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A sad commentary on our political leadership
By Steven Pearlstein, August 30, 2013
It is a sad commentary on the state of our democracy—and the state of our political leadership—that Republican leaders could not find the time or courage to attend Wednesday’s ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial marking the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.
I am painfully aware of today’s bitter partisan and ideological divide in the United States. I understand that an overwhelming majority of black Americans now vote for Democrats. I understand that Republicans want to roll back social programs and affirmative action efforts that are of keen importance to the black Americans who would inevitably dominate the ceremony. I understand that there is a blood feud between the Republicans and the labor unions that helped to organize the event.
I can also imagine that organizers of the march may not have been particularly enthusiastic in extending invitations to present and former Republican presidents, governors and Congressional leaders.
But if Republican leaders had overcome their discomfort and chosen to accept those invitations, I am pretty confident the organizers of the march would have had no choice but to welcome and accommodate them. By so doing, they would have done a service not only to the country, but to the Republican cause as well. Instead, they made themselves look even smaller and pettier by organizing a separate but unequal ceremony at the Capitol Hill Club.
In the wake of this embarrassment, Republican leaders might recall the wisdom of the one member of their party who did manage to make an appearance, albeit a silent one—Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln’s leadership was marked by a generosity of spirit and a fierce determination to unify a deeply-divided country—qualities perhaps best captured in the magnificent words of his second inaugural address that are etched into the marble walls of the Memorial that provided the backdrop for Wednesday’s ceremony.
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds…”
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Saturday, August 31, 2013
Bill, that wasn't your first mistake nor will it be the last
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Fox News' Bill O'Reilly Apologizes for MLK Anniversary Mistakes
By Sara Morrison, August 30, 2013
Bill O'Reilly ate a rare slice of humble pie on Thursday when he apologized for mistakenly reporting that Republicans were not invited to speak at Wednesday's MLK "I Have a Dream" speech anniversary event.
"Wrong, that's wrong," O'Reilly admitted, pointing out that other mistakes were made as well -- Republicans should not have declined the chance to speak.
O'Reilly explained that his error was due to a lack of reporting: "I simply assumed that since all the speakers were liberal Democrats, Republicans were excluded."
It's standard practice to issue a correction or retraction for these kinds of mistakes, but O'Reilly, never one for the conventional, instead turned his gaffe into an educational tool, devoting his "Tip of the Day" to reporters: "always check out the facts before you make a definitive statement."
"And when you make a mistake, admit it."
As several outlets pointed out, Republicans were invited to speak at the event but either turned it down or were unable to attend. It was widely reported the day before the march that Presidents George W. and George H.W. Bush's health issues that prevented their participation.
"I'm sorry I made that mistake," O'Reilly concluded. "It's very annoying because I know you guys watch the 'Factor' for accuracy."
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Fox News' Bill O'Reilly Apologizes for MLK Anniversary Mistakes
By Sara Morrison, August 30, 2013
Bill O'Reilly ate a rare slice of humble pie on Thursday when he apologized for mistakenly reporting that Republicans were not invited to speak at Wednesday's MLK "I Have a Dream" speech anniversary event.
"Wrong, that's wrong," O'Reilly admitted, pointing out that other mistakes were made as well -- Republicans should not have declined the chance to speak.
O'Reilly explained that his error was due to a lack of reporting: "I simply assumed that since all the speakers were liberal Democrats, Republicans were excluded."
It's standard practice to issue a correction or retraction for these kinds of mistakes, but O'Reilly, never one for the conventional, instead turned his gaffe into an educational tool, devoting his "Tip of the Day" to reporters: "always check out the facts before you make a definitive statement."
"And when you make a mistake, admit it."
As several outlets pointed out, Republicans were invited to speak at the event but either turned it down or were unable to attend. It was widely reported the day before the march that Presidents George W. and George H.W. Bush's health issues that prevented their participation.
"I'm sorry I made that mistake," O'Reilly concluded. "It's very annoying because I know you guys watch the 'Factor' for accuracy."
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Thursday, August 29, 2013
The disgraceful boondoggle of special favors that elected officials claim for themselves and their friends
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Time to Stop the Special Perks of Politics
By Carol Platt Liebau, August 29, 2013
If there's anything that's fundamentally un-American, it's the burgeoning system of politicians bestowing on themselves special privileges that are largely unavailable to the public -- that is, the people who elect them and pay their salaries.
As Glenn Reynolds pointed out in USA Today, special laws around the country give some states' politicians special gun rights, legal immunity and a variety of other perks. It's a disgusting practice that needs to stop. It's impossible for our elected representatives to "represent" us properly if they are living a life that's insulated from many of the onerous laws or regulations they inflict on the rest of us -- or, more generally, if they're a special "protected class."
Perhaps the apotheosis of this deplorable trend is the fact that, in 20 states, private lobbyists get public pensions. That's right -- through their taxes, citizens of those states are getting the dubious privilege of subsidizing the retirements of employees of private lobbying firms.
It's time to stop this disgraceful boondoggle, along with all the other cushy little special favors that our elected officials have granted themselves . . . and their friends.
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Time to Stop the Special Perks of Politics
By Carol Platt Liebau, August 29, 2013
If there's anything that's fundamentally un-American, it's the burgeoning system of politicians bestowing on themselves special privileges that are largely unavailable to the public -- that is, the people who elect them and pay their salaries.
As Glenn Reynolds pointed out in USA Today, special laws around the country give some states' politicians special gun rights, legal immunity and a variety of other perks. It's a disgusting practice that needs to stop. It's impossible for our elected representatives to "represent" us properly if they are living a life that's insulated from many of the onerous laws or regulations they inflict on the rest of us -- or, more generally, if they're a special "protected class."
Perhaps the apotheosis of this deplorable trend is the fact that, in 20 states, private lobbyists get public pensions. That's right -- through their taxes, citizens of those states are getting the dubious privilege of subsidizing the retirements of employees of private lobbying firms.
It's time to stop this disgraceful boondoggle, along with all the other cushy little special favors that our elected officials have granted themselves . . . and their friends.
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Sadly, religious conservatives still assert disproportionate influence in GOP primaries
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Fighting the Religious & Political Prosperity Gospel
By Brian and Garrett Fahy, August 30, 2013
Two recent articles highlight the two biggest challenges facing conservative religious voters and the GOP in 2014 and beyond: how to adapt to and influence a culture drifting leftward on social issues, and how to combat the creeping influence of a prosperity centered worldview.
In a recent Wall Street Journal interview, incoming president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Russell Moore, succinctly summarized the demoted status of the Christian Right, noting “we are no longer the moral majority. We are a prophetic minority.” Appropriately, this is a dose of reality with a measure of hope. Conservative Christians, once a dominant force in the culture and GOP politics, now occupy the minority position on key issues: same-sex marriage, same-sex adoption, first trimester abortion rights, and embryonic stem cell funding.
How those in the now moral minority will remain faithful to their doctrines while participating in an increasingly hostile politics is a question to be worked out in churches and at town hall meetings. Religious conservatives have reason to be worried, and to get working.
Last term, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated California’s Proposition 8 on a legal technicality, and threw out the key definitional provision of the Defense of Marriage Act that limited federal benefits to those in traditional man-woman marriages. This judicial policymaking extends beyond Washington.
Last week in New Mexico, where there are no civil unions or same-sex marriage rights, the state’s Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment does not protect a Christian photographer’s right to decline to photograph a same sex commitment ceremony. Instead, the court ruled that the photographer engaged in illegal discrimination based on sexual orientation, in violation of New Mexico’s public accommodation law.
This execrable decision highlights the direct conflict between irreconcilable views on sexuality and religious freedom. Those who find themselves on the wrong side of the law will have to choose between their faith and their prosperity. Which brings us to the second challenge: the prosperity gospel.
Writing in the Huffington Post last week, pastor Rick Henderson called out two of evangelical Christianity’s strongest voices – Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer – for peddling what has been pejoratively called the “prosperity gospel”: the belief that God wants you to be financially successful and will make you so if you’re obedient.
Theology aside, this fight over the centrality of wealth is important because it highlights two false notions. First, it suggests that the church equates the financially successful with the religiously pious. As a matter of orthodoxy, it’s wrong and counterproductive. Second, it reaffirms one of the worst characterizations of the Christian church: that it exists only to enrich itself, or is a community only for the rich.
Politically, the GOP is no stranger to the prosperity gospel. Unfortunately, it is an invitation to further alienation and marginalization from key voters. It not only leaves behind the poor and the middle class, it offers nothing true to those aspiring, nothing hopeful to those who have not succeeded, and nothing to stir charity by those at the top.
Thus, what will undermine the church, over emphasis on financial prosperity, will also undermine the GOP. 2012demonstrated this in the political realm. Mitt Romney, an exemplary man of longstanding church participation and extravagant personal generosity, was tarred as nothing more than the agent for the rich, and lost to President Obama, a man of no meaningful church participation and no demonstrable personal charity.
Center right voters of many faiths fell for the ruse as they heard Obama speak the language of faith and claim to care for those economically left behind. Now the real Barack Obama is revealed as he presides over an economy that has failed millions and seeks to trample religious liberty under the thumb of mandatory contraception funding. This should awaken conservative religious voters of all faiths, ages and income levels.
How religious conservatives will adapt to a quickly secularizing society and how they will confront a gospel of prosperity will impact how the GOP will fare in 2014 and 2016 because religious conservatives still assert disproportionate influence in GOP primaries.
How the GOP establishment will incorporate this religious faction of its base is an open question. But those who seek to lead the party – Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, et al. – must, in order to appeal to both secular and religious voters, be able to cogently address the social issues that are dividing the nation and clarify that the GOP’s prosperity gospel seeks to improve the lives of those at every rung of the economic ladder.
..................................................................................................................................
Fighting the Religious & Political Prosperity Gospel
By Brian and Garrett Fahy, August 30, 2013
Two recent articles highlight the two biggest challenges facing conservative religious voters and the GOP in 2014 and beyond: how to adapt to and influence a culture drifting leftward on social issues, and how to combat the creeping influence of a prosperity centered worldview.
In a recent Wall Street Journal interview, incoming president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Russell Moore, succinctly summarized the demoted status of the Christian Right, noting “we are no longer the moral majority. We are a prophetic minority.” Appropriately, this is a dose of reality with a measure of hope. Conservative Christians, once a dominant force in the culture and GOP politics, now occupy the minority position on key issues: same-sex marriage, same-sex adoption, first trimester abortion rights, and embryonic stem cell funding.
How those in the now moral minority will remain faithful to their doctrines while participating in an increasingly hostile politics is a question to be worked out in churches and at town hall meetings. Religious conservatives have reason to be worried, and to get working.
Last term, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated California’s Proposition 8 on a legal technicality, and threw out the key definitional provision of the Defense of Marriage Act that limited federal benefits to those in traditional man-woman marriages. This judicial policymaking extends beyond Washington.
Last week in New Mexico, where there are no civil unions or same-sex marriage rights, the state’s Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment does not protect a Christian photographer’s right to decline to photograph a same sex commitment ceremony. Instead, the court ruled that the photographer engaged in illegal discrimination based on sexual orientation, in violation of New Mexico’s public accommodation law.
This execrable decision highlights the direct conflict between irreconcilable views on sexuality and religious freedom. Those who find themselves on the wrong side of the law will have to choose between their faith and their prosperity. Which brings us to the second challenge: the prosperity gospel.
Writing in the Huffington Post last week, pastor Rick Henderson called out two of evangelical Christianity’s strongest voices – Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer – for peddling what has been pejoratively called the “prosperity gospel”: the belief that God wants you to be financially successful and will make you so if you’re obedient.
Theology aside, this fight over the centrality of wealth is important because it highlights two false notions. First, it suggests that the church equates the financially successful with the religiously pious. As a matter of orthodoxy, it’s wrong and counterproductive. Second, it reaffirms one of the worst characterizations of the Christian church: that it exists only to enrich itself, or is a community only for the rich.
Politically, the GOP is no stranger to the prosperity gospel. Unfortunately, it is an invitation to further alienation and marginalization from key voters. It not only leaves behind the poor and the middle class, it offers nothing true to those aspiring, nothing hopeful to those who have not succeeded, and nothing to stir charity by those at the top.
Thus, what will undermine the church, over emphasis on financial prosperity, will also undermine the GOP. 2012demonstrated this in the political realm. Mitt Romney, an exemplary man of longstanding church participation and extravagant personal generosity, was tarred as nothing more than the agent for the rich, and lost to President Obama, a man of no meaningful church participation and no demonstrable personal charity.
Center right voters of many faiths fell for the ruse as they heard Obama speak the language of faith and claim to care for those economically left behind. Now the real Barack Obama is revealed as he presides over an economy that has failed millions and seeks to trample religious liberty under the thumb of mandatory contraception funding. This should awaken conservative religious voters of all faiths, ages and income levels.
How religious conservatives will adapt to a quickly secularizing society and how they will confront a gospel of prosperity will impact how the GOP will fare in 2014 and 2016 because religious conservatives still assert disproportionate influence in GOP primaries.
How the GOP establishment will incorporate this religious faction of its base is an open question. But those who seek to lead the party – Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, et al. – must, in order to appeal to both secular and religious voters, be able to cogently address the social issues that are dividing the nation and clarify that the GOP’s prosperity gospel seeks to improve the lives of those at every rung of the economic ladder.
