Chief Justice John Marshall: Not Enough "Experience"?

The one thing supporters and opponents of Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court should agree on is this: it’s about time we had some non-judges on the high court…again.

The history of the Supreme Court is one filled with brilliant (and some not-so-brilliant) members who had never been judges before being confirmed. That was once considered not only normal, but a good thing. The non-judges have been some of the most remarkable names in the Court’s long history: Marshall, Brandeis, Frankfurter, Rehnquist, Warren. Thirty-seven other justices were part of the “not-a-judge” club. They brought a different view from that forged by a career in robes and, whether you agreed with their reasoning on individual cases, you could not argue that their perspectives were valuable.

Some, like Alabama Senator Hugo Black, President William Taft, and California Governor Earl Warren brought the political experience of elected office. Their frame of reference was not a narrowly legalistic one but rather one that incorporated the give-and-take of the public will. Others, like Attorney General Harlan Stone, corporate attorney Lewis Powell, and NAACP chief counsel Thurgood Marshall saw the law in ways that were deeply informed by their varied careers.

This was once considered a benefit — the idea that the nine (men) would deliberate and debate using the experiences they brought to the Court was thought to be the essence of the uniquely powerful and independent American judiciairy. Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote:

The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience. The felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories, intuitions of public policy, avowed or unconscious, even the prejudices which judges share with their fellow-men, have had a good deal more to do than the syllogism in determining the rules by which men should be governed. The law embodies the story of a nation’s development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics. In order to know what it is, we must know what it has been, and what it tends to become.

Currently all nine members of the Court were not only circuit court judges but appellate court judges as well. They’re all steeped in the Federal judiciary, for better or worse. Amidst the predictable arguments from Kagan’s opponents — she’s a nutty liberal anti-military lesbian — her lack of judicial experience seems a pretty dumb thing to pick on. That didn’t stop the president of the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center Ed Whelan from going in whole hog:

Kagan may well have less experience relevant to the work of being a justice than any justice in the last five decades or more. In addition to zero judicial experience, she has only a few years of real-world legal experience. Further, notwithstanding all her years in academia, she has only a scant record of legal scholarship.

All of which is true…of Kagan and the late William Rehnquist. Rehnquist — arguably the first justice to vigorously push a newly-developoing hard-right legal philosophy into the Supreme Court’s deliberations — was a darling of conservatives. But his resume was as “thin” as Kagan’s and arguably more troubling if “real-world” experience is what you’re after.

Out of Stanford Law in 1952 Rehnquist clerked for Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson. It was there he wrote a controversial brief arguing that Plessy v Ferguson was “right and should be affirmed.” You may recall from 8th grade history that Plessy was the 1896 ruling in which the Court declared that racial segregation was perfectly constitutional under the theory that “separate but equal” accommodations were enough to satisfy the law. And that was pretty much that in terms of Rehnquist’s judicial legal experience.

He moved to Phoenix and was a private practice attorney who worked with the state’s Republican Party including Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. When Richard Nixon was elected he brought Rehnquist to Washington and installed him in the Attorney General’s office as essentially the AG’s legal counsel. Two years later Nixon placed him on the Court. While 26 Senators voted against him — including two Republicans — no one said he didn’t have enough judicial or legal experience.

The truth is Supreme Court nominations are now primarily political battles. Certainly Nixon faced something similar when his first two picks for the Court were rejected by the Senate but his next choice — Lewis Powell — was confirmed 89-1. That kind of vote wasn’t so rare all the way into the early 90s. As incredible as it seems now, uber-conservative Antonin Scalia was confirmed 98-0. Not one Democrat voted against the most provocatively conservative nominee in a generation. (OK Robert Bork was probably more provocative but still, 98-0???).

And so it should surprise no one that conservatives are bust trying to define the nominee just as they tried to do with Sonia Sotomayor and liberals did with Bork. The game is well known and it is on. The right is gonna have to do better than “she’s not been a judge” though. I’m betting they run with the gay thing. Let’s see how that works for them….

New York State Capitol

So the Albany soap opera has come to a close. Crystal and Alexis will live to catfight another day. Serena and Blair will return in the fall. And Malcolm and Pedro will assuredly be ready for more battles next session. In the meantime let’s figure out the winners and losers from the month of madness.

Losers

We’ll start with the losers because it’s easier.

