Lincoln-Douglas It Ain't

Writing for Frum Forum, John Guardiano argues that interparty battles within the GOP is good because it will spur ideas. Guardiano notes:

I’ll acknowledge that a primary contest which devolves into an idealess food fight is a real risk, and one the GOP should avoid. However, a substantive contest of ideas should not only be countenanced; it should actively be encouraged: because it will help to invigorate and strengthen a GOP that urgently needs new ideas and new public-policy proposals, and for both substantive and political reasons.

Substantively, the GOP needs to address the great and pressing issues of our time: fractured countries and failed states, international terrorism, nuclear proliferation, a weak and fragile financial system, runaway entitlement spending (which threatens to bankrupt our country), chronic under- and un-employment, a lack of economic growth, et al.

If primaries were really about two candidates sharing their ideas on how to tackle pressing issues of the day, that would be one thing. But as Jeb Gonklin shows in a rebuttal to Guardiano, such battles are every the high-minded fight of ideas that Guardiano supposedly longs for. This is what he has to say about a GOP primary battle going on in Illinois between moderate Mark Kirk and conservative Andy Martin:

In a substantive debate on the issues that Guardiano highlights, Kirk would welcome a primary “battle” to focus on which candidate has the best ideas and which candidate is the most qualified to serve in the United States Senate. In five terms in Congress, Kirk has more than displayed his bonafides and his leadership skill on the most important issues of the day… like opposing Iranian nuclear proliferation. I don’t oppose a primary fight because it would focus on substantive issues but, on the contrary, because opposition to Kirk has nothing to do with the issues. The Tea Partiers opposing him don’t care that Kirk is the most qualified based on experience, the most intelligent, the most fit to win a general election, the best on Iran, the best on defense…..they care that he had the audacity to disagree with them on the bailout and on gun control — all issues which only primary voters disagree with him on. Guardiano calls for innovative and independent policy thinkers, yet it is Kirk’s refusal to toe the far right’s version of the “party line” that so upsets some conservatives.

If the debate were about issues, Andy Martin would not be running radio advertisements which mention a so called “solid rumor” that Kirk is gay. If this race were about issues, Lake County Republican leader Ray True would not publicly observe that Mark Kirk has “surrounded himself with homosexuals.” If this race were about issues, the rightwing blogosphere wouldn’t be buzzing about how “gay” Mark Kirk is. But this debate isn’t about issues. This debate is about how a small group of conservatives are upset that Kirk appeals to a more moderate group of voters. The opposition to Kirk doesn’t have a thing to do with issues.

The recent race between Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava and Conservative Doug Hoffman was basically a mudfight calling Scozzafava everything but a child of God.

My own skeptical take is that Guardiano is not pleased with the more moderate Kirk and wants a "high-minded slugfest." But such things rarely exist, especially when the moderate is battling a conservative who deems his opponent just wrong on issues, but a traitor to the party.

I'm all for sharing ideas, but not when it resembles a wrestling match.

Thinking About Tea Parties

David Brooks has a good take on the Tea Party movement and what it might be saying about American society circa 2010. It would be easy to write the movement off and some have (including yours truly). But Brooks, being a student of history, can see some of the underlying currents in America that are being made manifest in the Tea Party. He cites that Americans have lost faith in institutions and the Tea Party is basically saying what others are thinking:

The public is not only shifting from left to right. Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year.

The educated class believes in global warming, so public skepticism about global warming is on the rise. The educated class supports abortion rights, so public opinion is shifting against them. The educated class supports gun control, so opposition to gun control is mounting.

The story is the same in foreign affairs. The educated class is internationalist, so isolationist sentiment is now at an all-time high, according to a Pew Research Center survey. The educated class believes in multilateral action, so the number of Americans who believe we should “go our own way” has risen sharply.

A year ago, the Obama supporters were the passionate ones. Now the tea party brigades have all the intensity.

The tea party movement is a large, fractious confederation of Americans who are defined by what they are against. They are against the concentrated power of the educated class. They believe big government, big business, big media and the affluent professionals are merging to form self-serving oligarchy — with bloated government, unsustainable deficits, high taxes and intrusive regulation.

The tea party movement is mostly famous for its flamboyant fringe. But it is now more popular than either major party. According to the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 41 percent of Americans have a positive view of the tea party movement. Only 35 percent of Americans have a positive view of the Democrats and only 28 percent have a positive view of the Republican Party.

Again, most of us in the "educated class" have written these people off as silly idiots. And while I still think there is a lot of silly and even dangerous thinking coming from these folks, they are also on to something. Think about: over the last few years, we have seen governments unable to do anything as a major American city is inundated with water, get bogged down in two wars and run up massive deficits. When Americans look at business, the picture is no better: banks that made stupid risks, car companies that made cars no one wanted, and all supported in some way by an inept government. In some ways, this goes beyond who is in the White House: people are mad at everyone and even worse, they think the only person they can depend on is themselves.