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Religious right is modifying their other beliefs just to keep abortion politics as a hot-button issue. “Pragmatic”, what?
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In Today's Culture Wars, Politics Affects Religion Rather Than The Other Way Around
By Hank Campbell, August 27, 2013
It used to be that religion impacted politics but now politics is instead changing religion. And the catalyst for how religious people are modifying their other beliefs to achieve a common political goal is abortion.
The cozy political lines of the last generation, where Republicans are generally against abortion and Democrats are for it, may get more blurry. The reason is evangelicals; a whole lot of them are Democrats and a whole lot of them are increasingly concerned about abortion.
Southern Baptists are the second-largest religious denomination in the US and while Southern Baptist membership is trending down, along with all denominations, the political authority of their 16 million people has increased. The reason their authority has grown is that most Americans believe in some limitations on abortion – the U.S.remains one of only two developed nations with federally unrestricted abortion at any time. As a result, more religious states are issuing their own restrictions while less religious states are increasing access by allowing non-doctors to perform abortions. The effort to have midwives perform abortions in California recently passed the state Senate.
The overarching political goal of restricting abortion has led to changes in other religious attitudes. Southern Baptists have not historically been free speech advocates, for example, they instead have called for boycotts regarding media they dislike, but now they are increasingly filing briefs advocating just that - because the free speech is for abortion protesters. A political issue has changed how the laity regards a behavioral issue, a complete switch from previous generations when religious people instead told politicians what platforms to endorse.
There is a panel this week at the 2013 American Political Science Association meeting regarding "The Christian Right Today" to discuss how politics is changing religion. There is no similar panel regarding the left and religion,though there should be - when the 2012 Democratic National Convention removed reference to 'God' in its platform it was a huge controversy among members. The reason is because African-Americans are 87 percent religious and 74 percent Democrats. Meanwhile, 20 percent of Southern Baptists are African-American and 15 million other Baptists are. They are a solid Democratic constituency, but they are often factored out of discussions because the topic of religion focuses on 'the right'.
Yet African-Americans have historically voted for their issues rather than for a party. Though solidly Republican for 60 years, when Democratic Pres. Harry Truman desegregated the military he got 77 percent of their votes in 1948 and Democratic Pres. Lyndon Johnson got 94 percent of their votes in 1964 after the Civil Rights Act was passed (1). Religious groups, including those with large African-American representation like Baptists, still want to use that leverage, and they are willing to reshape their tenets and leadership to achieve that goal. In 2012 the Southern Baptist Convention named its first African-American president, showing how powerful that 20 percent representation is – they are not the casually religious that make up the majority. And American Baptists have been noting that when Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream 50 years ago, he was one of them.
Watershed moments like 1964 happen periodically and as abortion politics becomes a renewed hot-button issue, Southern Baptists and other groups may find themselves modifying their other beliefs in order to appeal to a broad enough critical mass to effect their political desires, rather than trying to get politicians to adapt to an increasingly fragmented religious constituency.
NOTES:
(1) It passed in Congress with 80 percent Republican support yet only 61% Democratic support but the 1964 Republican presidential contender was against it. Due to that, the common belief is that Republicans, the party of Lincoln, were against civil rights.
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In Today's Culture Wars, Politics Affects Religion Rather Than The Other Way Around
By Hank Campbell, August 27, 2013
It used to be that religion impacted politics but now politics is instead changing religion. And the catalyst for how religious people are modifying their other beliefs to achieve a common political goal is abortion.
The cozy political lines of the last generation, where Republicans are generally against abortion and Democrats are for it, may get more blurry. The reason is evangelicals; a whole lot of them are Democrats and a whole lot of them are increasingly concerned about abortion.
Southern Baptists are the second-largest religious denomination in the US and while Southern Baptist membership is trending down, along with all denominations, the political authority of their 16 million people has increased. The reason their authority has grown is that most Americans believe in some limitations on abortion – the U.S.remains one of only two developed nations with federally unrestricted abortion at any time. As a result, more religious states are issuing their own restrictions while less religious states are increasing access by allowing non-doctors to perform abortions. The effort to have midwives perform abortions in California recently passed the state Senate.
The overarching political goal of restricting abortion has led to changes in other religious attitudes. Southern Baptists have not historically been free speech advocates, for example, they instead have called for boycotts regarding media they dislike, but now they are increasingly filing briefs advocating just that - because the free speech is for abortion protesters. A political issue has changed how the laity regards a behavioral issue, a complete switch from previous generations when religious people instead told politicians what platforms to endorse.
There is a panel this week at the 2013 American Political Science Association meeting regarding "The Christian Right Today" to discuss how politics is changing religion. There is no similar panel regarding the left and religion,though there should be - when the 2012 Democratic National Convention removed reference to 'God' in its platform it was a huge controversy among members. The reason is because African-Americans are 87 percent religious and 74 percent Democrats. Meanwhile, 20 percent of Southern Baptists are African-American and 15 million other Baptists are. They are a solid Democratic constituency, but they are often factored out of discussions because the topic of religion focuses on 'the right'.
Yet African-Americans have historically voted for their issues rather than for a party. Though solidly Republican for 60 years, when Democratic Pres. Harry Truman desegregated the military he got 77 percent of their votes in 1948 and Democratic Pres. Lyndon Johnson got 94 percent of their votes in 1964 after the Civil Rights Act was passed (1). Religious groups, including those with large African-American representation like Baptists, still want to use that leverage, and they are willing to reshape their tenets and leadership to achieve that goal. In 2012 the Southern Baptist Convention named its first African-American president, showing how powerful that 20 percent representation is – they are not the casually religious that make up the majority. And American Baptists have been noting that when Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream 50 years ago, he was one of them.
Watershed moments like 1964 happen periodically and as abortion politics becomes a renewed hot-button issue, Southern Baptists and other groups may find themselves modifying their other beliefs in order to appeal to a broad enough critical mass to effect their political desires, rather than trying to get politicians to adapt to an increasingly fragmented religious constituency.
NOTES:
(1) It passed in Congress with 80 percent Republican support yet only 61% Democratic support but the 1964 Republican presidential contender was against it. Due to that, the common belief is that Republicans, the party of Lincoln, were against civil rights.
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Perry, I think this is called "carpetbagging"
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Flak follows Perry's Missouri ad blitz
By Janet Digiacomo, August 28, 2013
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has a bone to pick with Texas and its governor, Rick Perry.
The former Republican presidential candidate and Lone Star governor is scheduled to speak Thursday at the Missouri Chamber of Commerce. In advance of his remarks, he's launched a several hunderd thousand dollar ad campaign on Missouri airwaves encouraging Show Me state companies and employees to relocate to Texas to reap the benefits of the state's strong business climate and lack of state income tax.
An angry Nixon, who is a Democrat, called the ads misleading, and said while Perry's aggressive style may work in Texas it doesn't work in Missouri and it didn't work in the rest of the country.
"We're not going to build a better America by attacking other states. It's the wrong way for a Governor to act. We need to work in concert to help America," Nixon said.
At least one Missouri radio station, KTRS-AM, has refused to run Perry's ads.
The Missouri governor also fought back with his own ad, running exclusively on KTRS. Narrated by Nixon, it highlights the strengths of the Show Me state - lower property taxes, lower sales taxes, an unemployment rate that's been below the national average for the last four years and a triple-A credit rating. The Missouri governor even used social media to bring his point home, tweeting out a top 10 list of why Missouri is better than Texas.
The Nixon-Perry bout is partly fueled by a state battle over Missouri House Bill 253 - a sweeping tax cut plan that Nixon recently vetoed. State workers, including teachers, opposed the proposed tax cuts, saying the decline in state revenues would mean job cuts. But an organized effort is underway in the Missouri House to override Nixon's veto.
That effort was the impetus to invite Rick Perry talk to members of the Missouri Chamber of Commerce, said Dan Mehan, the president and CEO of the group.
Mehan said he had no knowledge of Perry's planned on-air marketing blitz, but defended Perry's right to do so.
"He is doing what governors do," said Mehan. "They market their states, they are the chief sales people for those states."
At the same time, Mehan says Perry's trip to the state was serving a different purpose than his ads. The governor isn't coming to market Texas, Mehan said, but instead to bolster attempts to revive the Missouri tax cut measure.
John Havens, a spokesman for Perry, said "Missouri's success is important to our economic strength as a nation, and if Texas can push Missouri to implement more competitive economic policies, we all benefit."
Nixon, however, said Perry shouldn't be jumping into the middle of a state issue.
"He has tried his political stunts in different places we're not going to tolerate him coming in here," Nixon said, adding he found it interesting that those who want to override the veto had to go all the way to Texas for help.
Monday, the Missouri teachers organizations issued a news release saying House Bill 253 threatens the jobs of thousands of teachers. The vote to override vote is expected to take place in September.
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Flak follows Perry's Missouri ad blitz
By Janet Digiacomo, August 28, 2013
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has a bone to pick with Texas and its governor, Rick Perry.
The former Republican presidential candidate and Lone Star governor is scheduled to speak Thursday at the Missouri Chamber of Commerce. In advance of his remarks, he's launched a several hunderd thousand dollar ad campaign on Missouri airwaves encouraging Show Me state companies and employees to relocate to Texas to reap the benefits of the state's strong business climate and lack of state income tax.
An angry Nixon, who is a Democrat, called the ads misleading, and said while Perry's aggressive style may work in Texas it doesn't work in Missouri and it didn't work in the rest of the country.
"We're not going to build a better America by attacking other states. It's the wrong way for a Governor to act. We need to work in concert to help America," Nixon said.
At least one Missouri radio station, KTRS-AM, has refused to run Perry's ads.
The Missouri governor also fought back with his own ad, running exclusively on KTRS. Narrated by Nixon, it highlights the strengths of the Show Me state - lower property taxes, lower sales taxes, an unemployment rate that's been below the national average for the last four years and a triple-A credit rating. The Missouri governor even used social media to bring his point home, tweeting out a top 10 list of why Missouri is better than Texas.
The Nixon-Perry bout is partly fueled by a state battle over Missouri House Bill 253 - a sweeping tax cut plan that Nixon recently vetoed. State workers, including teachers, opposed the proposed tax cuts, saying the decline in state revenues would mean job cuts. But an organized effort is underway in the Missouri House to override Nixon's veto.
That effort was the impetus to invite Rick Perry talk to members of the Missouri Chamber of Commerce, said Dan Mehan, the president and CEO of the group.
Mehan said he had no knowledge of Perry's planned on-air marketing blitz, but defended Perry's right to do so.
"He is doing what governors do," said Mehan. "They market their states, they are the chief sales people for those states."
At the same time, Mehan says Perry's trip to the state was serving a different purpose than his ads. The governor isn't coming to market Texas, Mehan said, but instead to bolster attempts to revive the Missouri tax cut measure.
John Havens, a spokesman for Perry, said "Missouri's success is important to our economic strength as a nation, and if Texas can push Missouri to implement more competitive economic policies, we all benefit."
Nixon, however, said Perry shouldn't be jumping into the middle of a state issue.
"He has tried his political stunts in different places we're not going to tolerate him coming in here," Nixon said, adding he found it interesting that those who want to override the veto had to go all the way to Texas for help.
Monday, the Missouri teachers organizations issued a news release saying House Bill 253 threatens the jobs of thousands of teachers. The vote to override vote is expected to take place in September.
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Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Mr. Cruz, that 1990s “short-term political pain” will be nothing like what the GOP will suffer this time if they go ahead and force a government shutdown
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Cruz: Some Republicans only want political cover on Obamacare
By Tom Howell, Jr., August 28, 2013
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said Wednesday that too many of his fellow Republicans are “scared” of his bid to defund Obamacare and are exaggerating the consequences of taking a stand during an upcoming budget showdown on Capitol Hill.
Calling intra-party divisions “unfortunate and disappointing,” the freshman Republican called out GOP lawmakers who have not backed a conservative-led strategy to cut off funds for the Affordable Care Act before the new fiscal year.
“Right now, far too many Republicans are scared of this fight,” Mr. Cruz told radio host Rush Limbaugh.
Senior Republicans have been reluctant to tie a short-term spending deal this September to the health care law, saying the public will blame them for threatening to shut down the government.
But Mr. Cruz said a brief government shutdown in the 1990s brought only “short-term political pain” for the Republican Party and years of balanced budgets for the federal government.
Mr. Cruz and allies like Republican Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Marco Rubio of Florida have said Republicans need to stand firm on the health care law before consumers begin to enroll Oct. 1 on state-based health exchanges, where those without employer-based insurance can buy coverage with the help of government subsidies.
Otherwise, Mr. Cruz said, Americans will get “addicted to the subsidies, addicted to the sugar.”
He said that as it stands, Republicans are fighting his efforts to defund the law more strongly than Democrats.
“That’s a sad state of affairs,” he told Mr. Limbaugh.
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Cruz: Some Republicans only want political cover on Obamacare
By Tom Howell, Jr., August 28, 2013
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said Wednesday that too many of his fellow Republicans are “scared” of his bid to defund Obamacare and are exaggerating the consequences of taking a stand during an upcoming budget showdown on Capitol Hill.