Republicans

Already in a deep state of disarray and on the wrong end of the demographic pendulum, New York Republicans came thisclose to pulling off a miracle. The problem is they had to consort with a criminal (OK not a convicted criminal but still) to get there and surprise surprise he stabbed them in the back. The GOP gets no credit for trying to fix Albany and ends up with no more power than when this all started. Ouch.

Senate Democrats

It was clear when they won control last November that these guys (and gals) were waaaay out of their league. Having spent their entire careers in the minority where they had been paid to do virtually nothing (since they had no power and no real function), they ascended to the leadership without any idea how to run the place. Nothing that has happened in the last 30 days will convince anyone otherwise. Indeed now everyone knows what reporters and Albany insiders knew nine months ago.

Mike Bloomberg

This may not seem so obvious because Bloomberg kvetched about the problem plenty, echoing the sentiments of most New Yorkers. Nonetheless in having to fight for school control and the ability to raise taxes, Bloomberg was forced to draw attention to two things that may not help him much in his reelection effort. Then again he’s gonna spend $100 million bucks against a guy no one knows is even running.

Tom Golisano

Having first helped produce the Democratic win in November and then having prodded the deserting Dems into action, billionaire Floridian (nee Rochesterite) Tom Golisano has proven he can play the puppetmaster — he’s just not very good at it. Golisano wants reform but nothing he has precipitated is likely to produce lasting change. I would LOVE to stand corrected on this one.

New Yorkers

We made California look good. New Yorkers got the government they deserve. By reelecting their State Senators and Assembly members year after year New Yorkers have, like many Americans, cast aside their responsibility to elect officials who will work in the best interest of his or her constituents. Now no one can argue they don’t know what the result of this has been. New Yorkers got screwed to be sure, but honestly, don’t we deserve it?

Winners

David Paterson

The only winner here is, oddly, Governor David Paterson. Sure there will be arguments that Attorney General Andrew Cuomo will benefit in his quiet attempt to be the right Democrat for Governor in 2010 but where’s the evidence? His limited contribution was to declare that Paterson couldn’t appoint a Lieutenant Governor. Most New Yorkers will think that makes Cuomo part of the problem.

Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver might also be deemed a winner but he was already the most powerful guy in Albany before the chaos and he remains so today. And don’t talk to us about Pedro Espada. Yes he is now Majority Leader. No, it won’t keep him from being indicted.

The only person who gets any bump out of this is Paterson who made the right noises and, with his Lt. Governor move, will be perceived by the public to have created the spark that made this problem go away. That being said, winning in this case is a relative thing. Paterson had no where to go but up.

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.

Will Republicans Take the Bait?

Barack Obama may be, above all else, a savvier politician than even Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton. Why? With his nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court Obama has set a defining trap for Republicans: If they take the bait they will dig themselves deeper into the pit of electoral despair that will take a generation to climb out of.

There are two fundamental things to remember about America and voting: Women vote in bigger percentages than men (plus there are more of them to begin with) and Hispanics are well on their way to becoming the dominant “minority” in the U.S.

In last year’s Presidential election women made up 53% of the vote although they represent just shy of 51% of the population (and 51.6% of the voting age population). Women have traditionally voted more Democratic than men and have favored the Dem Presidential candidate in every election since 1988. That’s twenty years and the trend is not good for the GOP. Obama won the biggest share of women since Reagan crushed Walter Mondale in 1984.

In choosing Sotomayor, Obama is acknowledging both the historic gender imbalance on the Supreme Court (110 members, 108 men) and the smart political play of appointing a woman. Remember who appointed the first woman to the Supreme Court — Reagan, who as we just noted, was the last Republican Presidential candidate to get a huge share of the women’s vote.

If Republicans attack Sotomayor for being “intellectually shallow” or a “bully” they will likely trigger the kind of reaction among women that will hardly help their cause. How often do women hear they aren’t as smart as the guys? How often to we hear about the shrill woman who has to get her way? These are dangerous waters for a party that is already decidedly male in the ranks of both its electeds and voters. Even if these arguments don’t get a full workout, count of the Democratic political team to make sure the media believes Republicans are making these kinds of challenges the center of their opposition to Sotomayor.