This is the challenge that both political parties have to face. I don't think that the Tea Party has the answer: if we followed their advice in the fall of 2008, we'd basically be living through the Second Great Depression instead of the Great Recession. But both Republicans and Democrats have to find some way to restore trust to American institutions. It's not simply about having a "public option" as it is about making sure that government is doing it's job well. It's about making business follow rules that benefit all and not just a few. It's about not going using military action unless we know we are going win. It's about trying to live within our means.

The Tea Parties want us to believe that we are on our own. I don't think that's true, but they have a point when you look at the landscape of the last few years.

As the Partiers go after mainstream Republicans, it's important that those establishment candidates speak to the underlying problems. What the American public needs to hear is that they will work to restore the public's trust.

That's why we need to listen to the Tea Parties, even if we don't like them.

What A Tangled Web We Weave

E.D. Kain probably has the best statement on the New York Times article about American evangelical involvement in the horrid homosexuality bill in Uganda:

I have no doubt that these men never thought the Ugandan government would go so far, but I do think their surprise is a little unwarranted. In America the culture wars may be fought in courtrooms and on pulpits and television screens. It may be over as mundane a thing as the right to legally wed. That’s how far we’ve come. In many other parts of the world, however, the culture war is a life or death matter. It’s playing with fire. At a certain point, when you see people playing with enough fire you have to wonder if they really don’t know its potential to burn. You begin to question whether or not maybe they’re aware that it will spread into a conflagration. You begin to think that maybe they are aware, that maybe their intention goes beyond what they claim – only they haven’t thought through the repercussions all the way. The long-term ramifications of their words and actions are uglier than they had at first imagined. The abstractions, when they solidify, becoming a little too grim.

Unlike a lot of bloggers and even some friends, I'm not willing to say that these persons wanted gays in Uganda to die.  I can't look into the hearts of these people and I'm not willing to judge them as wanting to kills gay folks.  It's also too easy to paint everyone who is not crazy about homosexuality or voted against gay marriage as a potential murderer of gays.

That said, I do think these persons were as E.D. notes, "playing with fire,"  a dangerous game of naievte. Maybe they thought that the Ugandans would be like anti-gay activists in North America who fight gay rights in the courts and the ballot box and force gays back into a closet.  But most people know that while being gay is not easy in most countries, in some nations you can get killed for loving someone of the same sex. 

Many of the evangelical leaders are now offering "explanations."  Again, I don't know what was in their hearts and frankly, I don't want to know.  They have the right to express their opinions, but the leaders should be reminded that actions can sometimes have consequences no one ever intended.

How to Do You Solve a Problem Like Sarah?

Over the holidays, an article appeared on the Daily Beast outlining how Republicans can effectively criticize former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. 

How does one do that?  Well, ask Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Case for the Filibuster

With all the drama about what had to be done to get 60 votes in the Senate for the Health Care Reform bill, there has been a lot of talk from liberals about ditching the filibuster. It was only a few years ago that conservatives were the ones asking to get rid of the filibuster. Shortly after Christmas, Ezra Klien wrote that it's time to get rid of the Senate procedure:

In today's Senate, 55 votes isn't enough to "win," or anything close to it; it's enough to get you five votes away from the 60 votes you need to shut down a filibuster. Only then, in most cases, can a law be passed. The modern Senate is a radically different institution than the Senate of the 1960s, and the dysfunction exhibited in its debate over health care -- the absence of bipartisanship, the use of the filibuster to obstruct progress rather than protect debate, the ability of any given senator to hold the bill hostage to his or her demands -- has convinced many, both inside and outside the chamber, that it needs to be fixed.

Not so fast, says Jay Cost of Real Clear Politics. While Klein thinks that the Senate is "broken," Cost thinks the Senate is working just fine. The problem is that the two Senate parties have grown farther apart over the last 40 years. He explains by using the following graph:



He then goes on to explain:

Three important trends are evident from this picture. First, the party extremes have grown farther apart. Second, there are now fewer genuine moderates in the United States Senate than at any point in the last half century. Third, there used to be a sizeable ideological overlap between the two parties in the Senate. It no longer exists. Put simply, the Senate parties have become ideologically polarized.

This helps explain the increasing use of the filibuster. As the parties drift apart ideologically, the majority party will more likely introduce legislation that the minority party can't accept, giving the latter a stronger incentive to block it via the filibuster. Using the filibuster is thus a rational response when one finds oneself in the smaller half of a polarized chamber, which is more likely to be the case today than 45 years ago.

Cost goes on to explain that removing this tool would make the upper chamber a more chaotic place. The majority party would only have to convince 51 rather than 60 Senators and they would pass more partisan legislation because there would be no check to moderate legislation. Also Cost notes that this would make for unstable policy coming from Washington. Legislation passed when one party is in power would be rescinded when the other party comes to power. Cost notes:

If nothing more than a simple majority is necessary for sweeping changes, what stops a newly victorious party from undoing all the reforms implemented by the old majority, and instituting its own set of big changes? What would be the long-term consequences of that? If every biennial or quadrennial election brought the prospect of big changes in public policy - how could we practically plan for the future? We all expect things in 2013 to be generally the same as things in 2009. Eliminate the filibuster, empower a bare majority to impose ideologically extreme policies, and that expectation could become unreasonable.