Calling intra-party divisions “unfortunate and disappointing,” the freshman Republican called out GOP lawmakers who have not backed a conservative-led strategy to cut off funds for the Affordable Care Act before the new fiscal year.
“Right now, far too many Republicans are scared of this fight,” Mr. Cruz told radio host Rush Limbaugh.
Senior Republicans have been reluctant to tie a short-term spending deal this September to the health care law, saying the public will blame them for threatening to shut down the government.
But Mr. Cruz said a brief government shutdown in the 1990s brought only “short-term political pain” for the Republican Party and years of balanced budgets for the federal government.
Mr. Cruz and allies like Republican Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Marco Rubio of Florida have said Republicans need to stand firm on the health care law before consumers begin to enroll Oct. 1 on state-based health exchanges, where those without employer-based insurance can buy coverage with the help of government subsidies.
Otherwise, Mr. Cruz said, Americans will get “addicted to the subsidies, addicted to the sugar.”
He said that as it stands, Republicans are fighting his efforts to defund the law more strongly than Democrats.
“That’s a sad state of affairs,” he told Mr. Limbaugh.
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Rothenberg thinks there’s “no reason to believe that members on both sides of the aisle ... aren’t evaluating bills in terms of what they believe is best for their constituents or for the country.” To further quote him, that’s “a lot of baloney.”
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When Calling Something ‘Politics’ Is Mere Politics Itself
By Stuart Rothenberg, August 27, 2013
Last week, CBS News veteran correspondent Mark Knoller tweeted that “Pres Obama says he’ll do ‘whatever it takes’ to get Congress, esp GOP, ‘to think less about politics and party’ & do what’s good for US.”
I hear that sort of sentiment a lot — politicians telling each other to put partisanship aside and simply do what is best for the country. Most of the time, it’s a lot of baloney.
You can think that many Republican members of Congress are nuts, extremists or, to quote one Republican officeholder, “wacko birds” without thinking that they are taking stands merely because of “politics and party.”
I have been critical of purist conservatives and liberals who are unwilling to compromise on important issues where compromise is necessary to address crucial, immediate problems. But painting all opposition to the president’s agenda as merely “politics” or “partisanship” is nothing more than a political tactic. In other words, it is “politics.”
Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Mike Lee and the couple of dozen House Republicans who seem to vote against everything cast their votes overwhelmingly because they think that passing those bills will hurt the country — not because they have decided to vote against anything the White House proposes.
Sure, there are times when opposition to something that is going to pass anyway is mere “politics.” The president knows something about that, since, once he was in the White House, he admitted that his votes against raising the debt ceiling were just politics. That’s not the case with tea party conservatives such as Cruz, Lee and Paul, who have complained often about the size of the debt and the need to shrink government, not grow it.
Yes, there is too much confrontation in this town and too little willingness to compromise on issues. And analysts/authors Norm Ornstein and Tom Mann may well be right in arguing in their book, “It’s Even Worse Than it Looks,” that the problem rests primarily with Republicans who are unwilling to meet Democrats even part of the way on crucial public policy issues.
But there is no reason to believe that members on both sides of the aisle whose voting records put them toward the ideological extremes of their parties — from Democrats Danny K. Davis of Illinois, Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and Raúl M. Grijalva of Arizona on the left to Republicans Steve King of Iowa, Jim Jordan of Ohio and Justin Amash of Michigan on the right — aren’t evaluating bills in terms of what they believe is best for their constituents or for the country.
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When Calling Something ‘Politics’ Is Mere Politics Itself
By Stuart Rothenberg, August 27, 2013
Last week, CBS News veteran correspondent Mark Knoller tweeted that “Pres Obama says he’ll do ‘whatever it takes’ to get Congress, esp GOP, ‘to think less about politics and party’ & do what’s good for US.”
I hear that sort of sentiment a lot — politicians telling each other to put partisanship aside and simply do what is best for the country. Most of the time, it’s a lot of baloney.
You can think that many Republican members of Congress are nuts, extremists or, to quote one Republican officeholder, “wacko birds” without thinking that they are taking stands merely because of “politics and party.”
I have been critical of purist conservatives and liberals who are unwilling to compromise on important issues where compromise is necessary to address crucial, immediate problems. But painting all opposition to the president’s agenda as merely “politics” or “partisanship” is nothing more than a political tactic. In other words, it is “politics.”
Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Mike Lee and the couple of dozen House Republicans who seem to vote against everything cast their votes overwhelmingly because they think that passing those bills will hurt the country — not because they have decided to vote against anything the White House proposes.
Sure, there are times when opposition to something that is going to pass anyway is mere “politics.” The president knows something about that, since, once he was in the White House, he admitted that his votes against raising the debt ceiling were just politics. That’s not the case with tea party conservatives such as Cruz, Lee and Paul, who have complained often about the size of the debt and the need to shrink government, not grow it.
Yes, there is too much confrontation in this town and too little willingness to compromise on issues. And analysts/authors Norm Ornstein and Tom Mann may well be right in arguing in their book, “It’s Even Worse Than it Looks,” that the problem rests primarily with Republicans who are unwilling to meet Democrats even part of the way on crucial public policy issues.
But there is no reason to believe that members on both sides of the aisle whose voting records put them toward the ideological extremes of their parties — from Democrats Danny K. Davis of Illinois, Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and Raúl M. Grijalva of Arizona on the left to Republicans Steve King of Iowa, Jim Jordan of Ohio and Justin Amash of Michigan on the right — aren’t evaluating bills in terms of what they believe is best for their constituents or for the country.
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"Ambition is good. Ambition is right. Ambition works."
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In defense of political ambition
By Chris Cillizza. August 28, 2013
Cory Booker is ambitious as hell.
That fact comes through loud and clear in Jason Horowitz’s excellent profile of the Newark (N.J.) Mayor and soon-to-be Senator.
“His detractors see him as an insatiable political animal who, in pursuit of his own national prospects, is willing to compromise on Democratic ideals and continue boosting his mutually beneficial relationship with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is a potential Republican presidential nominee,” writes Horowitz.
Conventional wisdom suggests that ambition for higher office — or a bigger national stage — is an unseemly characteristic in politicians, the sort of relentless climbing that people disdain in the men and women who represent them.
Bull. The Fix is a big believer in the general goodness of political ambition. Here’s why.
1. ALL politicians are looking for the next big thing. Let’s take politicians at their word that they got into politics because they want to serve the public. (We know that’s not entirely true, but just hang with us for a minute.) Under that logic, the best way to serve the most people is to be president of the United States. Short of that, it makes sense that you can do more good/have more influence over policy as a U.S. Senator than as a state Senator. Take that fact and then live in the real world where lots of politicians get into this line of work not just for the public service but also for the competitiveness of it, and you see that virtually everyone who gets into Congress (or even serves at the state legislative level) has their eye on something higher. Some politicians — like Booker and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul — are just more honest about it.
2. Politicians are just like us. In what other profession would there be an expectation that you can never, ever think about what you might do next? The Fix spent years working our butt off to get the attention of the folks at the Washington Post in hopes of landing a job here. That didn’t mean we didn’t do our job at the time well; in fact, it probably meant we went above and beyond in order to showcase as much of our ability as we could. The same holds true for politicians. Would you really want to be represented by someone who was 100 percent comfortable with where he/she was and had no interest in ever doing anything else? Restlessness — of intellect and action — is usually found in our greatest politicians.
3. Ambition fuels politics. Like it or not, ambition is the fuel that powers the Washington machine. (Bad metaphor alert!) As much as we dislike “House of Cards” — and we really dislike it — one thing the show absolutely gets right is how ambition oozes from the Capitol. And — unlike “House of Cards” — not all, in fact, not most, of that ambition is used for nefarious purposes and ends. Ambition for higher office or a better assignment on a better committee often drives politicians to work together that might not do so if they were locked into the seat they held.
Yes, political ambition also, quite clearly, has a downside. (John Edwards and Anthony Weiner leap to mind.) But, to deride a politician SOLELY because he or she is ambitious is a mistake. To paraphrase Gordon Gekko: Ambition is good. Ambition is right. Ambition works.
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In defense of political ambition
By Chris Cillizza. August 28, 2013
Cory Booker is ambitious as hell.
That fact comes through loud and clear in Jason Horowitz’s excellent profile of the Newark (N.J.) Mayor and soon-to-be Senator.
“His detractors see him as an insatiable political animal who, in pursuit of his own national prospects, is willing to compromise on Democratic ideals and continue boosting his mutually beneficial relationship with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is a potential Republican presidential nominee,” writes Horowitz.
Conventional wisdom suggests that ambition for higher office — or a bigger national stage — is an unseemly characteristic in politicians, the sort of relentless climbing that people disdain in the men and women who represent them.
Bull. The Fix is a big believer in the general goodness of political ambition. Here’s why.
1. ALL politicians are looking for the next big thing. Let’s take politicians at their word that they got into politics because they want to serve the public. (We know that’s not entirely true, but just hang with us for a minute.) Under that logic, the best way to serve the most people is to be president of the United States. Short of that, it makes sense that you can do more good/have more influence over policy as a U.S. Senator than as a state Senator. Take that fact and then live in the real world where lots of politicians get into this line of work not just for the public service but also for the competitiveness of it, and you see that virtually everyone who gets into Congress (or even serves at the state legislative level) has their eye on something higher. Some politicians — like Booker and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul — are just more honest about it.
2. Politicians are just like us. In what other profession would there be an expectation that you can never, ever think about what you might do next? The Fix spent years working our butt off to get the attention of the folks at the Washington Post in hopes of landing a job here. That didn’t mean we didn’t do our job at the time well; in fact, it probably meant we went above and beyond in order to showcase as much of our ability as we could. The same holds true for politicians. Would you really want to be represented by someone who was 100 percent comfortable with where he/she was and had no interest in ever doing anything else? Restlessness — of intellect and action — is usually found in our greatest politicians.
3. Ambition fuels politics. Like it or not, ambition is the fuel that powers the Washington machine. (Bad metaphor alert!) As much as we dislike “House of Cards” — and we really dislike it — one thing the show absolutely gets right is how ambition oozes from the Capitol. And — unlike “House of Cards” — not all, in fact, not most, of that ambition is used for nefarious purposes and ends. Ambition for higher office or a better assignment on a better committee often drives politicians to work together that might not do so if they were locked into the seat they held.
Yes, political ambition also, quite clearly, has a downside. (John Edwards and Anthony Weiner leap to mind.) But, to deride a politician SOLELY because he or she is ambitious is a mistake. To paraphrase Gordon Gekko: Ambition is good. Ambition is right. Ambition works.
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Tuesday, August 27, 2013
"... Jindal, no friend to Obama, is trying to stamp out the impeachment sparks."
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Impeach Obama! (And FDR, Eisenhower, Carter, Reagan, Etc.)
By Frank James, August 27, 2013
Based on what we know now, President Obama is as likely to be impeached as he is to be a lottery pick in next year's NBA draft.
Yet it's equally unlikely that calls for his impeachment will end anytime soon. Adding fuel to the fire recently was Obama's old friend from his Senate days, Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who suggested Obama had come "perilously close" to meeting the impeachment threshold.
Freshman Rep. Kent Bentivolio, R-Mich., fanned the flames by saying an Obama impeachment would be a "dream come true," though the lawyers he consulted on the matter told him to keep dreaming.
The congressional summer recess also found Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas, telling his constituents that Republicans "could probably get the votes" in the House to impeach Obama.
Of course, as Garrett Epps, a University of Baltimore Law School professor, points out in "American Epic: Reading the U.S. Constitution," nothing can stop a House bent on impeachment from seizing on any reason to do so "whether for illicit sex, jaywalking, or drinking Pinot Noir with fish."
It's kind of like the old saw about the ease with which a prosecutor can persuade a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. But getting the House to vote for impeachment, however, is a far simpler task than getting a conviction in the Senate.
Still, so long as the U.S. has political parties, there will be people calling for the impeachment of the president of an opposing party. Or even threatening impeachment against presidents of their own party.
Only three of 44 presidents have had to endure actual impeachment proceedings. House charges against John Tyler were dropped; Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were acquitted.
But name a modern non-impeached president and someone probably imagined him being impeached. A Republican congressman from Michigan wanted Franklin Roosevelt impeached, and he wasn't alone.
Perhaps more fancifully, the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote a poem titled "Tentative Description of a Dinner Given To Promote the Impeachment of President Eisenhower." Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, especially, all inspired more or less serious calls for their impeachment.
Many of those calls came from one lawmaker, the late Democratic Rep. Henry Gonzalez. The Texas congressman went after so many Republican presidents that journalist John Nichols, in his book The Genius of Impeachment, says he was jokingly referred to by his House colleagues as "Henry B. Gonzalez (D-Impeachment)."
None of Gonzalez's targets, of course, were impeached. And, again, Obama isn't likely to be either.
No less a Republican leader than Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, no friend to Obama, is trying to stamp out the impeachment sparks.
On NBC's Meet the Press recently, he said:
"Look, I reject that kind of talk. The reality is I didn't like it when the left spent eight years trying to delegitimize President Bush, calling to question his election.
"I don't think we should be doing that to President Obama. The reality is, one of the great things about this country is we do have a peaceful transfer of power. I disagree with this president's policy. And stop talking about impeachment."