The other bait in the trap is even more alluring and dangerous for the GOP. In 1988 Hispanics made up just 3% of those voting for President. By 2000 the number had jumped to 7%. Last year it was 9%. Still not a huge number and not yet the second-largest racial voting group after whites (blacks were 13% in 2008) but growing fast. What’s much more critical about the Hispanic vote is where it is growing. In states like California, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, and Texas the Hispanic population is growing so rapidly that it is impossible not to count those states trending Democratic over the next decades if the GOP doesn’t figure out how to win over more Hispanics.

This is not a new issue for Republicans. When then-California Governor Pete Wilson blamed the state’s problems on immigrants (later clarifying he meant illegal immigrants but the damage was done) the party was banished to a generational oblivion in the Golden State. Republicans managed to win the Governor’s office back in this decade but only with a “Bloomberg Republican” named Arnold Schwarzenegger. The rest of the state’s party has been pretty moribund since the Wilson fiasco.

George W. Bush recognized this and campaigned hard in 2000 for the Hispanic vote, pushing his party to see the demographic reality. Bush then stuck his neck out on immigration reform in his second term and got it promptly chopped off by his own party.

Of course that hasn’t stopped some conservatives from denying the obvious but the specter of Republicans hammering Sotomayor on immigration or racial decisions must bring big smiles to the Obama White House. Fox News was off to a fast start highlighting a Sotomayor ruling in the case of white firefighters in New Haven suing for reverse-discrimination just minutes after the President’s Sotomayor news conference ended.

Perhaps the biggest problem for Republicans is that they have so few (any?) credible, prominent women or Latinas to make their case against Sotomayor no matter what ammo they decide to use on her. There are only three female Republican Senators and two voted for Sotomayor when she was elevated to the Appellate Court by Bill Clinton in 1998. Both are also among the last remaining moderates in the shrinking GOP caucus. Don’t expect (Ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee) Jeff Sessions to convince Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins to be the spokeswoman for the “Republicans Against Sotomayor” campaign. As for big-name Republican Latinas, forget it.

Indeed the biggest voice against Sotomayor so far is (surprise surprise!) Rush Limbaugh who said on the radio after the announcement that he hoped she “fails.” That sounds familiar doesn’t it? If Rush is the Republican spokesman on this those White House smiles will get even bigger.

So the trap is baited and set. Will Republicans bite? Obama certainly hopes so.

Is the GOP Dead? (Threedonia.com)

Conservatives like small. Small government. Small states. Small taxes. And apparently a small political party to call their own. How else to explain the rapid desire to purge the fast-shrinking Republican Party of anyone who dares to suggest small is NOT better for a political party?

The latest example comes from Bobby Eberle who runs the website GOPUSA and it concerns George W. Bush’s first Secretary of State, Republican Colin Powell.

In a recent speech, Powell took swipes at Rush Limbaugh, Gov. Sarah Palin, and made his usual claims that the Republican Party has moved too far to the right. Give Powell credit, when he sees an opportunity to be opportunistic, he seizes it. The problem is that he is completely off track and would be much better suited joining Arlen Specter and the Democrats.

Eberle joins Rush Limbaugh and plenty of others from the conservative opinion whirlpool in calling for the ouster of any Republican who advocates tinkering with the party’s message to make it even the tiniest bit more moderate. Limbaugh famously said Arlen Specter should take “McCain and his daughter” with him when he left the GOP and the bright red blogosphere has been filled with angry calls for other Republican moderates like Maine’s Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins to leave the party too. (Here’s one really amazing thread.)

The argument goes like this: Since we’re already in deep doo-doo (having lost the White House, 15 Senate seats, and 51 House seats in four years) we might as well go all in. Purge all the moderate and liberal elements and refocus on a hard-core conservative message — low taxes, little government, religious social values on gays and abortion, no gun restrictions, big military. Get back, as Rush loves to preach, to Reagan. Limbaugh is first among many in arguing that Reagan was the last true conservative in the White House and he got there because he was a true conservative. Those now advocating turning away from Reagan, he says, don’t want to win.

When they look at the past and see landslide Presidential victories and don’t want to do it again that’s not a refutation of Reagan that’s not saying, “screw Reagan” that’s saying, “We don’t want those issues, we don’t want to win with those issues.”

Which is precisely the opposite of the truth. Reagan won in spite of his conservative politics because he did what any effective candidate does: He reframed his views to fit voters’ desires. He was, remember, the Great Communicator. And even if you don’t buy that the notion there’s this little gem of a fact conservatives like Rush are ignoring — it’s not 1980. America has changed. Here’s more of Rush:

I’ve been hearing we can’t win without the black vote — been hearing that all my life…. We can’t win without the women’s vote. and we’ve won without majorities of both. Now there’s a new one — we can’t win without the Hispanic vote.

