Centrist Pundits

Tonight, Massachusetts voted a Republican in to the Senate. This would surprise anyone who was looking at the race a few months ago, but comes as no surprise to those who’ve been looking at it for the last couple of weeks.

What does this mean for centrism? Well, you have to look at how the race was run.

On the one hand, it definitely reminds us that almost no state is a red state or a blue state. Like all states, Mass has a mix of people with a vast, muddy middle area. They elected Romney to office, after all, though he was a bit more liberal at the time. So it might be tempting to note this as a victory for centrists – that even in a “solid blue” state, moderates can and do influence the politics. A lot of people have said that Republicans could be in trouble if they go to the right particularly hard, and this might bear that out – for both parties.

On the other, neither side ran a typical campaign. Brown, for one, hardly ever called himself a Republican, knowing that word is anathema in Massachusetts. Coakley, on the other hand, sold herself mostly as a person with a penchant for misspeaking. Democrats didn’t take this race seriously, and it might have had another outcome if they had. But Brown’s strategy worked – Brown sold himself as a moderate, and yet a look at his record, while hardly the most conservative record in the world, if fairly solidly in the Republican camp. Whether or not the votes of Massachusetts will hold him to his promise of “social consciousness” while he has his personal beliefs tend towards the conservative side of the aisle will remain to be seen.

Now, the question is, what does this mean for the legislative centerpiece of the Democratic Congress, health care reform? I’ve seen a surprising number of posts tonight indicating that its dead, most of them in the “ding dong the witch is dead” vein (mostly from my conservative friends). And it could mean that. But keep something in mind: neither side really wants it dead, and neither side has to accept its death.

Democrats may actually come out ahead (at least in terms of how liberal a health care bill is passed), if they are willing (which is always the question with them.) The only option left to them is reconciliation, a concept I admittedly don’t understand well. I thought it could only be used for the budget. But people talk about using it for health care reform. If Democrats move this direction – costly as it may be in terms of making them look like they are playing fair – then they only need 51 votes in the Senate. They can tell Lieberman and Nelson to take their amendments and shove them, and pass the House version generally in tact. This might be a monumentally unwise move by the Democrats, but cornered animals tend to do strange things.

On the other hand, while no Republican in the world would admit it, they need Health Care as an issue. If they kill it now, it – meaning the need to repeal the bill – doesn’t help with the mid-terms and doesn’t help in 2012. I wonder if we’ll see Snowe or another moderate Republican have a change of heart, though that may be the cynical part of my brain.

What does this mean for the future? Not a whole lot. It will keep Steele in his job a little longer, and it will re-energize the morale of a number of downtrodden Republicans, but like NY23, it won’t maintain its party switch. Come 2012, barring a truly popular Republican with incredible coat tails, one Kennedy or another will decide to run, and take it from Brown. In short, what this race does is one thing only – remind us that the political pendulum in America is ever-swinging.

JC Congress, Political Parties, State Politics Congress, Health care, Massachusetts, Scott Brown, senators

(No, I’m not really back yet – new job and all – but I may post a bit this month.  I expect December to be when I start getting back in to this regularly.)

You know, the New York Senate was completely messed up this summer, and it barely made the national news.  But one not even particularly interesting Congressional race gets a bit weird, and suddenly, it’s everywhere.  I speak, of course, of New York 23, a bit north of where I live… but on my TV a lot these days.

Now, of course, normally, there would be no Congressional election this year.  But the previous Congressman is now the Secretary of the Army, and so a special election needed to be held to fill the seat.  Normally, this would be a remarkably open and shut case.  New York 23 is one of the more conservative districts in the state, and the area hasn’t had a Democratic representative since just after the Civil War, if  I understand it correctly.  Its Republican country until tomorrow.

Tomorrow, it may be Democrat country, or, more likely in this blogger’s opinion, Conservative country.    Now, I have no problem with a Conservative campaigning and winning an election (although he doesn’t live in the area, which I do have a problem with) but that’s not really the story.  The story is that a moderate – something that this website is interested in – was completely forsaken by the party – in favor of a conservative.

We all know the country, generally, leans to the middle, by most guesses, a little right of center, but towards the middle.  We also know that politics is completely defined by the two extremes of the political spectrum, both in their own self-definition and in their opposition’s definition of who they are.  Right now, the Republicans are looking towards their future, to figure out how they’ll define themselves.  And most of the bigwigs look like they’ve decided that they will define themselves as the far-right.

