Is this what they mean by "Tea Party"?

From the Department of Inescapable Conclusions comes this: the Tea Party movement is basically racist. That little gem is pointedly NOT included in the New York Times’ analysis of their own poll on the TPers — the paper’s focus is instead on the more “surprising” (to Upper East Side liberals anyway) finding that the people who identify themselves with the movement are educated. Can’t wait to see Fox have a field day with that one….

The new poll  comes hot on the heels of a Gallup Poll released last week that also looked at Tea Party supporters (different from people active in the movement as defined by the Times) and how it’s supporters stack up ideologically and demographically with the rest of America. Both polls give a similar demographic snapshot but the Times poll went far deeper into what TPers actually think and believe. The result is strong support for the argument that while the TP movement is ostensibly driven by anger and fear over the economy and government, the elephant in the room is race. The President is a black guy. That’s the problem.

The Times poll has lots of interesting data sprinkled throughout its 110 questions (who actually agrees to sit through all those questions?) including much that is predictable: TPers are better educated, whiter, older, richer, more Republican and vastly more politically conservative than the average American. There are also some telling surprises like the fact that the economic downturn seems to have effected the TPers less than the average American even though Tea Party members are far angrier about t

Let’s start with question 52.

Favor whites                  Favor blacks                   Treat equally                   Don’t know

U.S.                              2                                   11                                   83                                  5

Tea Party                     1                                   25                                   65                                  9

Are Americans too uninformed to be part of the process? OK that’s a little over the top but after the last year it’s really difficult for someone who’s spent a career trying to find the facts and then report them to watch the media, the pollsters, and the people follow each other down the rabbit hole into a world where every opinion is valid while every fact is either suspect or not worth our time.

Let’s ponder the polls on health care reform from just the last three frenzied weeks. It says a lot about what we’ve become.

Fox News’s last poll had some interesting wording:

Some Americans choose not to buy health insurance even though they can afford it. The president’s plan requires all Americans who can afford it to have some form of health insurance or else pay a penalty. Failure to pay the penalty would result in an even larger fine, a jail sentence of up to one year, or both. Do you think the government should be able to require all Americans who can afford it to have health insurance or pay a penalty, or not?

Yes                     29%

No                      68%

That was the sixth question Fox asked after the generic approve/disapprove and better/worse queries. I would have liked to see them follow with the same question but substituting “auto insurance” for “health insurance”. Alas that kind of thing was not on Fox’s agenda. For instance check out this one:

Some people think President Obama is showing strong leadership in his efforts to pass health care legislation by staying the course even in the face of opposition, while other people think he is showing stubbornness by ignoring opposition to the health care proposals and moving ahead anyway. Which is closer to your view?

Stubborn? Love that. Nowhere did Fox ask if people knew any facts about the bill. Not on the agenda.

I like this from CBS:

Do you feel you have a good understanding of how the current health care reform bill would affect you and your family, or is it confusing to you?

Good Understanding                       42%

Confusing                                        54%

So where’s the follow-up? Something like, “Why are you confused?” or “Who do you think made you confused?” or “Have you read anything other than headlines about the bill?” I guess it would have been too easy to ask if people thought the news media had done a good job of making the bill clear.

On the other hand CBS got an odd answer to this question:

Do you think Democrats who have been trying to pass the current health care bill have done so mainly because they believe it is good policy for the country, or mainly for political reasons?

Good Policy                                   35%

Political Reasons                           57%

Really? I guess the news that this is “political suicide” for Democrats hasn’t penetrated despite it becoming almost overnight conventional wisdom from the New York Times to Fox News.

The best poll by far was the one done by a health policy organization. The Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking Poll not only asked probing questions about what Americans think about the health care bill but also importantly what they know about it. Here are two:

As far as you know, has the independent Congressional Budget Office which analyzes the cost of legislation said the health reform legislation currently being discussed in Congress will increase the federal budget deficit over the next ten years, decrease the deficit over the next ten years, or is it not expected to have much impact on the deficit?

As far as you know, if Congress and the president did pass a health care reform bill, would most people who currently get health insurance coverage through their employers keep their existing health insurance arrangements or would most people have to change their existing health insurance arrangements?