Republicans have done best with white male voters for decades. It has been the real base of the party. In 1980 88% of those voting were white and 52% were men. In 2008 74% of the electorate was white and 47% was male. And those pesky Hispanics? Just two percent in 1980, 9% last year. But still Rush is not convinced that conservatives need to change. He insists issues like abortion are moving in the right direction.

The demographics have changed? Abortion is moving more and more in the pro-life favor in every public poll that’s taken.

Alas this is also simply not true. In poll after poll the abortion issue has changed very little since Roe v. Wade made it legal. For instance when Gallup asked about abortion in 1975, the results were not much different from when the pollsters asked the same questions in 1980 (when Reagan was elected), 1990 (when Bush was President), 2000 (when Clinton was ending his term), and 2008.

Always Legal           Sometimes Legal         Never Legal

1975                     21                                 54                             22
1980                     25                                 53                             18
1990                     31                                 53                             12
2000                     28                                 51                             19
2008                     28                                 54                             17

Source: Gallup Poll

The fact is Rush and the other conservatives-in-denial refuse to acknowledge what is demonstrably true from what they wish reality was. For the GOP, November’s election was a traumatic event — like a death in the family. There are 5 stages of recovery from such an event and some conservatives have a way to go before they run the list.

The 5 Stages of Grief
1. Denial
2. Guilt
3. Anger
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

On this scale Rush seems to be at about stage 3 (being temperamentally incapable of working through stage 2) while the Republican group out on its listening tour (Romney, McCain, Jeb Bush, etc) actually appear to be at stage 5. When more Republicans accept the reality that the electorate is not what it was in 1980 and that social values issues never have resonance in tough economic times they will be on the path towards reconstruction. That’s why Democrats have been so eager to keep Rush talking. He’s doing their work for them.

Still, sooner or later enough conservatives will get tired of losing. Democrats would be foolish to get complacent.

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.

Who Me?

It’s a recurring theme of Get Real but only because Republicans keep doing things that prove the point. The Pity Party seems absolutely bent on self-destruction by following all the old rules for the old game that they can’t stop playing.

Take John Boehner, leader of the House Republican minority. Sunday George Stephanopoulos had him on to talk about the Republican alternatives to Barack Obama’s proposals including on global warming:

…the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you’ve got more carbon dioxide.

There he goes again. Boehner, like so many other Republicans wishing Ronald Reagan could be brought back to life (and the White House), still thinks like this is an era when politicians can get away with saying trees cause air pollution. And ketchup is a vegetable.

Actually Boehner’s scientific analysis of cow farts wasn’t the funniest part of his interview. After trying, to no avail, to get Boehner to say anything about a Republican energy plan, Stephanopoulos threw out one last question to wrap up the segment:

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you are committed to coming up with a plan?

BOEHNER: I think you’ll see a plan from us. Just like you’ve seen a plan from us on the stimulus bill and a better plan on the budget.

And we know how much voters liked those plans.

The GOP is living in some kind of wonderland where conservatives believe the same ideas that lost them the last two elections will somehow work now. They voted unanimously against Obama’s budget and stimulus bills (actually 3 GOP Senators voted for the stimulus but have been vilified by their rank-and-file for doing so). They lined up behind Rush Limbaugh’s old-timey ranting like soldiers on review. And those tea parties.

Fox News showed it’s true colors with it’s slavish coverage of the tea parties it helped sponsor last week. But almost everyone else treated it like a joke. Or worse — like a big gathering of your crazy uncle and his friends. These coast-to-coast gatherings were in many cases the wing-nut conservatives’ version of a wing-nut liberal conference on impeaching then-President Bush. Wackos to the left of me, wackos to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle…. 

The problem for Republicans is many of the people who showed don’t represent a majority and seem far more likely to vote for Ron Paul than a mainstream GOP candidate.  Tying the Republican brand to a fringe anti-tax message is probably not the way Madison Avenue would have gone about it but what the heck? Nothing else it working.