The vast majority of the party leaders said that the candidate for the Republican party (who is, admittedly, a moderate – but let’s face it, NY Republicans are never the standard bearers of conservatism – and who, admittedly, was not elected but appointed as the candidate by 11 NY Republican Party county chairs) wasn’t conservative enough to be a Republican, and endorsed the Conservative Party’s candidate.  I’m not one for blind party loyalty but I think the least one can expect when one is the candidate for a party is the endorsement of the party’s movers and shakers, whether its enthusiastic or not.  It seems pretty basic.

The Republican, Dede Scozzafava, on the other hand, isnt showing much loyalty to the ideals of the Republican party either.  Not because of her moderate stances on things like gay marriage – which isn’t nearly the issue here in NY that it is, say, in Oklahoma – but because when she withdrew from the race, she endorsed the Democrat.  Again, not one for blind party loyalty, and she’d been rogered pretty badly by her party, but you probably shouldn’t endorse your party’s traditional opposition, as a general rule.

The parties exist, whether they should or not, because like minded people pooling their resources make for more power than a bunch of individuals.  In exchange, sometimes, you take one for the team.  If either part of that equation falters, the party suffers.  Right now, it seems like no one is remembering why parties exist.  I’d normally be okay with that, except I think at the moment it plays in the political extremist hands, rather than the rise of the center.

I suppose some might say that this is the beginning of the rise of a Conservative party.  And maybe they are right.  But if they are, is that good for conservatism in America?  If most Americans are center or center-right, does a stronger national party that always plays far-right get elected?  Or do they split the vote with moderates and start to consistently lose to Democrats?  When people say that parties are, by definition, big tents, they aren’t just saying that because they like to see a few people of color, a few women, and a few homosexuals around.  They are pointing out that you need to get to at least the plurality of votes.  A Conservative party that ignores moderates only works if moderates themselves go by the wayside.  Right now, it looks like the only two Republicans who realize that are Newt Gingrich and Meghan McCain.

The sad part about it is, this election isn’t some sort of bellweather.  If the Democrat wins, it is because the vote was split.  If the Conservative wins, it is because of outside influences.  If the Republican wins – which is basically impossible – it is because the district votes Republican by default.  There’s no… data… to be garnered from the results.  Just noise.  And noise is what those who endorsed the Conservative want – they want their names in the papers for their own ambitions – Palin, Pawlenty, Pataki and more.  Because if they can say “Hey, I don’t toe the line, I do what’s right, heck, I don’t even endorse my own party’s candidates if they are the wrong person” they can claim to be mavericks, free-thinkers, and movers and shakers, even if all they are is an ideologue.

JC National Politics, Political Parties, State Politics Congress, Conservative Party, elections, Palin, Pawlenty

Huh.  When I predicted Sotomayor a while back, it was mostly because the name kept popping up from smarter people than I.  In fact, I had begun to doubt it would be Sotomayor and instead be someone LIKE Sotomayor, simply because she was getting over-exposed in the pre-game.  There was an overabundance of people looking at her record, coming out against her, raising her up as an ultraliberal and an activist judge – in other words, picking Sotomayor gave the opposition more time to prep for her, since she was the one they expected.

But apparently she interviewed well with the President and he likes her history on the bench (and she’s a woman, and Hispanic) so she was picked.  And make no mistake, she’ll be on the court.  Even if there is an attempt at a filibuster – and I don’t think there will be – the Democrats will be more than happy to use the so-called nuclear option and take away the filibuster for judicial nominations, just as was threatened under Bush.  No one will like it, but the Democrats won’t allow this not to happen barring some unforeseen circumstance coming out early enough to give her time to voluntarily withdraw, ala Harriet Myers.  And she’s much more qualified than Myers was, so I don’t see that happening.

She has her flaws, judicially.  The accusations of judicial activism aren’t made up whole-hog, they have a grounding in reality.  The accusations of ultra-liberalism, on the other hand, are somewhat more based in the land of right-wing fantasy.  Does she lean left?  Yes.  Has the drifted left over the years?  Yes.  But she’s more moderate than many thought Obama would appoint.

Of course, the left is happy to point out that she was first nominated to the Federal Court by the first President Bush.  That’s sounds like a very nice sound bite, but it hardly matters.  It has been many years, and there was plenty of time for her to drift left, or for conservatives to say she had drifted left.  A vote for Sotomayor in either 91 or 98 doesn’t mean a vote for her in 2009.