On the first one 55% got it wrong and 15% got it right. (The CBO said it would decrease the deficit) while 48% got the second one right and 41% got it wrong (the bill would be unlikely to have much impact on people with company plans). Neither result is particularly reassuring that Americans know very much about what they are being asked to opine on.

Another interesting question came from the AP-GFK poll early in March. This one pointed up the childlike unfocused unhappiness of many Americans when it comes to health care (and I would argue a lot of other things but we’ll save that for another day):

How much, if at all, should the health care system in the United States be CHANGED? Would you say it should be changed a great deal, a lot, a moderate amount, a little, or not at all?

Great Deal                                  31%

A Lot                                           19%

Moderate Amount                       32%

A Little                                         13%

Not at All                                       4%

So 50% think the system needs significant change and 82% think it needs to change at least some. But how? AP didn’t ask. Probably because the leading answer would have been, “I don’t know but in some way that makes everyone happy.”

Instead we got some real gems like this one from CNN/Opinion Research Corp asked of those who said they oppose the final bill:

Do you oppose that legislation because you think its approach toward health care is too liberal, or because you think it is not liberal enough?

Liberal? The bill is a lot of things but “conservative” or “liberal” it is not. Those political terms are almost meaningless when you’re talking about politicians let alone a huge and complex reworking of one of the largest sectors of the U.S. economy. If you disagree then answer this: Is Medicare a “liberal” or “conservative” program? I’m gonna bet you wouldn’t get many of those aging Tea Party folks to say it’s “liberal” since most of them seem to be old enough to be getting their health care through Medicare.

Of course the pollsters don’t really deserve as much blame as their clients since that’s who pays the bills and signs off on how many questions will be asked. The fact that none of these news organizations was interested in finding out what, if anything, Americans knew about the health care reforms that will change a huge part of our economy and social system is a damning indictment on their failure to report both about the bill and the public’s failure to be responsible citizens.

Lest you think this is all much ado about nothing watch this video from an anti-health reform rally in Washington last week:

I’ve asked literally tens of thousands of questions to people over the years about what they think of political and policy decisions and this is not rare. This isn’t a conservative, liberal, rural, urban, racial, or anything else problem. This is an American problem. Everyone’s got an opinion but almost no one has an intelligent opinion yet all are treated equally. Everyone deserves to be heard. Right? Well, no.

What does it say about us as a country that both the pollsters and the polled appear appear to be completely and totally divorced from the “reality-based” world, and doesn’t care?

A Gun Nut

When we wrote last week about the ridiculous press release put out by the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association claiming that David Yassky lost his run-off primary race for New York City Comptroller because he was a proponent of gun control we got the predictable stream of unpublishable screeds and a few comment arguing with our reasoning.

Putting aside the venom, several people wrote to say that Yassky had made gun control an issue in this race, one stating that Yassky had made it a “central issue of his campaign.” Others repeated that assertion in arguing we were off-base.

So since we like to deal with demonstrable facts here let’s cut to the chase. Here are the scripts for Yassky’s four TV spots:

#1 “Know Me”

YASSKY: I’m David Yassky. You don’t know me but I’m going to save you money.

I’ll get rid of government waste and stand up to the special interests.

It’s what I’ve always done.

I worked with Chuck Schumer to pass the Brady Law and the Assault Weapons Ban.

On the Council, I closed tax loopholes for luxury housing developers.

Sued Exxon Mobil to clean up our water.

And I put the entire City Budget online because it’s your money.

As Comptroller, I’ll demand accountability. The buck will stop with me and I will watch every penny.

#2 “Behind”

YASSKY: Behind every dollar that government wastes is a child without a textbook, or a senior without a hot meal.

And behind every budget loophole is a special interest that benefits.

That’s why I put the entire City budget online so taxpayers can see how our money is being spent.

As Comptroller, I’ll demand accountability and results for every dollar, and eliminate waste and sweetheart deals with tough audits of City agencies.

I’m David Yassky. The buck will stop with me and I’ll watch every penny, because it’s your money.