Actually that message seems to finally be seeping through the cracks in the Republicans coalition. As Get Real has repeatedly pointed out, Republicans are losing everyone but their aging, male, white, Southern base and hence, any chance at winning elections. The majority of voters now do not remember socialism. Do not have the visceral reaction to the term ‘facism’ (which has been stripped of all meaning lately). Do not buy into the tax-cuts-at-all-costs ideal. Are not impressed with the tried-and-true Republican talking points they have heard their entire lives.

Meagan McCain, John’s daughter, is getting the most play in this, mainly from liberal bloggers who love her in the same way conservatives loved Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman — as apparent apostates. Saturday she spoke at the Log Cabin Republican National Convention (insert joke here about oxymorons) and laid it on pretty thick after mentioning that she had gone after Ann Coulter in column and paid the price:

People in our country have much more important issues to deal with on a daily basis. But the experience did reinforce what I learned on the campaign trail in some major ways.

I’ll summarize them in three points:

1. Most of our nation wants our nation to succeed.
2. Most people are ready to move on to the future, not live in the past.
3. Most of the old school Republicans are scared shitless of that future.

McCain went on:

I feel too many Republicans want to cling to past successes. There are those who think we can win the White House and Congress back by being “more” conservative. Worse, there are those who think we can win by changing nothing at all about what our party has become. They just want to wait for the other side to be perceived as worse than us. I think we’re seeing a war brewing in the Republican party, but it is not between us and Democrats. It is not between us and liberals. It is between the future and the past. I believe most people are ready to move on to that future.

Her most damning line followed shortly thereafter:

Simply embracing technology isn’t going to fix our problem either. Republicans using Twitter and Facebook isn’t going to miraculously make people think we’re cool again. Breaking free from obsolete positions and providing real solutions that don’t divide our nation further will. That’s why some in our party are scared. They sense the world around them is changing and they are unable to take the risk to jump free of what’s keeping our party down.

Republicans ought to be listening to people like Megan McCain. Sure she’s not as popular as Rush or Sean or the certifiable Glenn Beck but that begs the question: Are the people those blowhards are popular with the solution to what ills Republicans or are they the disease?

Youth isn’t the answer to everything and experience counts for a lot. But we’re not talking about kids when we say thata good size majority of American voters don’t much like Republican positions on so many issues. McCain and other (older) Republicans recognize the problem but the party’s Stalinist-style loyalty demands will keep them marginalized until someone new and fresh can begin to draw moderates, suburbanites, and immigrants back into the GOP.

It will happen. But in whose generation?

Ahoy There!

There a few things more certain in life than this: Hyper-partisans (left and right) will twist everything and anything to fit their worldview. Today’s case in point comes courtesy of Red State and a contributor who speculates that the Somali pirates who have attacked and apparently captured an American-flagged cargo vessel did so because they know Barack Obama is a wuss.

While the author is correct no U.S. flagged vessel has been successfully attacked by pirates to this point it’s worth noting how few American-flagged vessels there are any more. The number of major cargo ships flagged (registered) in the U.S. is fewer than 200 because it is so much more expensive for shipping companies to register in the U.S. than in countries like Panama and Liberia which have low costs (and large fleets as a result — check page 36 of this report if you’re really really interested).

It’s also worth noting American-flagged and owned vessels have been attacked since piracy took off in 2005 during the time when the presumably frighteningly-tough-as-nails President George W. Bush was in the White House including two U.S. Navy ships, two large passenger cruise liners, and two large bulk cargo ships. Perhaps the best reason to question the author’s premise was Saturday’s attack on an Israeli cargo ship.

If these guys will attack an Israeli ship they’ve either never heard of the Raid on Entebbe or they’ll go after any ship they see. I’d bet on the latter.

The Magic 30 Percent

Speaking of that wuss of a President, the evidence is now awfully solid that the Republican game plan (the Party of No) has accomplished one thing: It has built and maintained Obama’s disapproval ratings…at 30%.

A new Marist Poll out right now (check out their new website too) gives Obama an approval rating of 56% with 30% saying they disapprove of the job he’s doing. Those numbers are in line with a series of other polls in the last month even if the approval number is on the lower end of the range. And while some might argue the bloom is off the rose, a quick look at Real Clear Politics’s or the Polling Report’s running averages of all polls proves the point.

Both averages put Obama’s approval rating at a steady 60%+ since January while his disapproval rate has gone from the teens to around 30% where it plateaued in mid-February. That should concern the GOP since Obama only got 53% of the vote in November to John McCain’s 46%. That means 16 percentage points worth of McCain voters still don’t buy the GOP’s opposing message (and most don’t buy Obama either).