A quick glance at her record shows a moderate-liberal stance.  The only major abortion ruling she made upheld the government’s right to be pro-life, though I doubt that’s her actual, personal stance.  She also has been fairly moderate in some of her rulings on intellectual property, though some of those rulings have been overturned.  On the other hand, she falls in to the solidly liberal camp in things like freedom of speech and labor vs. management.  The accusations of her activism come from things like her throwing out a civil service test because not enough minorities were represented on the promotional list that came out of that test – expect to see the Republicans grill her (rightfully) on her stance on race issues.

Other issues that will come up are likely to be abortion (just because it always does), gay marriage (specifically involving California’s prop 8), right to privacy, and torture / enhanced interrogation, because those are the issues of the day.  But I don’t think we should expect any surprising answers on any of those questions.

All in all, it is a good pick by Obama.  She’ll probably pass, she’ll probably get at least a few Republican votes and she probably won’t lose many Democratic ones.  She has adequate experience, she’s good demographically, she’s not particularly old (though some are making an issue of her diabetes – but since I’m diabetic myself, I know it can be managed if you are careful).  Fivethirtyeight.com had the remarkably cynical but probably accurate statement that this will have just enough opposition to raise the possibility of making Republicans look foolish but not enough to actually stop her from getting on the court.

In the end, though, I want to go back to my earlier column on the Supreme Court and state that while there are many positives and negatives about Sotomayor, and while she appears okay, but not a home-run from this centrist’s point of view, my real problem is this: I don’t think she is another Thurgood Marshall.  Of course, I’m not sure who is, or I’d have endorsed that person earlier.

JC Supreme Court Congress, obama, Sotomayor, Supreme Court

The Obama budget has passed both the House and Senate this evening.  I have no doubt that Greg and I both have more to say on it than this, but I want to point out two things immediately:

I have no idea what will happen.  I hope it will help.  I fear it will make things worse.  I’m leaning toward help, but it could go any direction.

But here’s the second thing, and it is kind of obvious, and I think it is something we can call agree on: dang, that is a lot of money.

JC Congress, Economy budget, Congress, finance

The actual Republican budget alternative, the one with actual numbers instead of the “gist” of things, is now out.  It is really not all that surprising; it focuses on limited spending – except for defense – and tax cuts.  In some ways, it is very much like a proposal from when Bush was in office, or if McCain had won, although perhaps slightly more fiscally conservative than Bush’s requests.

I will give the budget some credit.  First of all, I think it really does present an alternative to the Obama proposal.  I’m fairly sure it is not, overall, a good alternative, but at least the game is actually starting now.  And a couple of points are actually good ones.  More money for veterans is generally a good thing, depending on how they want it spent.  (I remember that certain leading Republicans aren’t fans of the GI bill, which does nothing but anger me)  And this may be the one time, the one time in all of recent history, where I like the idea of cutting capital gains taxes; very few are making capital gains right now anyway with the economy like it is, and if the cut encourages new people to invest, that may be a good thing.

On the other hand, many of the other tax cuts (or tax cut extensions) are the same kinds of proposals that helped create the mess.  I have no problem, as mentioned before, with more, not fewer, steps in our tax rates.  I’m of mixed feelings on corporate tax rate cuts – corporations can afford to pay, but on the other hand, no one wants them fleeing oversees, either.

I find the idea of putting more money in for defense spending than Obama wants to be rather crazy.  Obama is, for better or worse, the commander in chief, and the military is going to do what he says it is going to do, so putting more money in to it seems a bit like catering for 100 guests when the wedding is only having 25 people.

Representative Paul Ryan, who is the ranking Republican on the House Budget committee, stated that the President is “exploiting” the current economic problems to spend trillions on programs.  He may or may not be right.  The President would argue that he’s spending trillions on fixing the underlying problems in America which feed the economic crisis.  Po-tay-to, Po-tah-to.  But perhaps, just maybe, hoping against hope, will we see the Republican numbers and the Democratic numbers play well together, and have something develop more in the middle of the road?

Alas.  Probably not.

JC Congress, Economy, Political Parties budget, Congress, finance

So, pretty much everybody who is alive is aware of the outrage coming from… well, pretty much everybody about the huge bonuses being paid out to AIG executives after being bailed out with our money.