#3 “Endorse”

NARRATOR: For Comptroller, the New York Times endorses David Yassky as the candidate “most suited to do the job, with skill, intelligence, and independence.”

The Times praises Yassky’s work on affordable housing, gun control, and for putting the City budget online.

Democrat David Yassky for Comptroller.

#4 “Marty”

SCRIPT—“Marty.”

MARKOWITZ: Brooklyn’s got the best. Junior’s, Nathan’s, Cake Man Raven, Yassky.

WOMAN: Yassky? What’s a Yassky?

MARKOWITZ: David Yassky. Running for City Comptroller. He’s my guy.

NARRATOR: Democrat David Yassky. In the Council, he closed tax loopholes for developers, sued Exxon Mobil to clean up Greenpoint, and put the City budget online because it’s your money. As Comptroller, Yassky will demand accountability with tough audits of City agencies. The buck will stop with him and he’ll watch every penny.

WOMAN: Wow, we’ll take a Yassky.

MARKOWITZ: Me too.

MARKOWITZ: Brooklyn’s got the best. Junior’s, Nathan’s, Cake Man Raven, Yassky.

WOMAN: Yassky? What’s a Yassky?

MARKOWITZ: David Yassky. Running for City Comptroller. He’s my guy.

NARRATOR: Democrat David Yassky. In the Council, he closed tax loopholes for developers, sued Exxon Mobil to clean up Greenpoint, and put the City budget online because it’s your money. As Comptroller, Yassky will demand accountability with tough audits of City agencies. The buck will stop with him and he’ll watch every penny.

WOMAN: Wow, we’ll take a Yassky.

MARKOWITZ: Me too.

Sure enough when we wrote that there was no mention of gun control in the papers or TV coverage of this race we failed to recognize that there was a mention — actually two — in the ads Yassky put on local cable channels. Fair enough. We were wrong. But isn’t it true that the first mention is really just a way to point up his endorsement from wildly popular New York Senator Chuck Schumer? And isn’t the second one of several items the New York Times mentioned in their editorial endorsement of Yassky? It’s quite a stretch to say he made gun control a “central issue of his campaign.”

The truth is none of the people writing in addressed this from our last post:

And follow the logic: If “the citizens of New York City have delivered an unambiguous rebuke to the gun control movement” then Sen. Chuck Schumer should be in deep doo-doo. He’s up for reelection in 2010. So how are his poll numbers holding up? According to the Marist Poll last month 6 in 10 New Yorkers think he’s doing an excellent or good job — just 13% think he’s doing a poor job.

Please answer this question before you send out another round of “Yassky-lost-because-of guns” missives.

And while you’re at it explain to me, if gun control was a “central issue” in a very low turnout election in which every political pro will tell you organized labor backing is the only guarantee of victory, how it is that Bill de Blasio running for Public Advocate on the very same day, won. Unlike Yassky, de Blasio got a pretty fair amount of ink and airplay for airbrushing out a gun necklace on his daughter’s neck from a campaign flier. Remember that de Blasio was Hillary Clinton’s first campaign manager and has always supported Mike Bloomberg’s anti-gun crusades.

If Yassky lost because of guns, then Bill de Blasio should have lost for the same reason. But wait. He won, didn’t he. Facts are stubborn things.

Yes the media is owned and controlled by the government but in most day-to-day operations that doesn’t really effect what these professionals do. As in the U.S. the media here is consumed with ratings, celebrity, competition shows, and the competition. And just like America much of the news here is about sports and entertainment stars coupled with stories about government and business news. The big difference, of course, is that the life-blood of American cable news is missing here: Criticism of the government and especially it’s highest ranking officials.

That difference has come into sharp focus this week as the central government in Beijing has put a blogger and a writer on trial for trying to help the families of the victims of last year’s devastating Sichuan earthquake. The scale of the quake’s toil is unimaginable to most Americans. As many as 87,000 people died. At least 10,000 of the dead were schoolkids who died when their classrooms collapsed in daylight tremor. Critics noted that recently-constructed school buildings fell apart while others built at roughly the same time stood. Parents began protesting almost immediately arguing persuasively that government officials in charge of construction allowed schools to be improperly built in exchange for kickbacks.