Obama White House aides couldn't agree more. Responding to an online petition with more than 49,000 signers calling for the president's impeachment, someone in the White House operation wrote a response headlined: "The Short Answer Is No, But Keep Reading."
After refuting several of the charges made by the president's opponents, the post said:
Impeach Obama! (And FDR, Eisenhower, Carter, Reagan, Etc.)
By Frank James, August 27, 2013
Based on what we know now, President Obama is as likely to be impeached as he is to be a lottery pick in next year's NBA draft.
Yet it's equally unlikely that calls for his impeachment will end anytime soon. Adding fuel to the fire recently was Obama's old friend from his Senate days, Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who suggested Obama had come "perilously close" to meeting the impeachment threshold.
Freshman Rep. Kent Bentivolio, R-Mich., fanned the flames by saying an Obama impeachment would be a "dream come true," though the lawyers he consulted on the matter told him to keep dreaming.
The congressional summer recess also found Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas, telling his constituents that Republicans "could probably get the votes" in the House to impeach Obama.
Of course, as Garrett Epps, a University of Baltimore Law School professor, points out in "American Epic: Reading the U.S. Constitution," nothing can stop a House bent on impeachment from seizing on any reason to do so "whether for illicit sex, jaywalking, or drinking Pinot Noir with fish."
It's kind of like the old saw about the ease with which a prosecutor can persuade a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. But getting the House to vote for impeachment, however, is a far simpler task than getting a conviction in the Senate.
Still, so long as the U.S. has political parties, there will be people calling for the impeachment of the president of an opposing party. Or even threatening impeachment against presidents of their own party.
Only three of 44 presidents have had to endure actual impeachment proceedings. House charges against John Tyler were dropped; Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were acquitted.
But name a modern non-impeached president and someone probably imagined him being impeached. A Republican congressman from Michigan wanted Franklin Roosevelt impeached, and he wasn't alone.
Perhaps more fancifully, the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote a poem titled "Tentative Description of a Dinner Given To Promote the Impeachment of President Eisenhower." Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, especially, all inspired more or less serious calls for their impeachment.
Many of those calls came from one lawmaker, the late Democratic Rep. Henry Gonzalez. The Texas congressman went after so many Republican presidents that journalist John Nichols, in his book The Genius of Impeachment, says he was jokingly referred to by his House colleagues as "Henry B. Gonzalez (D-Impeachment)."
None of Gonzalez's targets, of course, were impeached. And, again, Obama isn't likely to be either.
No less a Republican leader than Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, no friend to Obama, is trying to stamp out the impeachment sparks.
On NBC's Meet the Press recently, he said:
"Look, I reject that kind of talk. The reality is I didn't like it when the left spent eight years trying to delegitimize President Bush, calling to question his election.
"I don't think we should be doing that to President Obama. The reality is, one of the great things about this country is we do have a peaceful transfer of power. I disagree with this president's policy. And stop talking about impeachment."
Obama White House aides couldn't agree more. Responding to an online petition with more than 49,000 signers calling for the president's impeachment, someone in the White House operation wrote a response headlined: "The Short Answer Is No, But Keep Reading."
After refuting several of the charges made by the president's opponents, the post said:
"So the short answer is that we won't be calling for the President's impeachment — and given the fact that you made your appeal to the White House itself, we doubt you were holding your breath waiting for our support.
"Here's the important thing, though. Even though this request isn't going to happen, we want you to walk away from this process with knowledge that we're doing our best to listen — even to our harshest critics."..................................................................................................................................
Yes, Pat Robertson definitely has lost touch with the world as it is
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People Who Need to Retire: Pat Robertson Edition
The 700 Club host falsely asserted that gay men in San Francisco use special rings to give AIDS to unsuspecting people who shake their hands. What year is it?
By Garance Franke-Ruta, August 27, 2013
Dear people in public life: When you love your job, there is a nobility in working until you die, but retirement is a valid and respectable option, too. Someone needs to sit down with Pat Robertson and let him know that his views in 2013 don't sound conservative -- they sound like he has lost touch with the world as it is.
To wit, in remarks Tuesday on the 700 Club on the Christian Broadcasting Network, the 83-year-old televangelist asserted that gay men in San Francisco use special rings to spread HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. “You know what they do in San Francisco, some in the gay community there, they want to get people, so if they got the stuff they’ll have a ring, you shake hands, and the ring’s got a little thing where you cut your finger,” Robertson said.
"Really?" asked his co-host, Terry Meeuwsen.
“Yeah, really. It’s that kind of vicious stuff, which would be the equivalent of murder," continued Roberts. "But anyhow.”
Robertson later clarified he was talking about something he was warned about decades ago, saying he regretted that his remarks were misunderstood and telling The Atlantic Wire: "In my own experience, our organization sponsored a meeting years ago in San Francisco where trained security officers warned me about shaking hands because, in those days, certain AIDS-infected activists were deliberately trying to infect people like me by virtue of rings which would cut fingers and transfer blood."
"In no wise were my remarks meant as an indictment of the homosexual community or, for that fact, to those infected with this dreadful disease," Roberts said.
There was at least one gay-activist effort in the past to get Christian conservative leaders sick. In 2000, Dan Savage wrote in detail in The Stranger about his efforts to give Gary Bauer the flu:
But there's no record of anyone trying to deliberately infect someone like Robertson with HIV. Maybe a security guard gave Robertson false information about gay men in San Francisco back in the deeply homophobic 1980s, and Robertson believed it all these years because it jibed with his suspicious view of gays. This would have been during the era when Robertson routinely attacked AIDS funding and disparaged gays, one imagines. But why bring it up decades later as if it were something that (a) had ever happened and (b) was still happening? Robertson just seemed confused, and the 700 Club clipped the passage out of his show, according to Right Wing Watch.
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People Who Need to Retire: Pat Robertson Edition
The 700 Club host falsely asserted that gay men in San Francisco use special rings to give AIDS to unsuspecting people who shake their hands. What year is it?
By Garance Franke-Ruta, August 27, 2013
Dear people in public life: When you love your job, there is a nobility in working until you die, but retirement is a valid and respectable option, too. Someone needs to sit down with Pat Robertson and let him know that his views in 2013 don't sound conservative -- they sound like he has lost touch with the world as it is.
To wit, in remarks Tuesday on the 700 Club on the Christian Broadcasting Network, the 83-year-old televangelist asserted that gay men in San Francisco use special rings to spread HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. “You know what they do in San Francisco, some in the gay community there, they want to get people, so if they got the stuff they’ll have a ring, you shake hands, and the ring’s got a little thing where you cut your finger,” Robertson said.
"Really?" asked his co-host, Terry Meeuwsen.
“Yeah, really. It’s that kind of vicious stuff, which would be the equivalent of murder," continued Roberts. "But anyhow.”
Robertson later clarified he was talking about something he was warned about decades ago, saying he regretted that his remarks were misunderstood and telling The Atlantic Wire: "In my own experience, our organization sponsored a meeting years ago in San Francisco where trained security officers warned me about shaking hands because, in those days, certain AIDS-infected activists were deliberately trying to infect people like me by virtue of rings which would cut fingers and transfer blood."
"In no wise were my remarks meant as an indictment of the homosexual community or, for that fact, to those infected with this dreadful disease," Roberts said.
There was at least one gay-activist effort in the past to get Christian conservative leaders sick. In 2000, Dan Savage wrote in detail in The Stranger about his efforts to give Gary Bauer the flu:
I go around the room licking doorknobs. They are filthy, no doubt, but there isn't time to find a rag to spit on. If for some reason I don't manage to get a pen from my mouth to Gary's hands at the conference, I want to seed his office with germs, get as many of his people sick as I can, and hopefully one of them will infect the candidate. I lick office doorknobs, bathroom doorknobs. When that's done, I start on the staplers, phones, and computer keyboards. Then I stand in the kitchen and lick the rims of all the clean coffee cups drying in the rack. I grab my coat and head out.
But there's no record of anyone trying to deliberately infect someone like Robertson with HIV. Maybe a security guard gave Robertson false information about gay men in San Francisco back in the deeply homophobic 1980s, and Robertson believed it all these years because it jibed with his suspicious view of gays. This would have been during the era when Robertson routinely attacked AIDS funding and disparaged gays, one imagines. But why bring it up decades later as if it were something that (a) had ever happened and (b) was still happening? Robertson just seemed confused, and the 700 Club clipped the passage out of his show, according to Right Wing Watch.
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"Unity in our country has been crippled by leaders who allow it to be so." "Leaders"? I don't think so!
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Political Leadership. I Knew I Forgot Something.
By Dale Schlundt, August 26, 2013
Why is it difficult to lead in the 21st century? America is growing; there are many more potential leaders in our communities, but none that truly stand out as those who have come before. Where is the Lincoln of today? Of course, historians argue that Lincoln had more than his share of intense critics during his era. Yet, he pushed through them to accomplish some of the most critical tasks of the time. Today, compromise among politicians seems to reflect more an unwillingness to be unpopular, or at least to make unpopular decisions, than it does a dedication to accomplish goals. At the same time, an inability to collaborate with political foes seems prevalent as well. It is time to discontinue this trend of "all or nothing" in political and social circles within our country.
The "all or nothing" mentality is what began the American Revolution and the Civil War, among other historical events I could suggest. I teach my students that history is meaningless, unless we as individuals give it meaning. Let us make useful inferences from our nation's political history. It is time to continue to grow as a nation, without unnecessary and prolonged suffering that always seems to peak before change occurs. We tirelessly debate and write about the shortcomings of our current elected officials, while still accepting their small, but insignificant accomplishments. How often do we say to ourselves, "What can I do?"
This work has relatively nothing to do with political parties, as both they and the individuals in them will come and go. Perhaps it is time for the people as a whole to lead, as our representatives at all levels seem to lack the capacity to sacrifice for the greater good. The future always seems to be a variable or a gamble. However, the citizens of America have the power to decide what that variable will be. Unity in our country has been crippled by leaders who allow it to be so. The very word hegemony is known by so few, but should be a household term in the times in which we live. I urge all of us to add it to our internal dictionary, as it is truly relevant in this political environment. Hegemonic cycles have been seen throughout civilization's history; yet, this does not mean we have to follow this precedent. As many great scholars have pointed out, democracy at one time was a radical theory, not widely accepted.
As an Independent/Democrat, my own political views are typically not radical, but somewhat liberal, in the spirit of promoting constructive change. Of course, conservatism is a necessary element in any political sphere. Yet, it seems to be a trend in history that every so often radicalism is needed to promote democratic well-being. As Thomas Jefferson so eloquently stated, "When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When governments fear the people, there is liberty."
To put this quote in the context of 21st century America, we could say that we need to enhance the state of those who are being governed, rather than the state of those who are governing. Without question, as we all know, very few of those who are currently governing need their (financial or any other) state enhanced. Today, the middle class (the majority) needs to yell a little louder than before. It is fully justified in doing so.
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Political Leadership. I Knew I Forgot Something.
By Dale Schlundt, August 26, 2013
(Let us give our American History meaning)
Why is it difficult to lead in the 21st century? America is growing; there are many more potential leaders in our communities, but none that truly stand out as those who have come before. Where is the Lincoln of today? Of course, historians argue that Lincoln had more than his share of intense critics during his era. Yet, he pushed through them to accomplish some of the most critical tasks of the time. Today, compromise among politicians seems to reflect more an unwillingness to be unpopular, or at least to make unpopular decisions, than it does a dedication to accomplish goals. At the same time, an inability to collaborate with political foes seems prevalent as well. It is time to discontinue this trend of "all or nothing" in political and social circles within our country.
The "all or nothing" mentality is what began the American Revolution and the Civil War, among other historical events I could suggest. I teach my students that history is meaningless, unless we as individuals give it meaning. Let us make useful inferences from our nation's political history. It is time to continue to grow as a nation, without unnecessary and prolonged suffering that always seems to peak before change occurs. We tirelessly debate and write about the shortcomings of our current elected officials, while still accepting their small, but insignificant accomplishments. How often do we say to ourselves, "What can I do?"
This work has relatively nothing to do with political parties, as both they and the individuals in them will come and go. Perhaps it is time for the people as a whole to lead, as our representatives at all levels seem to lack the capacity to sacrifice for the greater good. The future always seems to be a variable or a gamble. However, the citizens of America have the power to decide what that variable will be. Unity in our country has been crippled by leaders who allow it to be so. The very word hegemony is known by so few, but should be a household term in the times in which we live. I urge all of us to add it to our internal dictionary, as it is truly relevant in this political environment. Hegemonic cycles have been seen throughout civilization's history; yet, this does not mean we have to follow this precedent. As many great scholars have pointed out, democracy at one time was a radical theory, not widely accepted.
As an Independent/Democrat, my own political views are typically not radical, but somewhat liberal, in the spirit of promoting constructive change. Of course, conservatism is a necessary element in any political sphere. Yet, it seems to be a trend in history that every so often radicalism is needed to promote democratic well-being. As Thomas Jefferson so eloquently stated, "When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When governments fear the people, there is liberty."
To put this quote in the context of 21st century America, we could say that we need to enhance the state of those who are being governed, rather than the state of those who are governing. Without question, as we all know, very few of those who are currently governing need their (financial or any other) state enhanced. Today, the middle class (the majority) needs to yell a little louder than before. It is fully justified in doing so.
