You don't understand anything until you learn it more than one way.
Marvin Minsky
Election Watch
The RCP House count shows the lean/likely/safe GOP lead stretching by 4: 225-171, as 2 toss-ups switch to lean-GOP and two more shift from lean-Dem to toss up, including the second, more conservative Maine district where Jason Levesque has cut Congressman Michaud's lead from almost 20 points two weeks ago to 4 points. Yesterday, RCP also cut MA-4 (Barney Frank's district) from likely to lean-Dem. I think the Scott Brown-like surge, which I also noted in yesterday's post, reflects undecided voters breaking in favor of the out-of-power GOP, as one might expect in a tough economy.
No change in the RCP Senate count, still showing 49-45 with 6 toss-ups. Of the 6 toss-ups, 4 have been consistently led by the GOP challengers by 3 or 4 points in recent polls; in the Washington race, Patty Murray and Dino Rossi have been swapping 1-point leads, and popular conservative Democratic Governor Joe Manchin, whom initially broke out to a massive lead, had more recently been trailing novice Republican John Raese but has since regained a small lead by running to the right of all the Senate Democrats, reversing his earlier support for the Obama agenda.
No one is predicting this, but I would not at all be surprised to see Manchin, win or lose, eventually change his party affiliation; he in effect would be the lone Blue Dog in the Senate and would have almost no leverage in his own caucus. You have a very small group of Democrats (Nelson (NE), Landrieu (LA) and Lieberman (CN)) whom are moderate on an ad hoc, inconsistent, incohesive basis; I think they're afraid of being sniped like Lieberman was in 2006 by progressive activists, so on the big issues they'll play hard to get but will eventually fall in line after winning some face-saving concession. I think what John Raese has to do is to remind dissatisfied West Virginia voters that they need to send a national message to Barack Obama and to beware of Manchin's election eve conversion: why didn't he speak up sooner, when Obama and the Congressional Democrats were steamrolling their agenda? If Raese does win, I think Manchin could set his sights on retiring Jay Rockefeller.
I saw in the Baltimore Sun that Maryland GOP Senate candidate Dr. Eric Wargotz did have a recent unremarkable short debate with Barbara Mikulski on local public television and has finally started airing his first general commercial (which I had to view on the web). I guess they didn't or couldn't license Pink Floyd's The Wall. I have already given my take on how Wargotz should approach the campaign. It's not exactly clear where Wargotz is going on the foreclosure angle, other than as a surrogate for a struggling economy; it just seems to serve up the ball to the progressive Democrats' bank-bashing argument and their dubious claim that their "financial reform" bill has addressed the core issues. Anyone reading this blog on a regular basis knows that I would be going after Obama and the progressive Dems' crony capitalism, the nationalization of student loans, the takeover of AIG, the car companies, and the GSE's, the growing dependence on foreign-produced energy resources, the Dems' picking winners and losers in the marketplace, their ineffectual overspending, etc. Wargotz is not going to beat a populist Democrat with a populist campaign; he needs to point out that he is running against a professional politician whom has been in Washington for 3 decades; children born and raised during Mikulski's tenure now are looking for work and towards a troubled financial future, a staggering national debt to service, and chronically underfunded entitlements. Maryland needs more of an independent voice, not a passive rubber stamp for a morally hazardous, presumptuous progressive agenda, corrosive of American traditional values, i.e., the self-made, self-reliant man, initiative, thriftiness, integrity, etc.
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
A Democratic House string of all-time record deficits spanning four years and, with Obama in the White House, the first two trillion-dollar plus deficits? Where's all that job growth from "shovel-ready projects" and throwing money at green energy companies dependent on tax subsidies to turn a profit? What about 2000-page bills and a flood of new rules and regulations, health care mandates or penalties and onerous paperwork, nonstop attacks on business, and continued government intervention in the marketplace? Obama is playing a game of chicken with the GOP over continuing the tax policies in place over the past decade versus partial reinstatement of the Clinton tax hikes, while businesses wait on the outcome. The GOP would agree to a 2-year extension of the Bush cuts in a heartbeat; they would prefer the tax cuts be made permanent; Obama insists on excluding the top tax brackets, nonnegotiable, never mind the fact most small businesses report on an individual tax basis. The Democrats argue that some small businesses (those with lesser income) are more equal than others in terms of tax cuts.
Class is not what you come to expect from leftist websites or rallies... Reported signs of House GOP leader (Jewish) Eric Cantor with a Hitler mustache and "I masturbate to Christine O'Donnell" are indicative of the uncivil, presumptuous, arrogant, judgmental nature of many, if not most progressives. (Whatever issues I have with Christine O'Donnell, they don't involve the substance of her political views. If I was voting in Delaware Tuesday, I would cast a vote for Christine O'Donnell. On a side note, in response to some ungentlemanly anonymous comments on a website I refuse to cite, I think she is a very attractive, kissable young woman brought up with the right values; I have no shot, of course, but my mom would approve of me dating a fellow Catholic.)