The central government has fought hard to squelch these protesters including using the army to prevent a group of parents from traveling to Beijing. And of course none of this has been covered by the Chinese media. We knew this but asked anyway: How did your organization cover the Sichuan earthquake? The answers were telling in ways that we didn’t expect.

The first answers were that the news organizations focused on the human toll — how many were still missing, how many needed food and housing. When we asked about the protests and anger among many of the people in the effected region, we were asked how we had covered Katrina. They were able to go into great detail about the failures of the American government there. We asked them how they knew about all this. The answer was obvious.

We went on to explain in great detail how the American media told the story of New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. We showed videos of the coverage immediately after the storm passed and investigative pieces that ran in the weeks and months following. We talked about how various media outlets stuck with the story and helped drive a nationwide soul-searching about our government. We told them the political fallout from Katrina, especially to the Republican Party.

In private conversations later we pressed to find out how these media professionals thought about this. Were they secretly chafing under government control? Did they look for ways to get around the restrictions? Did they feel this system was holding back their country? The answers were surprising.

They talked about their ability to do investigative stories on local corruption and how that was really more important to people than criticizing the central government because it was closer to their daily lives. They cited stories on the local bus system in this city and a local businessman who was involved in corruption. But they also bristled at the idea that the national government should be criticized in the way American news organizations do. Clips of Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly were met with stunned silence.

Certainly there are people here who are fighting to open China and we wouldn’t expect to find many of them working in the state-run media. And it’s no surprise that a proud people would defend their country to what they might perceive as an challenge from a foreigner (see O’Reilly, Limbaugh, Hannity, etc for the American version of this). But we suspect there’s more here.

Social critics in the west have long argued that our consumer culture accomplishes strong top-down social control by distracting the masses from what the people in power are doing. Whether you believe that or not, talking with young people here certainly makes the argument more persuasive.

The young (25-35) people in our training sessions couldn’t really conceive why they would criticize the central government. They wanted to learn how American Idol and Dancing With the Stars worked and how their own shows like Happy Girl 2009 and Do You Remember? could be better. They wanted to know how we were putting shows on cell phones and the internet. One told us that she reads the New York Times website every day and therefore knows what’s going on in the world. She didn’t really have much interest in news from Beijing critical or otherwise.

It made us think a bit about what’s happening in America where television news and newspapers are dying accelerating deaths. The audience for both is getting older and smaller by the day. Younger Americans long ago turned away from these traditional news sources, instead turning to the internet. Whether on their cell phones, netbooks, or work pc’s, this generation, like their Chinese counterparts, seems to have little appetite for being told what’s news. They make their own decisions.

So does that make China less likely to ever allow criticism of the government? Or will the flood of information available on the web simply overwhelm their heavy-handed attempts at censorship? (Facebook, You Tube, Vimeo, Twitter, etc. are all blocked here.) And will this generation of Chinese people change it all without really meaning to?

The earthquake here was devastating not only in lives lost but also in the loss of face. If the Beijing Olympics were the peak of modern Chinese pride, the earthquake was the hard slap in the face for many here that reminded them that their country has still not “arrived” as a fully modern First World nation. To be sure everyone we talked to knew about the protests in Sichuan and the shameful building practices there. They just didn’t want the rest of the world to know too.

Homer the Republican

What is it about sanctimonious, God-fearing Republicans?

They can’t just flame out with a simple extra-marital affair. Or a little problem with some pills. Oh no. It must be spectacular. So South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, late of the “rising Republican stars for 12″ team, has finished off his political career with a fabulous mess of lies, diversions, derelictions of duty, and…oh yeah…an Argentinian dominatrix.

OK I made that last part up for the sake of alliteration but who knows?

As we all know by now Sanford seemingly vanished off the face of the earth for nearly a week. His wife said she didn’t know where he was. His staff said they didn’t know. Then they did. Hiking in the mountains. Then he appeared at Atlanta airport. Fresh from hiking the Appalachian Trail? Not exactly.

Instead Sanford was, as he finally confessed at a tear-soaked news conference, in Argentina visiting his mistress.