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Sarah, put a sock in it!
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Palin jumps onto defund Obamacare effort
By Kein Liptak, August 27, 2013
The effort by some Capitol Hill Republicans to wield leverage in upcoming budget battles in order to defund President Barack Obama's health care law gained the backing of Sarah Palin Tuesday.
The former Alaska governor and one-time GOP vice presidential nominee said she was signing on to a petition launched by conservative U.S. senators who say they won't support any measure funding the federal government that includes support for Obamacare.
"Those in the Senate and those seeking to serve there must stand strong against this devastating program before it reveals its true face now recognized by both sides of the aisle as the bureaucratic and economic beast that will deny our families, our businesses, and our sick the ability to access health care," Palin said in a statement distributed by the Senate Conservatives Fund, a grassroots group that is urging lawmakers to sign onto the plan.
Palin said she was signing onto a petition from the group for the defund Obamacare effort. Backed by Senators Ted Cruz of Texas, Mike Lee of Utah, and Marco Rubio of Florida, the effort presses Republican lawmakers to pledge their opposition to any government funding measure that also funds the Affordable Care Act.
"The time for rhetoric and ceremonial votes in Congress is over. The time to take serious action to stop Obamacare is now," Palin wrote.
Many Republicans oppose the tactic, saying even the threat of a government shutdown could alienate voters who are tired of partisan bickering over the nation's finances.
Cruz, in an interview last week with CNN chief political correspondent Candy Crowley, conceded the votes weren't there yet for the plan to succeed. But he predicted a "grassroots tsunami" would lift the plan in the next month.
Palin, who in 2009 stepped down as Alaska governor in the middle of her term, currently acts as a commentator on the Fox News Channel. She told CNN earlier this summer she would definitely hit the campaign trail for fellow Republicans next year.
"Time's-a-wasting. Things are moving really quickly and if we don't get out there and defend this republic then America will be transformed into something we do not recognize," she told CNN.
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Palin jumps onto defund Obamacare effort
By Kein Liptak, August 27, 2013
The effort by some Capitol Hill Republicans to wield leverage in upcoming budget battles in order to defund President Barack Obama's health care law gained the backing of Sarah Palin Tuesday.
The former Alaska governor and one-time GOP vice presidential nominee said she was signing on to a petition launched by conservative U.S. senators who say they won't support any measure funding the federal government that includes support for Obamacare.
"Those in the Senate and those seeking to serve there must stand strong against this devastating program before it reveals its true face now recognized by both sides of the aisle as the bureaucratic and economic beast that will deny our families, our businesses, and our sick the ability to access health care," Palin said in a statement distributed by the Senate Conservatives Fund, a grassroots group that is urging lawmakers to sign onto the plan.
Palin said she was signing onto a petition from the group for the defund Obamacare effort. Backed by Senators Ted Cruz of Texas, Mike Lee of Utah, and Marco Rubio of Florida, the effort presses Republican lawmakers to pledge their opposition to any government funding measure that also funds the Affordable Care Act.
"The time for rhetoric and ceremonial votes in Congress is over. The time to take serious action to stop Obamacare is now," Palin wrote.
Many Republicans oppose the tactic, saying even the threat of a government shutdown could alienate voters who are tired of partisan bickering over the nation's finances.
Cruz, in an interview last week with CNN chief political correspondent Candy Crowley, conceded the votes weren't there yet for the plan to succeed. But he predicted a "grassroots tsunami" would lift the plan in the next month.
Palin, who in 2009 stepped down as Alaska governor in the middle of her term, currently acts as a commentator on the Fox News Channel. She told CNN earlier this summer she would definitely hit the campaign trail for fellow Republicans next year.
"Time's-a-wasting. Things are moving really quickly and if we don't get out there and defend this republic then America will be transformed into something we do not recognize," she told CNN.
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Monday, August 26, 2013
Learning how to fix problems in a new way is not such a bad thing
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Millenials Will Run for Political Office, Like it Or Not
By Noreen Malone, August 26, 2013
Ron Fournier, a Baby Boomer writing in the Atlantic, is worried about what will happen when millenials are in charge of the political world. "[T]hey have no patience for inefficiency, stodgy institutions or the status quo." This is, apparently, a bad thing. "Consider what they could do to politics and government," he warns direly.
Fournier talked to some 80 millenials for the story, but quotes mostly fellow non-millenials, like noted youth-whisperer Michael Steele. (Steele explains millenials using an "Iron Man 3" analogy: “They are going to destroy the old silos, scatter their elements to the wind, and reassemble them in ways that make sense for them and the new century.”) Fournier is worried because students at Langley High School, "an elite public school in suburban Washington that caters to the sons and daughters of U.S. congressmen, ambassadors, and Cabinet members," do not want to go in to government work like their parents. (High school students: famous for getting along with their parents.) He quotes stats that show young people think politics are too partisan and that politicians are motivated by selfish reasons and that our political system seems ill-equipped to effectively deal with the current problems facing the country.
This is more or less what any sentient being who has followed the political debate over the past few years (or heard Michael Steele quoting "Iron Man 3") would think, and that's why the argument Fournier builds to—that millenials are a mass of secretly libertarian nihilists who, when given our chance to govern, will instead opt to continue starting companies and looking for private sector solutions—irked me.
First, he is worried about enough Millenials pursuing the workaday government jobs that Boomers will vacate when they retire. But the reason millenials haven't pursued those jobs is that Boomers are squatting on them! Surely he has read enough trend pieces on twentysomethings in the gig economy living at home with their parents to realize we will not turn up our noses at a government pension, should they ever become available.
Secondly, people have always built fortunes and connections and forged their worldview outside government before deciding in middle age or later to try for political office. In fact, it seems as if it's often those who displayed a precocious interest in a politics career above all other worldly interests who have driven much of the partisan gridlock and increasing polarization. Paul Ryan and Ted Cruz come to mind.
"The trouble is that Millennials believe traditional politics and government (especially Washington) are the worst avenues to great things," Fournier frets. "They are more likely to be social entrepreneurs, working outside government to create innovative and measurably successful solutions to the nation’s problems, even if only on a relatively small scale." It's highly doubtful that, in a few years, an entire generation of adults will look at positions promising vast influence and power and say "no, thanks." That's simply not the way human nature works. So if in the meantime some young people aren't learning at the feet of the very people who've broken the system and are instead trying to learn how to fix problems in a new way, I'm not sure that's such a bad thing.
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Millenials Will Run for Political Office, Like it Or Not
By Noreen Malone, August 26, 2013
Ron Fournier, a Baby Boomer writing in the Atlantic, is worried about what will happen when millenials are in charge of the political world. "[T]hey have no patience for inefficiency, stodgy institutions or the status quo." This is, apparently, a bad thing. "Consider what they could do to politics and government," he warns direly.
Fournier talked to some 80 millenials for the story, but quotes mostly fellow non-millenials, like noted youth-whisperer Michael Steele. (Steele explains millenials using an "Iron Man 3" analogy: “They are going to destroy the old silos, scatter their elements to the wind, and reassemble them in ways that make sense for them and the new century.”) Fournier is worried because students at Langley High School, "an elite public school in suburban Washington that caters to the sons and daughters of U.S. congressmen, ambassadors, and Cabinet members," do not want to go in to government work like their parents. (High school students: famous for getting along with their parents.) He quotes stats that show young people think politics are too partisan and that politicians are motivated by selfish reasons and that our political system seems ill-equipped to effectively deal with the current problems facing the country.
This is more or less what any sentient being who has followed the political debate over the past few years (or heard Michael Steele quoting "Iron Man 3") would think, and that's why the argument Fournier builds to—that millenials are a mass of secretly libertarian nihilists who, when given our chance to govern, will instead opt to continue starting companies and looking for private sector solutions—irked me.
First, he is worried about enough Millenials pursuing the workaday government jobs that Boomers will vacate when they retire. But the reason millenials haven't pursued those jobs is that Boomers are squatting on them! Surely he has read enough trend pieces on twentysomethings in the gig economy living at home with their parents to realize we will not turn up our noses at a government pension, should they ever become available.
Secondly, people have always built fortunes and connections and forged their worldview outside government before deciding in middle age or later to try for political office. In fact, it seems as if it's often those who displayed a precocious interest in a politics career above all other worldly interests who have driven much of the partisan gridlock and increasing polarization. Paul Ryan and Ted Cruz come to mind.
"The trouble is that Millennials believe traditional politics and government (especially Washington) are the worst avenues to great things," Fournier frets. "They are more likely to be social entrepreneurs, working outside government to create innovative and measurably successful solutions to the nation’s problems, even if only on a relatively small scale." It's highly doubtful that, in a few years, an entire generation of adults will look at positions promising vast influence and power and say "no, thanks." That's simply not the way human nature works. So if in the meantime some young people aren't learning at the feet of the very people who've broken the system and are instead trying to learn how to fix problems in a new way, I'm not sure that's such a bad thing.
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Guess the Heritage Foundation is the "devil" since it did the original work on Obamacare
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The Heritage Foundation disowns its baby
By Timothy Noah, August 21, 2013
The Heritage Foundation is desperate for Congress to strangle Obamacare in the crib. Prevent the program’s major provisions from taking effect on Oct.1, the conservative Washington research foundation advises, by threatening to shut down the government. Heritage President Jim DeMint just launched a nine-city “Defund Obamacare” tour, sponsored by Heritage’s advocacy arm, Heritage Action. It’s all very scholarly.
Obamacare must be stopped, according to Heritage, because it’s expensive, imposes new taxes, and tramples on individual liberty.
But the punchline is that Obamacare is largely Heritage’s own invention.
It may not be news that a conservative Washington think tank is going to great lengths to defeat a Democratic policy proposal. But this may be the first instance where the policy being opposed was incubated at the very same think tank. Look out, donors: the policies you pay Heritage to develop today may be policies you pay Heritage to defeat tomorrow. It’s like Victor Frankenstein stumbling over the frozen tundra to defeat the creation he was so proud of but now despises.
In this instance Dr. Frankenstein is Stuart Butler, then director of domestic policy research at Heritage and, since 2010, director of Heritage’s Center For Policy Innovation. (No, they didn’t fire him.) Butler’s greatest claim to fame is that he developed the idea of “enterprise zones,” i.e., lowering taxes in certain low-income areas to promote economic development. But his greater accomplishment—shhhh!—is that he developed two central ideas in Obamacare: an individual mandate requiring everyone to purchase health insurance, and expansion of Medicaid coverage to the working poor.
Butler wrote a 1989 pamphlet titled A National Health System For America in collaboration with Edmund Haislmaier (then a health care policy analyst at Heritage and now a senior research fellow there—no, they didn’t fire him, either). The pamphlet is not currently available on Heritage’s Web site (it can be purchased online), but a 1989 lecture by Butler (“Assuring Affordable Healthcare For All Americans”) is, and a more readable version is available on the Web site HealthCareReform.ProCon.org.
In the lecture, Butler said:
That’s the individual mandate. Butler didn’t invent the idea—it was, according to Butler’s assistant, also promoted three years earlier in a paper by Randall R. Bovbjerg and William G. Kopit—but that doesn’t get Butler off the hook. Bovbjerg was then (and remains) a scholar at the Urban Institute, a mildly liberal Washington think tank. (In fairness to Butler, something like an individual mandate was also favored by the conservative economist Milton Friedman. Conservatism has shifted dramatically rightward during the past two decades.)
In the 1989 lecture, Butler also said
That’s the Medicaid expansion—though, to be fair, Butler wasn’t the only person then calling for loosened Medicaid eligibility requirements. Many conservatives at that time were looking for ways to reward the working (“deserving”) poor as distinct from the welfare-dependent poor—a concern that faded after the 1996 welfare-reform bill eliminated long-term dependence on cash payments, making many more of the poor “deserving.”
One significant departure Butler makes from Obamacare is that he does not (at least in the 1989 lecture) favor “community rating,” i.e., a requirement that insurers take all comers regardless of pre-existing conditions and charge them approximately the same premium. But this is not a difference Heritage is likely to advertise now, because community rating is the one part of Obamacare so popular that most conservatives dare not openly oppose it.
In the lecture, Butler repeatedly called his proposal “the Heritage plan”– not “my plan.” He elaborated these ideas in a 1990 backgrounder and in a 1993 paper titled “Why Conservatives Need A National Health Plan.”
In none of these writings did Butler make explicit mention of government-run insurance exchanges. But Butler favored severing health insurance entirely from the workplace—a good idea that was too far left for Obama to favor—by eliminating the tax deduction that employers receive for it.
Under Butler’s (whoops, make that Heritage’s) scheme, everyone would have to purchase his or her own health insurance. Butler proposed a consumer-choice system in which the government “set broad rules of the ‘game,’” and the context strongly suggested that by “government” Butler meant “federal government.”
That sounds an awful lot like insurance exchanges, which President Obama has used similar language to describe. Butler also mentioned as one model the Federal Health Employee Benefits Program, which was one model for Obamacare. A decade later, when Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was putting together a state-level health reform plan that was another model for Obamacare, Heritage “helped us construct an exchange,” according to Romney’s 2010 book, No Apology.
