish” to “enemy” last year by supporting Obama’s economic stimulus, instead of attacking it and pocketing the cash. Crist, though, is benefiting from reports that Rubio allegedly used a state party credit card for personal purchases. But he’s probably toast, just like his famously tanned hide.

NEW HAMPSHIRE, SEPTEMBER 14: In New Hampshire, Attorney General Kelly Ayotte, a National Republican Senatorial Committee recruit of indistinct ideological character, will battle “true conservative” Ovide Lamontagne for the nomination to succeed retiring Senator Judd Gregg. An early poll put Lamontagne within nine points of Ayotte. If Lamontagne wins, he may lose to Democratic Representative Paul Hodes, who polls quite well in contrast.

In sum, the Democrats could well benefit from conservative victories in several of this year’s GOP primaries. But the larger impact of such purges may occur after November 2. By 2012, the economy will likely have improved and turnout patterns will be much more favorable to Democrats. Republicans, on the other hand, would be even more radical than they are today. At that point, an unimpressive Republican presidential field could become fatally weak if the nominating process is dominated by a herd of elephants stampeding to the right.

This item is cross-posted from The Democratic Strategist.

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A Pretty Wild Mainstream

Monday, March 1st, 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 don’t quite know exactly where this is coming from, but there’s clearly a media effort underway to show that the conservative movement and the Republican Party are reining in “the extremists” in their ranks, presumably in order to look all ready to govern.

Today’s Politico features a long piece by Kenneth Vogel detailing claims by various conservative and Tea Party spokesmen that the influence of “the fringe” has been grossly exaggerated by “the Left,” and that in fact unruly elements are being ignored or excluded by the Right’s grownups.

“Birthers,” Birchers and militia types, we are told, are being shown the door, and haven’t been that important to begin with, except in the propaganda of the Left.

The door-keepers in Vogel’s account, however, are not a group that would normally strike you as moderately-tempered unless the bar for political sanity is set very low. One is none other than Judson Phillips of Tea Party Nation, who told Vogel that activists needed “to control the message and to prevent the tea party movement from being hijacked.” That’s interesting, since Phillips’ recent National Tea Party Convention featured a race-baiting keynote address by Tom Tancredo, another speech by “birther” advocate Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily, and a breakout panel headed by Christian Right extremist Roy Moore. Another is dirty-trickster and ACORN conspiracy theorist Andrew Breitbart, who is credited with disrepecting Farah at Phillips’ event. Still another is Erick Erickson of RedState, that ferocious advocate of strife against “squishes” and moderates of every variety.

If these folk want to keep “the Left” from talking about crazy people on the Right, they might want to make their policing a bit more rigorous than the occasional tip from the coach to stay on the political sidelines. “The Left” did not invent the cosponsorship of the recent Conservative Political Action Conference by the John Birch Society and the militia-friendly Oathkeepers. But more to the point, it’s a disturbing sign in intself that people like Phillips, Breitbart and Erickson are being treated as some sort of “mainstream,” where it’s perfectly normal to call President Obama a socialist, treat Democrats as presumptive traitors, and advocate an array of radical economic and social policies. All the “self-policing of the Right” narrative really shows is how far and fast conservatives have recently moved to what used to be thought of as “the fringe.” It’s cold comfort to learn there is ample frontier territory on the Right that’s well beyond that.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/heroiclife/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

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