There must be a confessional flu bug spreading through the GOP that poor Governor Sanford caught. Just last week Nevada Senator John Ensign — another holier-than-thou Christian Republican — admitted he’d had an affair with a staffer who happened to be the wife of another staffer. Nothing like keeping it in the family.

Of course then there was hooker-loving Louisiana Senator David Vitter who is up for reelection in 2010. And don’t forget “wide-stance-in-the-stall” Idaho Senator Larry Craig whose Minneapolis airport bathroom fun ended his career. I could go on but you get the idea.

For Republicans the hits just keep coming. Just as public opinion polls show a slight softening of support for Barack Obama after six months of rock-star bullet-proof approval ratings, Republicans will again spend some time in the cross-hairs of the 24/7 cable news maw and late-night comedians. The GOP message has been pretty consistent, if not terribly effective, all year: The Dems are pouring your money down the drain. Sooner or later as the economy only slowly improved, that message was going to start working with some disillusioned independents. But now? Maybe it will be better in the fall.

The inherent problem for Republicans is that their brand is indelibly tied to Christian conservatism which is, at its root, a preachy, moralistic, high-handed form of politics that creates huge potential blowback problems if Republican politicians fail to practice what they preach. Democrats have never faced such a dilemma since they’re immoral. Kidding.

It reminds Get Real of numerous pieces of research that illuminate the essential hypocrisy of so much conservative moralizing. There’s the study showing that generally speaking, the more religious the state the more online pornography is downloaded. And a whole bunch of studies showing divorce rates highest in the Bible Belt and lowest in the Northeast. Or what about the one showing that religious girls are no less likely to get abortions (pay) than their less religious counterparts. Is it any wonder that it’s so often Republicans that seem to get caught up in these things?

While the GOP certainly can’t abandon its conservative religious supporters the party needs to figure out how to appeal to them without also having to pander to them. To expect that future Republican politicians will somehow be more truly righteous (and less self-righteous!) is ridiculous. Men will be men. Too often the little head takes control of the big head. It’s nature. For Republicans, admitting that would be a start.

Freedom v. Happiness?

I love reports. Especially reports with neat charts and cool maps. I’m a report geek. So imagine my glee when I came across a new report by two “scholars” who claim to have rigorously measured the level of freedom in each and every state. Whee!

The report, entitled Freedom in the 50 States, concludes that residents of New Hampshire, Colorado, and South Dakota are the freest (doesn’t that word look cool?) while the poor indentured servants of New York and New Jersey are the least free. Now before we go any further its worth noting that the authors here don’t even pretend that this is unbiased although they spend almost 11 pages describing in gory detail the statistical methods they used. Freedom in this report is essentially defined this way: How close does a state hew to libertarian principles?

So far so good. If “freedom” is measured by whether a state allows sobriety checkpoints (bad) or same-sex marriage (good), has a minimum wage law (bad), or regulates home-schooling (bad) then as long as that’s spelled out there’s nothing wrong with the rankings. And the authors do a very thorough job of discussing what variables they chose to measure and what weight they chose to give each one. When they go one step further and compare their “freedom” ranking with how Democratic or Republican a state is that’s fine too — if not surprising. Democratic states are less “free.”

This report is the product of the Mercatus Center, a libertarian think tank headquartered at George Mason University and best known for guiding the Bush Administration in killing environmental and business regulations. “Freedom” to the Mercatus Center apparently also means the Federal government should not restrict how many hours in a row truckers can drive or how much arsenic should be in the water we drink. So the report is nothing if not true to its sponsor’s mission of making American free for pure libertarian ideals.

What’s funny about all this is how the “worst” states as defined by Mercatus rank awfully well in some other ways that seem kind of important. Take the bottom five, “least free” states: New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, California, and Maryland. As the studies authors helpfully (and ruefully) note: “Unfortunately, these states make up a substantial portion of the total American population.” So Americans prefer to live in shackles? Yeah, right.

Gallup and the disease management company Healthways did their own survey of which states are the best to live in using an entirely different set of criteria focused on which residents are happiest – and the rankings offer a pretty interesting contrast to those from Mercatus.