In a 2012 op-ed, Butler emphasized some hair-splitting differences on the individual mandate (his was motivated by a desire not to protect the policyholder but to “protect others”) and added for good measure that he’s since changed his mind. Meanwhile, Heritage, in a 2011 amicus curiae brief submitted in support of the legal challenge to Obamacare, stated, “Heritage has stopped supporting any insurance mandate.” Heritage also said it had come to believe the individual mandate was unconstitutional—an interpretation later rejected, of course, by the Supreme Court.
Mainly, though, Heritage denies that it ever favored a health plan that remotely resembled Obamacare. Conceding this point too conspicuously would compromise its splashy campaign to defeat Obamacare by any means necessary. How can Obamacare be the work of the devil if much of that work was done at Heritage? A subject, perhaps, for future scholarly inquiry.
..................................................................................................................................
The Heritage Foundation disowns its baby
By Timothy Noah, August 21, 2013
The Heritage Foundation is desperate for Congress to strangle Obamacare in the crib. Prevent the program’s major provisions from taking effect on Oct.1, the conservative Washington research foundation advises, by threatening to shut down the government. Heritage President Jim DeMint just launched a nine-city “Defund Obamacare” tour, sponsored by Heritage’s advocacy arm, Heritage Action. It’s all very scholarly.
Obamacare must be stopped, according to Heritage, because it’s expensive, imposes new taxes, and tramples on individual liberty.
But the punchline is that Obamacare is largely Heritage’s own invention.
It may not be news that a conservative Washington think tank is going to great lengths to defeat a Democratic policy proposal. But this may be the first instance where the policy being opposed was incubated at the very same think tank. Look out, donors: the policies you pay Heritage to develop today may be policies you pay Heritage to defeat tomorrow. It’s like Victor Frankenstein stumbling over the frozen tundra to defeat the creation he was so proud of but now despises.
In this instance Dr. Frankenstein is Stuart Butler, then director of domestic policy research at Heritage and, since 2010, director of Heritage’s Center For Policy Innovation. (No, they didn’t fire him.) Butler’s greatest claim to fame is that he developed the idea of “enterprise zones,” i.e., lowering taxes in certain low-income areas to promote economic development. But his greater accomplishment—shhhh!—is that he developed two central ideas in Obamacare: an individual mandate requiring everyone to purchase health insurance, and expansion of Medicaid coverage to the working poor.
Butler wrote a 1989 pamphlet titled A National Health System For America in collaboration with Edmund Haislmaier (then a health care policy analyst at Heritage and now a senior research fellow there—no, they didn’t fire him, either). The pamphlet is not currently available on Heritage’s Web site (it can be purchased online), but a 1989 lecture by Butler (“Assuring Affordable Healthcare For All Americans”) is, and a more readable version is available on the Web site HealthCareReform.ProCon.org.
In the lecture, Butler said:
Many states now require passengers in automobiles to wear seatbelts for their own protection. Many others require anybody driving a car to have liability insurance. But neither the federal government nor any state requires all households to protect themselves from the potentially catastrophic costs of a serious accident or illness. Under the Heritage plan, there would be such a requirement.
That’s the individual mandate. Butler didn’t invent the idea—it was, according to Butler’s assistant, also promoted three years earlier in a paper by Randall R. Bovbjerg and William G. Kopit—but that doesn’t get Butler off the hook. Bovbjerg was then (and remains) a scholar at the Urban Institute, a mildly liberal Washington think tank. (In fairness to Butler, something like an individual mandate was also favored by the conservative economist Milton Friedman. Conservatism has shifted dramatically rightward during the past two decades.)
In the 1989 lecture, Butler also said
a new index of eligibility would be developed to link Medicaid coverage to poverty instead of welfare. This is an important distinction, because many poor families struggling to keep off welfare currently risk enormous and uncovered medical bills because they are not eligible, or do not seek, to go on to the welfare rolls.
That’s the Medicaid expansion—though, to be fair, Butler wasn’t the only person then calling for loosened Medicaid eligibility requirements. Many conservatives at that time were looking for ways to reward the working (“deserving”) poor as distinct from the welfare-dependent poor—a concern that faded after the 1996 welfare-reform bill eliminated long-term dependence on cash payments, making many more of the poor “deserving.”
One significant departure Butler makes from Obamacare is that he does not (at least in the 1989 lecture) favor “community rating,” i.e., a requirement that insurers take all comers regardless of pre-existing conditions and charge them approximately the same premium. But this is not a difference Heritage is likely to advertise now, because community rating is the one part of Obamacare so popular that most conservatives dare not openly oppose it.
In the lecture, Butler repeatedly called his proposal “the Heritage plan”– not “my plan.” He elaborated these ideas in a 1990 backgrounder and in a 1993 paper titled “Why Conservatives Need A National Health Plan.”
In none of these writings did Butler make explicit mention of government-run insurance exchanges. But Butler favored severing health insurance entirely from the workplace—a good idea that was too far left for Obama to favor—by eliminating the tax deduction that employers receive for it.
Under Butler’s (whoops, make that Heritage’s) scheme, everyone would have to purchase his or her own health insurance. Butler proposed a consumer-choice system in which the government “set broad rules of the ‘game,’” and the context strongly suggested that by “government” Butler meant “federal government.”
That sounds an awful lot like insurance exchanges, which President Obama has used similar language to describe. Butler also mentioned as one model the Federal Health Employee Benefits Program, which was one model for Obamacare. A decade later, when Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was putting together a state-level health reform plan that was another model for Obamacare, Heritage “helped us construct an exchange,” according to Romney’s 2010 book, No Apology.
In a 2012 op-ed, Butler emphasized some hair-splitting differences on the individual mandate (his was motivated by a desire not to protect the policyholder but to “protect others”) and added for good measure that he’s since changed his mind. Meanwhile, Heritage, in a 2011 amicus curiae brief submitted in support of the legal challenge to Obamacare, stated, “Heritage has stopped supporting any insurance mandate.” Heritage also said it had come to believe the individual mandate was unconstitutional—an interpretation later rejected, of course, by the Supreme Court.
Mainly, though, Heritage denies that it ever favored a health plan that remotely resembled Obamacare. Conceding this point too conspicuously would compromise its splashy campaign to defeat Obamacare by any means necessary. How can Obamacare be the work of the devil if much of that work was done at Heritage? A subject, perhaps, for future scholarly inquiry.
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The Political Class will lose its defense of the status quo
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The Digital Threat to the Political Class
By Scott Rasmussen, August 26, 2013
You might expect a story about wine, The Washington Post, Twitter and polling to be about the lifestyle of the nation's political elite. But this one is about the digital threat to America's Political Class.
Let's start with the wine. A recent story on Marketwatch.com noted that apps are now available to scan the label of a wine bottle, compare prices and order online. Other apps help people learn more about wine and make restaurant recommendations. One wine director complained, "Wine is an experience and should not be sold that way." But 6 percent of wine sales last year were conducted online, a figure that is growing rapidly.
The rise of online buying is good news for consumers and for lesser-known wineries whose products now have a better chance of being sampled. The only losers will be those who prefer the status quo.
That's the same message that comes from the sale of The Washington Post. For most of America, it was no big deal. We've heard the same story about plenty of other newspapers in recent years. But for official Washington, the sale of the Post was treated like the death of a family friend. On learning that the deed had been done by an Internet guru, you could almost hear the Political Class reaction in the words of that wine director. News "should not be sold that way."
For some who live inside the DC bubble, the sale of the Post may have finally forced them to recognize that a handful of political and media insiders could no longer control the narrative of the national storyline. That's good news for everyone except those who prefer the status quo.
Last week, Twitter entered the discussion when a professor claimed that an analysis of tweeting did an unusually good job of predicting the results of U.S. House elections in 2012. A formula based largely on the number of "tweets" for candidates correctly predicted 92.8 percent of House races. The implication was that this model might soon replace traditional polling.
There were many problems with the claim (chronicled by Mark Blumenthal, senior polling editor of The Huffington Post). At a very basic level, though, when more than 90 percent of House incumbents routinely win re-election, the 92.8 percent figure isn't so impressive.
Still, while the professor claimed too much too soon for the new techniques, the polling industry faces the same challenge as the wine stores dealing with new apps. New technology will fundamentally alter the ways that polls are conducted. Other online techniques will replace polling entirely in some situations. These shifts will be good for everyone except those who defend the status quo.
That same lesson will soon be learned by America's Political Class.
The digital world is changing everything about politics. It has already changed the way that mainstream Americans get information, organize, vote, interact with each other and learn about alternative approaches to problem solving.
These changes empower the middle class.
The Political Class is trying to resist and cling to the status quo, but they will be no more successful than those in the wine, newspaper or polling industries. In the digital revolution, those defending the status quo always lose.
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The Digital Threat to the Political Class
By Scott Rasmussen, August 26, 2013
You might expect a story about wine, The Washington Post, Twitter and polling to be about the lifestyle of the nation's political elite. But this one is about the digital threat to America's Political Class.
Let's start with the wine. A recent story on Marketwatch.com noted that apps are now available to scan the label of a wine bottle, compare prices and order online. Other apps help people learn more about wine and make restaurant recommendations. One wine director complained, "Wine is an experience and should not be sold that way." But 6 percent of wine sales last year were conducted online, a figure that is growing rapidly.
The rise of online buying is good news for consumers and for lesser-known wineries whose products now have a better chance of being sampled. The only losers will be those who prefer the status quo.
That's the same message that comes from the sale of The Washington Post. For most of America, it was no big deal. We've heard the same story about plenty of other newspapers in recent years. But for official Washington, the sale of the Post was treated like the death of a family friend. On learning that the deed had been done by an Internet guru, you could almost hear the Political Class reaction in the words of that wine director. News "should not be sold that way."
For some who live inside the DC bubble, the sale of the Post may have finally forced them to recognize that a handful of political and media insiders could no longer control the narrative of the national storyline. That's good news for everyone except those who prefer the status quo.
Last week, Twitter entered the discussion when a professor claimed that an analysis of tweeting did an unusually good job of predicting the results of U.S. House elections in 2012. A formula based largely on the number of "tweets" for candidates correctly predicted 92.8 percent of House races. The implication was that this model might soon replace traditional polling.
There were many problems with the claim (chronicled by Mark Blumenthal, senior polling editor of The Huffington Post). At a very basic level, though, when more than 90 percent of House incumbents routinely win re-election, the 92.8 percent figure isn't so impressive.
Still, while the professor claimed too much too soon for the new techniques, the polling industry faces the same challenge as the wine stores dealing with new apps. New technology will fundamentally alter the ways that polls are conducted. Other online techniques will replace polling entirely in some situations. These shifts will be good for everyone except those who defend the status quo.
That same lesson will soon be learned by America's Political Class.
The digital world is changing everything about politics. It has already changed the way that mainstream Americans get information, organize, vote, interact with each other and learn about alternative approaches to problem solving.
These changes empower the middle class.
The Political Class is trying to resist and cling to the status quo, but they will be no more successful than those in the wine, newspaper or polling industries. In the digital revolution, those defending the status quo always lose.
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How timing affects retirement decisions by Supreme Court justices
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Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Great judge, terrible political analyst
By Jonathan Bernstein, August 26, 2013
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, by all accounts, has been an excellent Supreme Court justice and is still, at 80, able to do the job as well as ever, maybe better. But she’s jeopardizing everything she believes in by staying on the court, and if the interview she gave to Adam Liptak of the New York Times is any indication, the problem isn’t selfishness; it’s just that she really doesn’t understand the way nomination politics works these days:
Not only that, but there’s every chance that Justice Anthony Kennedy, 77 now, will retire during the next Republican presidency. The result, should Ginsburg also leave, would be five reliable votes for radical conservative results.
It’s not just Ginsburg; Justice Stephen Breyer is 75. If Republicans win the White House in 2016 and hold it for three terms (and, yes, that’s a perfectly plausible scenario), would he be able to stay on the bench until 2029?
Ginsburg and Breyer may not fully realize what’s happened to judicial confirmations since their own relatively easy Senate votes. Should Republicans win the Senate in 2014 — again, quite possible — confirmation of an Obama nominee would surely be far more difficult. Indeed, if Ginsburg and Breyer resigned, it’s not far-fetched to imagine Chuck Grassley declaring a new “principle” that seven justices were quite enough, really; after all, the justices’ workload is even lighter than that of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit!
It’s possible that Ginsburg and Breyer don’t care about any of that and simply want to continue in office for purely personal reasons. But if they believe that Democrats have a lock on the White House, or that Republicans would replace them with moderates, or that a Republican Senate would confirm someone similar to what they were in the 1990s, they’re just plain wrong, and they’re risking a lot on poor political analysis.
It’s obviously asking a lot, but both Ginsburg and Breyer have had two decades on the nation’s highest court. If they care about the principles they’ve fought for in those two decades, the best thing they could do to continue that fight is to leave the court. As soon as possible.
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Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Great judge, terrible political analyst
By Jonathan Bernstein, August 26, 2013
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, by all accounts, has been an excellent Supreme Court justice and is still, at 80, able to do the job as well as ever, maybe better. But she’s jeopardizing everything she believes in by staying on the court, and if the interview she gave to Adam Liptak of the New York Times is any indication, the problem isn’t selfishness; it’s just that she really doesn’t understand the way nomination politics works these days:
Justice Ginsburg said her retirement calculations would center on her health and not on who would appoint her successor, even if that new justice could tilt the balance of the court and overturn some of the landmark women’s rights decisions that are a large part of her legacy.