The worst news for Republicans is in these numbers from the Gallup Poll:

Since his Inauguration Obama’s support among Democrats and independents has stayed roughly the same. Only Republicans have become more dissatisfied. With self-identifying Republicans dropping to levels rivalling post-Watergate, the GOP clearly needs a new plan. Unless they really enjoy being in the minority.

Number Crunchers Rejoice!

Bucolic Columbia County

If you can’t wait for the actual votes to get counted in the special election upstate to replace Kirsten Gillibrand in the House, Nate over at 538 has some analysis that indicates Democrat Scott Murphy could end up winning this most-Republican-district-in-New-York. What’s interesting is where the most absentee ballots are coming from: Columbia County, which we explained several times could prove pivotal because of all the second-home NYC residents who vote up there (where their votes obviously count far more because there are actually two parties in Columbia County).

Republican Jim Tedisco has been making the rounds to conservative radio shows and columnists making noises about Democratic intimidation of local election boards but as a weekend resident in the district (who does NOT vote there) I can tell you that any intimidation would probably be by the election board members. These are hardy peeps in the 20th who are unlikely to take any crap or suggestions from anybody. Further the notion that the state Board of Elections would be denying military ballots in order to favor a Democrat is equally absurd.

Remember this: Tedisco is being represented in any court action by former Republican Congressman James Walsh. Walsh is one of the four members of the State Board of Elections. So give it rest guys.

We should know who gets the distinct privilege of representing me (on weekends) in a week — or sooner.

The GOP's Platform

Nope. No way. Not gonna vote for it. Not gonna support it. Not gonna do it. Republicans are not gonna play ball with any Democratic bill, initiative, thought, proposal. House Dems could propose a resolution that “America is great” and Republicans would all vote “No” instead proposing a resolution stating “America is the greatest.”

That’s how Washington is working these days and it’s driving even some Republicans to warn the party is becoming the House of No to it’s own detriment.

Newt Gingrich told a group of Missouri college students that Republicans might be challenged by a third party of angry conservatives if they don’t figure out how to become both more fiscally conservative (remember that Bush and his GOP friends passed one budget after the next that spent far more than the government took in and even ditched the “pay as you go” rule Congress put into place a decade earlier) and more idea-oriented.

Gingrich railed on the GOP for becoming the Party of No in a cover piece last month in the New York Times magazine:

Most Republicans are not entrepreneurial. They’re corporatists. They like the security and the comfort of a well-thought-out, highly boring boardroom meeting in which they do a PowerPoint once. And it worries them to have ideas, because ideas have edges, and they’re not totally formed, and you’ve got to prove them, and they sound strange because they’re new, and if it’s new how do you know it’s any good, because, after all, it’s new and you’ve never heard it before.

So this week one of Gingrich’s acolytes, Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan, wrote up a GOP alternative to Barack Obama’s budget. Sure enough Republicans held the line on the Obama plan — not a single Republican in either the House or Senate voted for Obama’s budget. Not one. (Their votes weren’t needed so it passed easily.)

It got better for the GOP after 20 Dems voted against their own President’s budget in the House. But party unity failed miserably when 38 Republicans voted “No” on Ryan’s alternative budget. That’s a much larger percentage of the GOP House delegation than the percentage of Democratic “No” votes on the Obama budget. So despite their best efforts, the GOP comes away again as the Party of No.

The problem for Republicans is that they really aren’t talking about any truly new ideas — or even ideas that the American voter might think of as being worth a try since the few ideas the GOP is pushing are eerily reminiscent of those promulgated by George W. Bush. That’s not the kind of linkage that helps.

A quick peak at the always-useful Real Clear Politics average of polls shows that Obama’s approval rating has stayed roughly the same for the past month at about 60%. Voters opinion of Republicans, on the other hand, has continued to sink (although there are far fewer polls asking this question so the trend is tougher to say exists with certainty) and hovers somewhere around 30%.

So despite warnings about, and even actions to stop being perceived as the Party of No, Republicans now own the label. The conservative blogs have been filled with passionate posts coming from all sides alternately lashing out at Democrats and perceived media favoritism and bemoaning the lack of party unity around anything other than “No”.

But the bottom line remains the same: Being perceived as against everything and for nothing is a losing strategy. Here’s an interesting read from Fox News about that very premise…from 2005…concerning Democrats.