Five of the ten “least free” states contain residents who are among the top 10 “happiest”:

Freedom Rank    State    Happiness Rank

        43                  MA               8
        44                  WA               7
        45                  HI                 2
        46                  MD               6
        47                  CA               9

And the “freest” states? Not all are so happy it turns out:

Freedom Rank    State    Happiness Rank

         3                   SD               39
         5                   TX               21
         6                   MO             44
         7                   TN               42
        10                  ND               28

So what can we conclude? That some people are unhappy with their freedom? Others are happy to be restricted? Hogwash.

There are all kinds of ways to measure whether a state is a good place for its residents or not and manipulative “researchers” can always find and massage data to make their points. The authors of the Mercatus study pretend their definition of freedom is definitive by making this truly ridiculous, and insulting, assertion:

If Americans generally prefer freedom as we have measured it, how did some states come to restrict freedom to such a degree? Perhaps the most regulated states on our index have been responding more to interest group pressures and politicians’ self-interest than to citizens’ most strongly held preferences.

Or perhaps your methodology is flawed because it is designed to produce a predictable outcome. That being said there are some sweet graphics in this baby….

A New England Congregational Church

Partisan political change tends to move glacially. The South was ruled by Democrats pretty much forever until Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and Richard Nixon discovered the “Southern Strategy.” Even then it took another 20 years for Republicans to make the South their center.

Likewise New England was rock-ribbed Republican from the Civil War until cracks began to show in the sixties. Only in the last decade has New Hampshire lost much of its GOP sheen and Maine still has two Republican Senators.

The turning point was the same — civil rights — but the signals that change was complete have come at different times and in different ways. From 1980 to 2009 seventeen Congressmen switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party. In those same 29 years just 2 Republicans went the other way. Most of the Democratic defectors were in the South — the Republican switchers were from Pennsylvania and New York. 

In the South 1996 marked the end for Democrats when a popular Southern President (Clinton) lost all the states of the Deep South other than his home (Arkansas) and Louisiana (which until Katrina, was a reliably “interesting” Presidential election state). The South became winnable almost exclusively only by candidates with conservative social — read religious — values. Statewide candidates who believed in abortion rights need not apply.

The end for Republicans in New England may be now as Maine’s Governor signed into law same-sex marriage Wednesday. That means all the states of New England save Rhode Island either allow same-sex marriage or have a bill on the governor’s desk (New Hampshire) to make it the law. In November New England lost it’s last Republican House member (Connecticut’s Chris Shays) and with Arlen Specter’s defection to the Dems notable conservative voices (Rush) called on two of the three Republican Senators from New England to join him (Maine’s Snowe and Collins). Seems like the GOP would prefer to be done with the birthplace of the nation.

It seems kind of funny that traditional New Englanders would be the ones to make same-sex marriage happen in a big way but it also makes a lot of sense. New England states have a long history of independence and a strong libertarian streak. That’s why they used to be Republicans because those used to be Republican values. New Hampshire’s license plates famously read “Live Free or Die”. So while there’s a lot of conservative tradition in those handsome towns with their pretty white-spired Congregational Churches, that tradition is the small ‘c’ conservatism that our country’s founders believed in and brought with them from England.

The irony is that same-sex marriage is nearing a tipping point just as those most opposed to it reach their nadir. Surely same-sex marriage will not be made legal in many states any time soon but in choosing the issue as one to run on (see: Iowa, see: Rudy Giuliani) conservatives are battling a demographic and regional tide. Polls in most New England states have shown a majority of residents support same-sex marriage (when not offered a third choice of civil unions) and national polls (even of self-identified evangelical Christians) show younger voters far more supportive of same-sex marriage than their elders.

Plain and simple — this is a bad issue for Republicans. And just as Barack Obama made a concerted effort to win votes in the South and try to begin reversing the Republican domination there (he won North Carolina and Virginia), Republicans need to figure out how to bring naturally conservative (small ‘c’) New England voters back into the fold. This may be bottom for the GOP in the region but banking on social issues like same-sex marriage to turn things around here could keep them sinking.