“I don’t see that my majority opinions are going to be undone,” she said. “I do hope that some of my dissents will one day be the law.”It’s very simple: If nothing else changes and a Republican appoints her successor, there will be a 5-4 majority against a lot of the things that Ginsburg cares about. There’s not going to be any more David Souter results, in which a Republican accidentally appoints a reliably liberal justice. Or, for that matter, any case-by-case pragmatists, new versions of Sandra Day O’Connor who might be inclined toward conservative positions but flexible on specific cases. The next choices by a Republican president will be very much like the last few — perfectly reliable, and fairly partisan, conservatives. Who, as Ginsburg recognizes, are about as “activist” as any justices have ever been about overturning laws and precedents.
Not only that, but there’s every chance that Justice Anthony Kennedy, 77 now, will retire during the next Republican presidency. The result, should Ginsburg also leave, would be five reliable votes for radical conservative results.
It’s not just Ginsburg; Justice Stephen Breyer is 75. If Republicans win the White House in 2016 and hold it for three terms (and, yes, that’s a perfectly plausible scenario), would he be able to stay on the bench until 2029?
Ginsburg and Breyer may not fully realize what’s happened to judicial confirmations since their own relatively easy Senate votes. Should Republicans win the Senate in 2014 — again, quite possible — confirmation of an Obama nominee would surely be far more difficult. Indeed, if Ginsburg and Breyer resigned, it’s not far-fetched to imagine Chuck Grassley declaring a new “principle” that seven justices were quite enough, really; after all, the justices’ workload is even lighter than that of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit!
It’s possible that Ginsburg and Breyer don’t care about any of that and simply want to continue in office for purely personal reasons. But if they believe that Democrats have a lock on the White House, or that Republicans would replace them with moderates, or that a Republican Senate would confirm someone similar to what they were in the 1990s, they’re just plain wrong, and they’re risking a lot on poor political analysis.
It’s obviously asking a lot, but both Ginsburg and Breyer have had two decades on the nation’s highest court. If they care about the principles they’ve fought for in those two decades, the best thing they could do to continue that fight is to leave the court. As soon as possible.
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Sunday, August 25, 2013
Nate Silver's polling contributions
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Nate Silver — exemplar of openness
By Renée Loth, August 24, 2013
IT’S THE doldrums of the presidential campaign season — just seven months into Barack Obama’s second term — so not everyone may be aware that the political prognosticator Nate Silver has left The New York Times for the sports network ESPN. Fans, not to say addicts, of Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog have been reacting as if the dog died. “Don’t leave us, Nate!” keened a typical comment on his last posting, in July.
For the Times, the decamping of the boy wizard (Silver is 35) is also a major blow. He was a huge driver of traffic to the newspaper’s website, searched for more often during the 2012 campaign than any other individual byline, according to the web analytics company Alexa. By November, something like 20 percent of all visits to the Times website included a stop at Silver’s blog. One media observer sent around an e-mail when Silver defected last month, laced with a bit of schadenfreude. “RIP NYT” the subject line read.
I wouldn’t go that far. Silver’s relationship with the Times was symbiotic: Each benefited from a connection with the other. The notion of “free-agent journalism” — where a reporter’s strong personal brand has a value greater than the associated news outlet — is overrated. Still, the popularity of FiveThirtyEight contains a lesson for more traditional political journalists, some of whom grumbled that Silver’s odds-making approach to campaign reporting didn’t fit at the Times.
Silver became a cult figure not just because he correctly called all 50 states in the race between Barak Obama and Mitt Romney — 48 of them within his projected margin of victory. His predictions were based on an aggregation of polling results conducted by others, after all. Silver’s great contribution, and perhaps his greatest departure from traditional campaign reporting, was transparency. He showed his work, describing in exhaustive detail his methodology: which polls he picked to follow and why (i.e., forget national polls, since in the Electoral College the state results are all that matter); how he adjusted the polling averages to consider variables like economic factors or demographics; how he treated tracking polls that accrue rolling averages over several days.
He included a glossary of terms veteran journalists casually drop into their coverage but which are bewildering to average readers, such as the ubiquitous phrase “margin of error.” Four days after the election, he offered a review on the accuracy of 90 different presidential polls to evaluate which techniques are most effective. Readers could see the weaknesses of land-line and automated telephone polls, and the surprising accuracy of many online polls. Silver’s website wasn’t just a blog, it was an education.
The late John Silber often chastised reporters covering his 1990 gubernatorial campaign, insisting that his words and actions should be viewed “as if through a clear pane of glass,” that is, with no external analysis. That’s not the kind of transparency Silver provided. He made judgments all the time: about which polls to trust, how to weight them, and so on. But he explained himself. Even readers who don’t grasp regression analysis felt Silver’s words were undergirded by the comforting hardness of numbers. “His relentless focus on the data provided an anchor that his readers could cling to,” said Tom Fiedler, dean of the college of communication at Boston University, “while the news media’s fickle winds blew in a different direction on any given day.”
Silver was a refreshing break, in other words, from the oracular pronouncements of traditional political punditry. In a recent interview with The Guardian newspaper, Silver explained his appeal to what he described as his somewhat younger, web-centric readers: “They want the score, the bottom line. They don’t care about the gossip as much.’’
Voters have repeatedly been burned by polls, but they are getting more sophisticated, and Silver has developed a million-dollar method for separating the signal from the noise, as he might put it. Early next year he’ll be returning to his first love, sports, but he will also keep up FiveThirtyEight and soothsay on economics, the weather, and other fields that lend themselves to statistical analysis. Is this nerdy numbers-cruncher good enough to drive a sports agnostic like me to ESPN? I’ve already got it bookmarked.
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Nate Silver — exemplar of openness
By Renée Loth, August 24, 2013
IT’S THE doldrums of the presidential campaign season — just seven months into Barack Obama’s second term — so not everyone may be aware that the political prognosticator Nate Silver has left The New York Times for the sports network ESPN. Fans, not to say addicts, of Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog have been reacting as if the dog died. “Don’t leave us, Nate!” keened a typical comment on his last posting, in July.
For the Times, the decamping of the boy wizard (Silver is 35) is also a major blow. He was a huge driver of traffic to the newspaper’s website, searched for more often during the 2012 campaign than any other individual byline, according to the web analytics company Alexa. By November, something like 20 percent of all visits to the Times website included a stop at Silver’s blog. One media observer sent around an e-mail when Silver defected last month, laced with a bit of schadenfreude. “RIP NYT” the subject line read.
I wouldn’t go that far. Silver’s relationship with the Times was symbiotic: Each benefited from a connection with the other. The notion of “free-agent journalism” — where a reporter’s strong personal brand has a value greater than the associated news outlet — is overrated. Still, the popularity of FiveThirtyEight contains a lesson for more traditional political journalists, some of whom grumbled that Silver’s odds-making approach to campaign reporting didn’t fit at the Times.
Silver became a cult figure not just because he correctly called all 50 states in the race between Barak Obama and Mitt Romney — 48 of them within his projected margin of victory. His predictions were based on an aggregation of polling results conducted by others, after all. Silver’s great contribution, and perhaps his greatest departure from traditional campaign reporting, was transparency. He showed his work, describing in exhaustive detail his methodology: which polls he picked to follow and why (i.e., forget national polls, since in the Electoral College the state results are all that matter); how he adjusted the polling averages to consider variables like economic factors or demographics; how he treated tracking polls that accrue rolling averages over several days.
He included a glossary of terms veteran journalists casually drop into their coverage but which are bewildering to average readers, such as the ubiquitous phrase “margin of error.” Four days after the election, he offered a review on the accuracy of 90 different presidential polls to evaluate which techniques are most effective. Readers could see the weaknesses of land-line and automated telephone polls, and the surprising accuracy of many online polls. Silver’s website wasn’t just a blog, it was an education.
The late John Silber often chastised reporters covering his 1990 gubernatorial campaign, insisting that his words and actions should be viewed “as if through a clear pane of glass,” that is, with no external analysis. That’s not the kind of transparency Silver provided. He made judgments all the time: about which polls to trust, how to weight them, and so on. But he explained himself. Even readers who don’t grasp regression analysis felt Silver’s words were undergirded by the comforting hardness of numbers. “His relentless focus on the data provided an anchor that his readers could cling to,” said Tom Fiedler, dean of the college of communication at Boston University, “while the news media’s fickle winds blew in a different direction on any given day.”
Silver was a refreshing break, in other words, from the oracular pronouncements of traditional political punditry. In a recent interview with The Guardian newspaper, Silver explained his appeal to what he described as his somewhat younger, web-centric readers: “They want the score, the bottom line. They don’t care about the gossip as much.’’
Voters have repeatedly been burned by polls, but they are getting more sophisticated, and Silver has developed a million-dollar method for separating the signal from the noise, as he might put it. Early next year he’ll be returning to his first love, sports, but he will also keep up FiveThirtyEight and soothsay on economics, the weather, and other fields that lend themselves to statistical analysis. Is this nerdy numbers-cruncher good enough to drive a sports agnostic like me to ESPN? I’ve already got it bookmarked.
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Will Kansas serve as a model for other states?
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Political David versus Goliath: Insight Kansas
By Chapman Rackaway, August 25, 2013
My Insight Kansas colleague Michael Smith has called Kansas a "three party" state for more than a decade. While two of the parties might have shared the same name until recently, Kansas may actually become a three-party state in the near future.
After the 2012 Republican primary elections, most observers (myself included) were ready to carve a headstone marking the death of the Kansas moderate Republican. A resurgent state GOP apparatus rebuilt under conservative leadership methodically consolidated an organizational base, picked off almost all of the moderates still standing in the Senate, and cemented authority in both chambers of the legislature as well as the governor's mansion.
What would become of the voters who preferred moderate Republicans, though? Had they shifted to the right, meaning that moderates had disappeared? Would moderates shift to the Democrats, making a combination of two minorities to challenge at the newly dominant majority's heels? At first Democrats had the upper-hand, attracting high-profile moderate Republicans like former Wichita state Senator Jean Schodorf. Moderates maintained most of their allegiance to the Republican Party, though, and the exodus to the Party of Jackson never materialized.
Banking on a silent majority of moderates yearning for a home, a group of Kansans are building a new party apparatus. Aaron Estabrook, Rodney Wren, Nick Hoehisel and Dave Warren have co-founded a Moderate Party of Kansas. Currently operating as a PAC, they are seeking ballot status for 2014. Boldly stating their intent, the Moderates claim that our current situation of one-party, one-faction rule "demands cooperation and compromise," and they strive to "unite in the heart of the nation to bring balance, reason, and pragmatism to Kansas."
Creating a party is no easy task, though. Political scientist Maurice Duverger pointed out that electoral arrangements like ours inevitably become two-party systems. Breaking through two-party dominance is incredibly difficult - just ask Ross Perot or Ralph Nader. The Moderates have to acquire thousands of petition signatures to become officially recognized, then they have to marshal the resources to recruit and support candidates.
Aiming high, Estabrook announced plans last month to challenge Sen. Pat Roberts in the 2014 primary. While the tactic earned free press, taking on one of the most respected and popular politicians in Kansas (according to SurveyUSA polls) is the very definition of Quixotic. A party can raise and spend a lot of money to only get 27 percent of the vote, stalling out momentum.
Unspoken in the Moderate Party's ambitious plans are the two political figures that inspire them: Sam Brownback and Kris Kobach. Brownback is the state's highest profile political figure, but a Moderate Party candidate would likely simply split the anti-Brownback vote with presumptive Democratic nominee Paul Davis. Going after Brownback would be almost as much a fool's errand as Roberts, because the governor's advantages of strategy, money and personnel are significant. Kobach presents an easier, yet still difficult, target. Even more than the big fish, the Moderates could build themselves from the ground up using selected state representative campaigns to reverse the 2010 and 2012 conservative movement that now dominates the legislature. Considering the organizational strength of the state GOP, however, any attempt by the Moderates is a David versus Goliath story.
There are clearly many "third-party" moderates still around, looking for a political home. Will the Moderate Party follow in the tradition of the Prohibition Party, who did win seats in the legislature during their heyday? Are there enough moderates to help build a competitive campaign organization and recruit attractive candidates to build the party? Will the political pendulum swing left at the right time for the Moderate Party, or will they suffer the same fate as the Reform Party?
..................................................................................................................................
Political David versus Goliath: Insight Kansas
By Chapman Rackaway, August 25, 2013
My Insight Kansas colleague Michael Smith has called Kansas a "three party" state for more than a decade. While two of the parties might have shared the same name until recently, Kansas may actually become a three-party state in the near future.
After the 2012 Republican primary elections, most observers (myself included) were ready to carve a headstone marking the death of the Kansas moderate Republican. A resurgent state GOP apparatus rebuilt under conservative leadership methodically consolidated an organizational base, picked off almost all of the moderates still standing in the Senate, and cemented authority in both chambers of the legislature as well as the governor's mansion.