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The Left Tries to Stir Up Trouble Between the Tea Party and the GOP
Frank Rich is one of the stable of irrelevant strident New York Times columnists, along with "Mr. Nobel Prize" Paul "Enron Consultant" Krugman, whom has been battling the G-20 to overspend their way to "prosperity" , and Maureen Dowd, whom, instead of tracking bureaucratic incompetence and inertia in the federal government, tries to find a conspiracy in how the Catholic Church and/or the current pope handled proceedings against rogue priests accused of sexual misconduct nearly 30 years ago.
Frank Rich wrote a typically vacuous column which I hardly want to dignify with a discussion, but I did want to stress a couple of points. First, Frank Rich is repeating the same old same old talking points that the GOP is being disingenuous about spending and that it wants to retreat to the same "failed policies". It is true that Bush increased the deficit more than under Clinton, but people forget that those budget surpluses weren't due to Clinton, but to a disciplined GOP House in power for 6 of Clinton's 8 years, which more than anything else left Clinton without a majority he needed to expand government programs. In fact, the GOP is largely responsible for blocking Clinton's ill-conceived health care "reform", which would have vastly increased federal spending.
So, during the 12 years the Republicans controlled Congress, you can divide the 6 years under Clinton, where Republicans were very effective at fiscal discipline, versus the first 6 years under Bush. When the Democrats point at the "8 years under Bush", the first thing they conveniently want you to forget is the last two years were under a Democratic-controlled Congress, and the recession started in December 2007, and Bush had to contend with a Democratic-controlled Senate the first 2 years (after Jeffords' defection given a split Senate, tenuously controlled by the Republicans with VP Cheney presiding). So you can only really count 2003-2006. The Democrats seem to mean by "policies" the Bush tax cuts, which the Republicans can validly point to as stimulating 52 straight months of job growth and increasing the burden of the federal revenue burden paid by higher-income people (but apparently that's not good enough for Barack Obama, whom seems to think they should pay even more...)
A big-ticket item was Bush's expansion of Medicare prescription drug support. But keep in mind Bush ran into considerable resistance from his own GOP conservative base which balked at adding the new entitlement--and the objections from the Democrats didn't mirror conservative concerns but complained that Bush's plan wasn't generous enough. There was also conservative disagreement with the establishment of the super-bureaucracy of DHS; the Democrats also pushed for government union interests (work rules, etc.), which effectively raised government operational costs.
Part of what went on in the Bush era had to do with asset bubbles that actually started under Clinton's era, not Bush's: the NASDAQ surged past 5000 and 10 years later is struggling to attain half that level. We had the 9/11 tragedy which nearly brought down the air travel and hospitality sectors and cost the economy nearly $700B dollars. The housing market bubble was already well under way; when I moved to Santa Clara in 1999, houses in Silicon Valley started at around half a million dollars. If we didn't have very aggressive lending to less-qualified applicants, in part enabled by GSE purchases and progressive lending preferences, with the federal government implicitly on the hook, the housing bubble would have been much more manageable. That's why conservatives like me have been harping on the need to reform (preferably privatize) the GSE's. Instead, what we have seen is increased government meddling in the real estate market.
The GOP did increase domestic spending in the Bush era, and there were also the costs of the wars; why did many (but not all) Republicans lose their way? I think, in part, it reflected a desire to do whatever it took to retain support of the voters back home which translated into government investments, goods and services. The point remains, which Frank Rich and the other progressives will never acknowledge, that the Democrats fought for MORE spending every step of the way--for obvious reasons.
Now let's get to the real point: Frank Rich is really saying that the Republicans won't deliver on fiscal discipline. Tell me, if you are a grade-conscious student, would you sign up to take a course under a professor whom promised more work and a lower grade-distribution? Are you going to give your mom and dad bigger presents when they promise to ground you for violating your curfew?
What you can take to the bank is there never would have been a $1.3T deficit under a GOP Congress. Look at all the fights that have been taking place: the Republicans have put blocks on unemployment compensation increases that required NEW funding; the Democrats have made a procedural farce out of pay-go, routinely trying to pass new spending as "emergency"/exempted in nature.
David Cameron, Britain's freshman Prime Minister, did not broadcast austerity before the elections. The fact is, everybody knows that current spending is unsustainable, but look what Nancy Pelosi has gone around promising: no raising the retirement age, even though with longer lives the government can't afford to pay out the same benefits without additional funding. The point is, you have to stretch out payments, e.g., by lowering disbursement and/or increase contributions and payment adjustments (e.g., the relative payroll tax, the number or level of contributors, etc.) and/or delay eligibility.
There are a variety of reasons John Boehner and Mitch McConnell won't be specific. In part, what they can deliver in part depends on the nature and extent of Tuesday's mandate; for example, it's still questionable whether the GOP can win control of the Senate this cycle. But high spending is routinely among the top 2 or 3 issues voters are discussing. The trouble is that you run into resistance when you get to specifics, because there is tremendous resistance to change the status quo. Congressmen and Senators argue passionately against military base closures affecting their district or state, even though if you ask them as a principle whether the military should have the right to close bases no longer needed strategically.