There’s likely to be some serious political fallout. The most likely victim will be Connecticut’s Senator Chris D0dd, who put language into the stimulus bill that permitted these bonuses. Dodd has said that he did that at the request of the Obama administration. That may be, but next year when he runs for reelection, he’ll likely not be able to get past the fact that for the past 20 years, he’s been the top receipient of campaign contributions from AIG’s PAC.

But the most absurd thing is the attempt to rectify this by taxing the recipients of the bonus at rates that could only be described universally as confiscatory. Democrats are totally behind this… Republicans seem to be split.

The fact of the matter is that crafting tax policy to target a handful of individuals to cover up the government’s mistake is just plain wrong.

Now, don’t misunderstand me. AIG shouldn’t have given out these bonuses. It was a bad idea, although many of these were contractual obligations. But the fact is that the government let this happen. Some say the Democrats let this happen right under their nose. I don’t think that’s a fair characterization. It makes them seem like they were bamboozled, when the evidence is pretty clear that they were complicit partners in this.

I think that the GOP will, at the very least, pick up a Senate seat in CT because of this.

Greg Congress, Economy, National Politics, Political Parties AIG, bailout, bonus, Congress, finance, stimulus, taxes

The big discussion of the week has been on earmarks in the omnibus spending bill.  What’s ironic is that even though it was a huge spending bill, higher than previous ones, the earmarks were a small part of it.  Now, there are still questions – if Obama ran against earmarks, why isn’t he taking a stronger stance now?  And if earmarks are part of a “scratch your back then you scratch mine” system in Congress, aren’t they inherently corruptive?  But here’s the thing: more important than earmarks is, perhaps, the fact that there’s no strong voice of fiscal conservatism anymore in Congress.

I’m not a fiscal conservative by most definitions.  I believe that the Government should spend only what money it has to, but no more – but my definition of has to is pretty broad; I think things like universal health care and education are things the government has not only a right but a responsibility to be involved in, while true fiscal conservatives do not.  But that’s not really my point right now either.

See, I like opposition.  It frustrates the hell out of me, but I’ve seen what happens when *any* philosophy gets to strong and goes unopposed.  But right now, there isn’t a strong fiscal conservative voice, and I think it’s hurting the nation.

There’s lots of Republicans trying to appear fiscally conservative – and maybe they even are – but their efforts are completely undermined by their actions.  Any party in the minority tends to become nothing more than naysayers, so the idea that Republicans oppose earmarks rings hollow, leaving you left to wonder what would happen if the party returned to power.  After all, the Bush years played earmark politics even with such important issues as homeland security – and it may not be fair, exactly, to assume that such things would happen again, it is very human to assume they would.

Governors are speaking out against the stimulus pack and talking about refusing the money, but if verbal speech contained footnotes, there would be a guy standing right behind them saying “Refusing 100 million of 3.3 billion”

How can we take fiscal conservatism seriously when the party spent 8 years approving the neo-con agenda, which isn’t fiscally conservative?  McCain is actually a fairly good speaker at times, but he was lockstep with Bush much of the time.  Lindsey Graham came right out and said on the Sunday shows that while he’s against earmarks, if the omnibus bill had been rejected, he’d have put the earmark for his own state right back in the new version – without the slightest bit of shame!

I honestly don’t know what the party can do, other than hope time heals all wounds, and that when they are in power again (and it is only a matter of time) that they keep to a fiscally conservative program.  Because I may be a long haired hippie freak to some of my conservative friends, but even I know letting us have our way to much will be just as disastrous for our country as letting the neo-con agenda run roughshod over everything was disastrous.  In a perfect world, I feel that whatever party is in power, it should be lead by smart people of that party.  But smart people don’t thrive on yes-men, smart people thrive on discussion. 

“If you’re dumb, surround yourself with smart people.  If you’re smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you.”  Thanks, Aaron Sorkin, even if that particular quote didn’t come from West Wing.

JC National Politics, Political Parties Congress, finance

A lot has been made, since Obama’s speech to Congress, about the fact that a number of members of Congress were using “twitter” during the speech.  It has even come up on the Daily Show, and I’m sure if you click our link to the Daily Show in our links section, you could find the clip about it.  The most common idea is that if you are at the State of the Union (or something close enough to it), you should probably pay attention, you may learn something.  I don’t know that I buy that; Obama is a good speaker, no doubt, but he’s not out to educate people and the policies he’s putting forth have all been vetted and leaked and are generally known before he says them; besides, if you are a good enough typist, you can listen at the same time.  If you do your twitters while keeping your phone out of site and only glancing at the screen occasionally to make sure you spelled everything correctly, I don’t have a problem with that.