What would become of the voters who preferred moderate Republicans, though? Had they shifted to the right, meaning that moderates had disappeared? Would moderates shift to the Democrats, making a combination of two minorities to challenge at the newly dominant majority's heels? At first Democrats had the upper-hand, attracting high-profile moderate Republicans like former Wichita state Senator Jean Schodorf. Moderates maintained most of their allegiance to the Republican Party, though, and the exodus to the Party of Jackson never materialized.
Banking on a silent majority of moderates yearning for a home, a group of Kansans are building a new party apparatus. Aaron Estabrook, Rodney Wren, Nick Hoehisel and Dave Warren have co-founded a Moderate Party of Kansas. Currently operating as a PAC, they are seeking ballot status for 2014. Boldly stating their intent, the Moderates claim that our current situation of one-party, one-faction rule "demands cooperation and compromise," and they strive to "unite in the heart of the nation to bring balance, reason, and pragmatism to Kansas."
Creating a party is no easy task, though. Political scientist Maurice Duverger pointed out that electoral arrangements like ours inevitably become two-party systems. Breaking through two-party dominance is incredibly difficult - just ask Ross Perot or Ralph Nader. The Moderates have to acquire thousands of petition signatures to become officially recognized, then they have to marshal the resources to recruit and support candidates.
Aiming high, Estabrook announced plans last month to challenge Sen. Pat Roberts in the 2014 primary. While the tactic earned free press, taking on one of the most respected and popular politicians in Kansas (according to SurveyUSA polls) is the very definition of Quixotic. A party can raise and spend a lot of money to only get 27 percent of the vote, stalling out momentum.
Unspoken in the Moderate Party's ambitious plans are the two political figures that inspire them: Sam Brownback and Kris Kobach. Brownback is the state's highest profile political figure, but a Moderate Party candidate would likely simply split the anti-Brownback vote with presumptive Democratic nominee Paul Davis. Going after Brownback would be almost as much a fool's errand as Roberts, because the governor's advantages of strategy, money and personnel are significant. Kobach presents an easier, yet still difficult, target. Even more than the big fish, the Moderates could build themselves from the ground up using selected state representative campaigns to reverse the 2010 and 2012 conservative movement that now dominates the legislature. Considering the organizational strength of the state GOP, however, any attempt by the Moderates is a David versus Goliath story.
There are clearly many "third-party" moderates still around, looking for a political home. Will the Moderate Party follow in the tradition of the Prohibition Party, who did win seats in the legislature during their heyday? Are there enough moderates to help build a competitive campaign organization and recruit attractive candidates to build the party? Will the political pendulum swing left at the right time for the Moderate Party, or will they suffer the same fate as the Reform Party?
..................................................................................................................................
Let Bozo the Clown I, Bozo the Clown II, Bozo the Clown III, et al. fight it out in Iowa's caucuses and Straw Poll
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Iowa’s G.O.P. Fears Its Role in Presidential Selection Is Diminishing
By Jonathan Martin, August 24, 2013
AMES, Iowa — On the surface, Iowa’s Republican presidential caucuses seem healthier than ever: would-be candidates are flocking here mere months after the last White House race ended, drawing sizable crowds and ample news coverage. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania were in this central Iowa college town for a Christian conservative conference this month, and Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has come to the state twice since May.
But Iowa’s political leaders, always looking ahead to the next campaign, worry that looks can be deceiving and that the prized role of the Republican caucuses is in jeopardy. Establishment Republicans fear that conservatives have become such a dominant force in the nominating process here that they may drive mainstream presidential candidates away.
That would relegate the caucuses to little more than a test of the party’s right-wing sentiment, and would do little to identify and propel the eventual nominee.
“It just creates a self-selecting field,” said David Kochel, a longtime Iowa Republican strategist. “The spotlight will still be here, because the Democrats are all going to show up, but with Republicans it could be optional.”
New Hampshire is pegged as the more unpredictable of the two kickoff states, prone to rewarding insurgents and providing momentum for campaigns in subsequent states.
It has been Iowa in recent years, however, that propelled conservative upstarts — Mike Huckabee in 2008 and Mr. Santorum in 2012 — who ultimately failed to gain mainstream support and go on to win the nomination. The party’s eventual Republican nominees, meanwhile, waged less than intense efforts in Iowa and paid no penalty.
That precedent could embolden candidates like Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida to spend their time elsewhere and play down or even skip the state altogether.
“You’re going to see conservatives probably not play as much in New Hampshire, and you’re going to see moderates not play here,” Mr. Santorum said in an interview this month before he addressed the gathering of Christian conservatives here.
That is exactly what senior Iowa Republicans fear. And it is why some in the party are already taking steps to curb one of the more controversial elements of the caucus process: the Ames Straw Poll.
Held every summer before a contested caucus, the poll was intended to be equal parts barbecue, political revival and moneymaker for the state party. But it has become a drain on the campaigns of presidential candidates, and the potential embarrassment of a poor performance offers another reason to stay away.
Party officials were especially chagrined last year after Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, having won the 2011 straw poll, finished in last place in the actual caucuses and ended her presidential campaign shortly thereafter. So now, like a Civil War doctor amputating a gangrenous leg to save the life of a patient, Gov. Terry E. Branstad wants to end the Ames tradition.
“I just think the major contenders are not going to want to compete in an expensive and meaningless process,” Mr. Branstad said of the straw poll. “So we need to come up with something better.”
But even the debate over the straw poll illustrates the diminished influence of establishment Republicans here. In most states, if a sitting governor decided that a party event was to be terminated, that would be the final word on the matter. But backers of Mr. Paul have taken over the state party, and they are disinclined to do away with the straw poll. Other Iowa conservatives, including Steve King, the firebrand United States representative, are also uneasy about ending the tradition.
“It’s unique in American political history, and it would be a shame if there was an effort to undermine it,” Mr. King said. “Right now, I expect there will be one.”
Mike Murphy, a longtime Republican strategist who has worked on caucus campaigns and Iowa governor’s races over the years, likes to compare the famed straw poll here to intractable “land wars in Asia,” offering more risk than reward to establishment hopefuls.
“The danger for the caucuses is that they follow the fate of the straw poll in just measuring one sector of the party,” Mr. Murphy said. More moderate candidates, he said, may “just let Santorum, Cruz and Bozo the Clown all fight it out.”
Adding to the fears of Iowa Republicans is a growing scandal this summer involving a state legislator who is said to have taken money to switch his endorsement from Mrs. Bachmann to Ron Paul, then a congressman, in last year’s campaign. Even the whiff of such pay-to-play behavior, party insiders worry, gives those inclined to avoid Iowa an excuse to do so.
Still, Republican officials here hope two things will make it impossible for the presidential contenders to stay away. The first, given what is expected to be a wide-open race, is that the early news attention will be intense. And the second, because Iowa is typically a general-election battleground, is that the eventual nominees may be apprehensive about completely disregarding the caucuses.
“For a candidate to suggest he can’t compete here is showing a red flag of weakness,” said Matthew N. Strawn, a former chairman of the Iowa Republican Party. “A strong candidate has the opportunity to change the makeup of the electorate. That’s what Barack Obama did in 2008, and even Ron Paul did to some extent in 2012.” (Mr. Obama won the caucuses convincingly; Mr. Paul, a septuagenarian libertarian, managed to win 21 percent and come in third place.)
Those who want to keep the caucuses relevant were not happy this month when Bob Vander Plaats — an Iowa Republican and the head of the Family Leader, which sponsored the conference of Christian conservatives here — said Mr. Rubio would have a hard time running for president in 2016 given his support for changes to immigration laws. Such comments, they said, only further undermine Iowa and its influence.
Mr. Vander Plaats said that he did not want Mr. Rubio to bypass the state — he invited the senator to his conference — and that he believed that if Mr. Rubio was to have a chance in 2016, “he needs to come to Iowa.”
But Mr. Vander Plaats also noted that Mr. Rubio “was and is getting beaten up” by Mr. King, an ardent opponent of an immigration overhaul, in Iowa.
In the meantime, there is no indication that Mr. Rubio will be returning to the state this year.
..................................................................................................................................
Iowa’s G.O.P. Fears Its Role in Presidential Selection Is Diminishing
By Jonathan Martin, August 24, 2013
AMES, Iowa — On the surface, Iowa’s Republican presidential caucuses seem healthier than ever: would-be candidates are flocking here mere months after the last White House race ended, drawing sizable crowds and ample news coverage. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania were in this central Iowa college town for a Christian conservative conference this month, and Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has come to the state twice since May.
But Iowa’s political leaders, always looking ahead to the next campaign, worry that looks can be deceiving and that the prized role of the Republican caucuses is in jeopardy. Establishment Republicans fear that conservatives have become such a dominant force in the nominating process here that they may drive mainstream presidential candidates away.
That would relegate the caucuses to little more than a test of the party’s right-wing sentiment, and would do little to identify and propel the eventual nominee.
“It just creates a self-selecting field,” said David Kochel, a longtime Iowa Republican strategist. “The spotlight will still be here, because the Democrats are all going to show up, but with Republicans it could be optional.”
New Hampshire is pegged as the more unpredictable of the two kickoff states, prone to rewarding insurgents and providing momentum for campaigns in subsequent states.
It has been Iowa in recent years, however, that propelled conservative upstarts — Mike Huckabee in 2008 and Mr. Santorum in 2012 — who ultimately failed to gain mainstream support and go on to win the nomination. The party’s eventual Republican nominees, meanwhile, waged less than intense efforts in Iowa and paid no penalty.
That precedent could embolden candidates like Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida to spend their time elsewhere and play down or even skip the state altogether.
“You’re going to see conservatives probably not play as much in New Hampshire, and you’re going to see moderates not play here,” Mr. Santorum said in an interview this month before he addressed the gathering of Christian conservatives here.
That is exactly what senior Iowa Republicans fear. And it is why some in the party are already taking steps to curb one of the more controversial elements of the caucus process: the Ames Straw Poll.
Held every summer before a contested caucus, the poll was intended to be equal parts barbecue, political revival and moneymaker for the state party. But it has become a drain on the campaigns of presidential candidates, and the potential embarrassment of a poor performance offers another reason to stay away.
Party officials were especially chagrined last year after Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, having won the 2011 straw poll, finished in last place in the actual caucuses and ended her presidential campaign shortly thereafter. So now, like a Civil War doctor amputating a gangrenous leg to save the life of a patient, Gov. Terry E. Branstad wants to end the Ames tradition.
“I just think the major contenders are not going to want to compete in an expensive and meaningless process,” Mr. Branstad said of the straw poll. “So we need to come up with something better.”
But even the debate over the straw poll illustrates the diminished influence of establishment Republicans here. In most states, if a sitting governor decided that a party event was to be terminated, that would be the final word on the matter. But backers of Mr. Paul have taken over the state party, and they are disinclined to do away with the straw poll. Other Iowa conservatives, including Steve King, the firebrand United States representative, are also uneasy about ending the tradition.
“It’s unique in American political history, and it would be a shame if there was an effort to undermine it,” Mr. King said. “Right now, I expect there will be one.”
Mike Murphy, a longtime Republican strategist who has worked on caucus campaigns and Iowa governor’s races over the years, likes to compare the famed straw poll here to intractable “land wars in Asia,” offering more risk than reward to establishment hopefuls.
“The danger for the caucuses is that they follow the fate of the straw poll in just measuring one sector of the party,” Mr. Murphy said. More moderate candidates, he said, may “just let Santorum, Cruz and Bozo the Clown all fight it out.”
Adding to the fears of Iowa Republicans is a growing scandal this summer involving a state legislator who is said to have taken money to switch his endorsement from Mrs. Bachmann to Ron Paul, then a congressman, in last year’s campaign. Even the whiff of such pay-to-play behavior, party insiders worry, gives those inclined to avoid Iowa an excuse to do so.
Still, Republican officials here hope two things will make it impossible for the presidential contenders to stay away. The first, given what is expected to be a wide-open race, is that the early news attention will be intense. And the second, because Iowa is typically a general-election battleground, is that the eventual nominees may be apprehensive about completely disregarding the caucuses.
“For a candidate to suggest he can’t compete here is showing a red flag of weakness,” said Matthew N. Strawn, a former chairman of the Iowa Republican Party. “A strong candidate has the opportunity to change the makeup of the electorate. That’s what Barack Obama did in 2008, and even Ron Paul did to some extent in 2012.” (Mr. Obama won the caucuses convincingly; Mr. Paul, a septuagenarian libertarian, managed to win 21 percent and come in third place.)
Those who want to keep the caucuses relevant were not happy this month when Bob Vander Plaats — an Iowa Republican and the head of the Family Leader, which sponsored the conference of Christian conservatives here — said Mr. Rubio would have a hard time running for president in 2016 given his support for changes to immigration laws. Such comments, they said, only further undermine Iowa and its influence.
Mr. Vander Plaats said that he did not want Mr. Rubio to bypass the state — he invited the senator to his conference — and that he believed that if Mr. Rubio was to have a chance in 2016, “he needs to come to Iowa.”
But Mr. Vander Plaats also noted that Mr. Rubio “was and is getting beaten up” by Mr. King, an ardent opponent of an immigration overhaul, in Iowa.
In the meantime, there is no indication that Mr. Rubio will be returning to the state this year.
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