If you are still reading this post, you can probably guess that I am in favor of keeping the filibuster. As Cost notes, moderates are becoming less and less rare in the Senate, and Congress as a whole. It was the moderates that were the dealmakers that could get legislation passed. A bill proposed by the Democrats would have some Republican support and visa versa. But as the parties become more polarized, it only makes sense that when one party proposes a bill, the other party will oppose it. It also means that the party in power is really in power and the filibuster is the only tool the losing party has.

Klein and others are mad that there had to be so much work done to get 60 votes for health care to pass. If there were no filibuster then a health care reform bill would pass, probably with a public option. The remaining moderates in the Democratic party would be sidelined, and the liberal base would become even more powerful. That would be music to Klein's ears, but I think it would be bad in the long run for American democracy.

Part of the problem with our polarized climate today is that when one party wins an election, party stalwarts tend to think this is a mandate from the people to get their own agendas done. They also think that a losing party basically has to sit there and take it. So, in the health care debate, Democrats think that all Republicans should basically shut up since they won the election.

But this isn't a pure democracy, it's a republic that believes that even minorities have to be listened to. People may not like that the GOP was threatening to use the filibuster, but is the only voice the GOP had. The same goes for when the Democrats were the minority party. They need to be able to have some say in how a bill is crafted and absent bridge building moderates, this is how minorities can speak.

Too the winner goes the spoils might work in sports, but not in politics.

The Ambassador Who Came In From the Cold?

More than a few Republicans were sad when Utah Governor Jon Huntsman gave up his job and his presidential ambitions to become Ambassador to China. However, Dan Gerstein of Forbes writes that the public shouldn't write off Huntsman yet:

My bet: Huntsman resigns his post in the summer, frees himself up to campaign for GOP candidates in the fall, then forms an exploratory committee by year's end. He'll start out behind, and he'll have to deal with the baggage of being tied to Obama. But Huntsman, who worked in the Reagan White House and helped lead his family's global chemical company, brings a lot of comparative advantages to the table. He hails from a pivotal electoral region for the GOP; he is far more engaging and genuine than the flat Pawlenty and the flip-flopping Romney; and he can match if not beat Romney on economic policy credibility without his fellow Mormon's corporate-raiding baggage, which will be an issue in the post-bailout era. So expect him to at least be in the (ahem) hunt.

If this becomes true, it would be wonderful for the GOP. Huntsman is definitely a candidate that could appeal to "Whole Foods Republicans" and expand the party's reach.

Will it come true? We shall find out in the coming year.

The GOP Health Care Political Theater

The new meme going in conservative circles is to try to repeal whatever health care overhaul passes next year. The 2010 campaign theme coming from GOP pols and activists is to repeal the bill.

I have to admit that it's a clever strategy. Too bad it won't work.

As Dave Weigel notes, even if the GOP wins one or both houses next year, they will still have to face some hurdles- like President Obama:

But as Republicans gravitate towards a repeal message for the 2010 elections, they’re running up against the reality that health care reform would be prohibitively hard to roll back. According to conservative health care analysts, legal analysts, and political strategists, if President Obama signs health care reform into law, Republicans will have extremely limited opportunities to repeal any part of it.

“Anyone who thinks they’ll be able to repeal ObamaCare is kidding themselves,” said Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. “If they want to stop it, they need to stop it now.”

In conversations with TWI, conservatives identified a few hurdles for a hypothetical, repeal-minded GOP Congress. The first is that in their most optimistic scenario, in which Republicans like Barton and Bachmann hold committee chairmanships, Barack Obama will be president, wielding a veto pen, until at least January of 2013. The second hurdle — one that Republicans aren’t considering, but Democrats are — is that once it passes, health care reform will win back public support. And the third hurdle is a provision of the bill that, according to Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and other conservatives, may not ever be subject to new legislative oversight. The road ahead for repeal looks so daunting that many conservatives are looking at legal challenges, not GOP wins, as the most promising way to challenge health care reform.

The thing is there will be no attempt to repeal the bill. Why? Because it's pretty hard to repeal a law, let alone one that is basically an entitlement. Have Republicans pushed back Social Security or Medicare? Nope. It might be a bad bill, but it's still a bill that will give more Americans access to health care. The minute this bill becomes law, it becomes a third rail in American politics.

If the GOP wanted to make a real difference, they would have worked with Democrats and make hard bargains to come up with a bill everyone could agree with. But for the most part, they chose to sit this one out.

So, why is the GOP trying to make this a centerpiece of their campaign in 2010? I think the answer is to please the party activists. Stuart Taylor sums this up in a post back in November about the polarization of political parties. Taylor cites Morris Fiorina, the author of Disconnect: The Breakdown of Representation in American Politics who believes that the American public tends to be more moderate than the political elites and activists. As political moderates are driven out of both political parties, politicians focus more on pleasing the base than in offering solutions. Which is why the GOP is pushing this plan and why they have sat out the health care debates. The moderates in the party that would have made the deals have either left the party, retired or lost in recent elections. What's left are those who care more about party purity than they do in legislation.

What we have in the repeal movement is political theater. It's a good show, but in the end all it's just entertainment.