No, I have a problem with the content of the tweets.  I don’t think twittering itself is disrespectful but the tweets should have something to do with the subject at hand.  If you are complaining about your seat, or commenting on former occupants of certain offices, or (worst of all) suggesting alternatives to watching the speech to your constituents, perhaps you should put your Blackberry or iPhone away.

But if you want to comment on what the President is saying, I think there could be an amazing tool in twittering.  If he’s saying something about increased spending, and you want to twitter to your followers something about tax cuts being a more sensible approach, more power to you.  If he’s talking about health care reform and you want to twitter about how you’ll be voting with the President on that matter, that’s good too.  Real time analysis of the President’s speech is a neat idea.  I’d even go so far as to say that I’d watch the President speak with a 3 way split screen, Republican tweets to the right, Democratic to the left, with the President in the middle, and I think it would be fascinating.  Like a real-time political version of “Pop-up Video”.  I’d definitely be all over Tivoing that.

Twitter does not lend itself easily to the dignity that our political process is supposed to possess.  That said, we are Twitter’s content providers, and we could choose to control the message.  When the “we” in that case are members of Congress, perhaps they should.  No one cares that the honorable representative from the great state of New York has to sneeze but can’t get out of the room.  But we do care about his stance on what our health care system will do about that sneeze if it turns out to be something serious.

JC Congress, Society Congress, technology

Imagine it’s election day, 2008. You’re walking down the street, and a guy grabs you and pulls you into a dark alley. He’s wearing a button with a GOP elephant on it. As he pushes you against a wall, he says:

You’re patriotic, ain’t ya, bub? If you know what’s good for you, you’ll vote for McCain today.

The ruffian pushes you back to the sidewalk, and you walk away quickly, reflecting on the crazy idiot supporters some candidates attract. You’re about to contact the police when another arm reaches out and pulls you into an abandoned building. The man in front of you, as burly as the last one, has a button with a Democratic donkey on it. He says:

You look healthy. You should stay that way. Obama is going to fix healthcare for all of us. You should vote for him. Otherwise, I’d hate for you to find yourself… not healthy.

You leave the building. You think about calling the police… but who would believe you? You see the polling place up ahead. You walk in, and stand in line. You’re handed your ballot, and you walk into a voting booth. To your shock, you see both heavies in the booth with you! You call over to the election judge. She explains that the law has been changed, and that your vote is no longer secret, and these two get to know how you vote.

Suddenly, you realize it’ll be a long and dangerous walk home.

Now, that might sound like some piece of science fiction, but that’s exactly how labor unions want to have happen in the workplace.

Right now, in order to form a union in a company, cards are passed out among the workers. If 30% of the workers turn in cards that indicate they want a union, then a secret ballot vote is administered by the National Labor Relations Board. If a majority of the employees vote to form a union, then it’s done. If not, then no union is formed. Pretty straightforward, balanced and fair.

The unions want to take the secret ballot out of the equation. They’re promoting the passage of a “card check” law, which basically would say that if a majority of the employees turned in cards supporting a union, then there’s no secret ballot vote.

The proposed legislation, marketed under the misleading title “Employee Free Choice Act”, would allow unions to harrass workers until they check yes on the card. They can, and would, come by the workers homes each and every night until they get what they want — a checked card.

The reason that the current system isn’t good enough is because that type of coersion doesn’t work in a secret ballot. Someone who checks yes on a card because they want to get rid of the union organizer, or because he fears for the safety of his family, would no longer have the option of voicing his true opinion in a secret ballot.

Now, I don’t want people to think I am anti-union. Unions serve a vital role in this country, and we need them. But unions have an ugly history of violence and intimidation, and a law like this does nothing more than encourage that behavior.

But the card-check law is something that has no place in a civilized society. Like other laws that are pro-union and anti-freedom, this is the kind of thing that can only happen when a political party is owned lock, stock and barrel by the labor unions.

And that party now controls both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Greg Congress, National Politics card check, Congress, unions

I heard a lot of ideas and promises from the President in his address to Congress tonight… but it seemed to be short on specifics in some of these areas.

I mean, I love the idea of curing cancer in my lifetime, but I am not sure how he plans to do it. I’ll have to go back over the transcript to see how many of these there were.

Greg Congress, National Politics Congress, obama