For now New England, once solidly red, is not only deep blue, but sort of pink too. Who’d a thunk it?

Pennsylvania

Is there an echo in Pennsylvania? You better you bet.

Republicans and especially hard-core conservatives are foaming at the mouth over the defection of Pennsylvania Republican Senator Arlen Specter, decrying him as another Benedict Arnold. One of the most fevered cries is that Specter put politics ahead of principle. Whether you believe that or not (if the principle Specter is upholding is to win then I guess he’s being principled…) it has brought the battle for the soul of the GOP to the forefront. And the front page of the New York Times.

The question, which to be fair has been central to the Republican conversation at least since Rudy Giuliani first started talking about running for President, is whether Republicans need to become more purely conservative or need to do a Reagan and open up the tent. For the Republicans in charge of the effort to reclaim some of the 15 Senate seats lost in the last two years, the answer is clear:

Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said he would seek to recruit candidates who he thought could win in Democratic or swing states, even if it meant supporting candidates who might disagree with his own conservative views.

Mr. Cornyn said he was taking a page from Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the last head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, who led his party to big gains by embracing candidates who, for example, opposed abortion rights or gun control.

“If you think about it, Schumer has been very good at this; I complimented him this morning in the gym,” Mr. Cornyn said, adding, “Some conservatives would rather lose than be seen as compromising on what they regard as inviolable principles.”

That is, of course, not how everyone sees it. Here was Rush Limbaugh’s take on Wednesday:

The Republican Party is moving left and that is why it is in trouble, and there is certainly a greater diversity of viewpoint in the Republican Party. For crying out loud, I guarantee you the Democrat (sic) Party would never, ever nominate their equivalent of John McCain. 

I guarantee you The Democrat (sic) Party would never, ever nominate somebody who rips, and has made his name by ripping and criticizing, his own party and his own presidents. That would never happen. Democrats throw those people out of the party or they bury them. We nominated a guy whose claim to fame is criticizing his own president and criticizing his own party, and they say we’re monolithic. The monolith is the Democrat (sic) Party. 

But as usual, Rush either has amnesia, is lying, or is simply entertaining his gullible audience. But he’s missing something crazy obvious. Rush is just like Kos (in one respect anyway). Really! Let me explain.

Democrats were once a pretty ideologically pure party while Republicans (under Nixon and the Reagan) made less of ideology and more of winning.

That changed a bit when Bill Clinton was elected but soon the party was in what seemed to be a downward spiral of alleged liberal thinking and hidebound candidates. After the drubbing in 2004, things changed. Howard Dean took over at the DNC pushing the 50-state strategy and embracing the netroots. And New York Senator Chuck Schumer (the hardest-working man in politics) took over the reigns at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Schumer lined up candidates he thought could win even if that meant pissing off the liberal version of the conservative blogosphere — the netroots.

In Ohio Schumer forced a progressive Iraq war vet out of the Senate race in 2006 to clear the way for a veteran Ohio politician named Sherrod Brown. That’s Senator Brown to you.

In North Carolina Schumer encouraged a progressive gay candidate to step aside (and was slammed by a blog named “down with Tyranny” — ring any bells, conservatives?) so that a woman named Kay Hagen could run against Libby Dole. That’s Senator Hagen to you.

And in Pennsylvania Schumer encouraged Bob Casey Jr. to run despite being anti-abortion rights. Liberals — especially women’s groups were enraged — but Casey won the primary against pro-choice candidates and wiped Republican Senator Rick Santorum from office.

Republicans should linger in Pennsylvania a bit longer because the echo there is even stronger: Casey’s pro-life father was refused a spot at the Democratic National Convention in 1992 when he wanted to speak about abortion. The tent wasn’t big enough for that. At the convention in Denver last year, his son got a prime speaking spot where he spoke about his disagreement with Obama (and much of the party) on abortion.

And the change didn’t only come from Schumer. The netroots actually fought for a few candidates that did not follow the pure Democratic line. Gun-toting Montana Senator Jon Tester was not the choice of the establishment but won his primary in 2006 thanks to support from liberal activists. 