Boehner has already hinted that there will be action taken on the federal hiring spree and unsustainable compensation packages. I also think that you will see budget freezes and/or cutbacks. I do believe that Republicans will need to make cuts across the board and most of these will be politically unpopular. Frank Rich and other progressives have an implicit self-interest in daring the GOP leadership to be more forthcoming. In essence, what Boehner and others need to do is bundle the austerity package in such a way as to be seen as a fair sharing of the burden.
Boehner and McConnell will also argue that we need tax reform and halt government intervention in the private sector to enable business with the clarity and confidence they need to start investing more. In part they are looking to stimulate business growth to increase business tax revenue and also employee tax revenue.
The second point I want to raise deals with the "old-guard"/Karl Rove Republicans and the Tea Party insurgents. I have a very strong reaction myself, not to the Tea Party, but an affiliated political organization, the Tea Party Express. I think any party doesn't like an external organization interfering with its candidate nominations. Take the state of Delaware; there aren't that many candidates with the name recognition and statewide appeal like Mike Castle. According to one dated reference, about 45% of Delaware's voters are registered Democrats and 31% are Republicans. You can say all you want that maybe 16% of the voters in the state went for Christine O'Donnell. The bottom line is, on a party-line ballot basis, a Democratic nominee needs only 1 out of 4 independents. A Republican is going to need an extraordinary turnout, the clear majority of moderates/independents and probably some Democratic votes as well. Sean Hannity and other media conservative demagogues can say all they want about Castle being a "sore loser" for failing to endorse a dubiously qualified candidate resulting from a manipulated election: you have to ask, what kind of conservative can win in Delaware? Probably a fiscal conservative, social moderate, just like Mike Castle and most New England Republicans (other than an occasional Sununu). The most optimistic polls have O'Donnell behind by at least 10 points with mere days left. A lot depends on voter turnout Tuesday, and we can normally expect some surprises any election, but I would be shocked if O'Donnell managed to pull the upset. There do seem to be a Scott Brown-like surges occurring all over the Northeast.
I am not part of the "country club" Republicans. I agree with most of the Tea Party principles. I disagree with the political organization Tea Party Express; in many cases, it has backed candidates which are having trouble reaching 50% in one of the biggest turnover elections of the last 100 years. We are seeing things like John Raese blowing a lead in West Virgina by (among other things) hiring actors to play stereotype characters, Rand Paul talking about the Civil Rights Act and Aqua Buddha, Joe Miller having to discuss his bodyguards arresting a member of the press and dealing with revelations from his personnel file late in the campaign, Christine O'Donnell having to address witchcraft and masturbation and expressing confusion over the First Amendment, Sharron Angle talking about abortion and illegal immigration, etc.
It is true even veteran politicians run into problems, e.g., Charlie Rangel, Richard Blumenthal, Mark Kirk, etc. But you have to vet your candidates, and you have to stick to the core talking points of limited government and fiscal responsibility. By far, the most appealing Tea Party-backed candidate has been Marco Rubio whom was the GOP Speaker of the Florida House; Charlie Crist, arguably the most popular Republican in the state until about a year ago, has burned bridges. He probably needs to take a sabbatical; most people thought Nixon was done after losing two high-profile elections in the early 60's, but he came back in 1968.
Political Cartoon
A few originals:
- Frank Capri, Democratic candidate for Rhode Island, and Lincoln Chafee (independent) showed up at the White House for Halloween trick-or-treat. Barack Obama dropped a "hope and change" bumper sticker in each of their bags, insisting that he had to treat his 2008 supporters the same. Capri wanted his treat from the endorsement jar and told Obama what he could do with his bumper sticker. It's too bad he didn't check out the White House lawn. A number of Blue Dog Democratic candidates like Joe Manchin had dropped by earlier, looking for treats from Obama's money jar; when they instead found his endorsement in their bag, they dropped it and ran as fast as they could away from it.
- The morning after Halloween, Sasha and Malia woke up to catch Barack Obama munching on candy from their trick-or-treat bags. The girls complained that they hadn't gotten much candy because Michelle had insisted on their getting a lot of healthy snacks like apples and raisins. Their dad explained that he had found their candy bags while looking for a cigarette. "Dad, wasn't it bad enough when that thief broke into our piggy banks?" Barack patiently repeated, one more time, that it wasn't a thief but an IRS agent...
Frank Mills, "Music Box Dancer". What I remember in particular about this song is someone had anonymously left this song years back in its entirety on my answering machine. I suspect it was left by my girlfriend at the time, Kathryn. I first met her at a Catholic Newman Center across the street from the UH campus. Kathryn was tall (5' 10.5") and gorgeous; she was wearing jean cutoffs that showed off her gloriously long legs. She introduced herself, saying that she had noticed me at Mass (I often wore suits, unlike many guys) but said that I probably hadn't noticed her because she was "freakishly tall" (a little taller than me: not a problem). I eventually broke off the relationship (for unspecified reasons dealing with her emotional style); unsurprisingly, she was determined to have the last word. (How many guys get a break-up letter typewritten on office letterhead?) She even started wearing high heels to Mass...