So when “pure” conservatives say Specter’s defection is welcome because it cleanses the party, they ought to consider what the Democrats learned in Pennsylvania about ideology. There’s a reason there are only 40 Republican Senators right now and it’s not because they’re all too liberal.

Jack Bauer of 24

All of a sudden there is a debate over torture. A debate about whether or not torture might be okay to use in some cases. What’s stunning is not the arguments for and against but that there’s now an accepting underlying narrative. Conservative and liberal commentators who violently disagree about whether the U.S. should torture tacitly agree on one thing: Torture works.

Bullshit.

The relatively short list of those who argue that it has (Dick Cheney, Michael Hayden, Michael Mukasey) all offer either no proof (Cheney) or debunked claims (Hayden and Mukasey). And all are former Bush Administration officials who have every reason to defend their actions regarding torture.

(Note that Obama’s intelligence director Dennis Blair did not argue torture had worked where other methods had failed. He instead used torturous language to explain how he would defend the CIA and it’s personnel for prior use of torture.)

The list of those who deny torture works is very long, filled with officials from Republican and Democratic Administrations who cite specific instances where critical information was gotten from suspects using more modern methods than simply inflicting pain.

Can torture work? Of course. But will torture ever produce results that other techniques will not? There is no evidence offered to support that. None. Except for Jack Bauer.

24 is just a TV show but in presenting torture as something that works week after week, year after year, over 164 episodes and counting, 24 caused Americans to rethink torture. After all if it works then maybe there are times…. Just look at the NY Times/CBS News poll out today. As Greg Sargent points out, when CBS and the Times can’t bring themselves to call waterboarding torture while 71 percent of Americans can, it says something.

Well folks guess what? It’s fiction. 24 is fiction. Jack Bauer is fiction. Torture yielding civilization-saving information is fiction. Torture does not work. End of story.

24 Sucks and Torture Doesn’t Work from Jay DeDapper on Vimeo.

A City Slicker's 2nd Home

So it’s those city folks, huh? They’re the ones trying to steal this election from a good Republican. That’s the claim Republicans supporting Congressional candidate Jim Tedisco are making as the results of the first special election since Barack Obama became President enter their second week of counting.

As Jimmy Vielkind at Politicker and Leigh Hornbeck at Capitol Confidential report in their excellent posts about the verrrry slow hand counting of absentee ballots in Columbia County, Republicans are objecting to nearly every ballot sent to addresses in New York City arguing that these second home owner don’t have a right to vote in Columbia County since it is not the location of their primary residence.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a second home owner in Columbia County but am registered to vote in New York City and therefore did not participate in this particular election.

The GOP’s lead lawyer is James Walsh who told Vielkind: “We have research to indicate that many of these people who reside on the Upper West Side and in Florida and other areas live there primarily, and they are continuously requesting absentee ballots in Columbia County when they are not eligible to vote there.”

Get Real has sat through enough hand counts and recounts and court sessions featuring famous New York election lawyers to known that any argument is fair game in the war to keep votes from being counted. Democrats and Republicans play the game with equal relish and vigor.

The problem with Walsh’s argument is it’s total b*llshit. New York courts have ruled repeatedly and conclusively that second home owners can vote in the towns and counties in which those homes are located. In fact a ruling handed down last October cites much of the history (read it here — go to page 3 for the definitive section) and makes it clear that the votes in Columbia County should be — and certainly will eventually be counted.

Republicans are objecting because these city slickers are almost surely votes for Democrat Scott Murphy who leads Tedisco by 25 votes (out of about 156,000 cast) as of Monday afternoon. Last month Get Real identified this contingent of voters (along with new high-tech residents of several other counties in the district) as the key to determining whether a Democrat could win three elections in a row in New York’s most Republican Congressional district.

Indeed the county-by-county results so far (there are 10 counties represented in the 20th District) back up our original argument that the district has changed markedly and is far more independent and less Republican than many observers believe. That, coupled with the drawn-out vote-counting, means that whoever eventually is declared the winner will not (nor will his party) be able to successfully brag about this election holding larger meaning.

Tip O’Neill famously said all politics is local. In this case, so will be the election result in the 20th. Whenever they finish counting the ballots.