A Summing Up

November 20, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Presidents, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

Robert Novak suspended his column last summer when he learned he had a brain tumor.  The long-time Washington observer and uber-reporter arrived in the capital in the latter years of the Eisenhower administration.

In this month’s Washingtonian magazine, he talks at length with Barbara Matusow for her “What I’ve Learned” column.

“The Prince of Darkness” —a persona he calculated and a reputation he cultivated— has lost none of his power to provoke.  I couldn’t agree more with his assessment of President Bush; I couldn’t disagree more with his dismissal of RN.  The whole wide-ranging piece is recommended reading.

You’ve had a chance to look back on your life and think about what you’ve done that was good and what was bad. What stands out?

Looking back, I tried to find out what the politicians were up to, which is a difficult job. I find that politicians as a class are up to no good. Sometimes they accidentally do the right thing. When I started out, I didn’t have any agenda or tablet of principles at all. But in the course of writing about things and getting exclusive information, I might have helped certain causes. I might have helped the tax-cutting cause, which I’m very much in favor of. That takes away from my mantra that I’m just a simple reporter reporting the facts, doesn’t it?

When we started the column, Rowly [Rowland Evans was Novak's writing partner in their political report and influential syndicated column from 1967 until his death in 2001] and I were neutral on abortion, maybe leaning toward pro-choice. I began to read, think about it, and by the time I embraced Catholicism, I was adamantly against abortion. I’m happy that I moved in that direction.

Rowly once gave me a very elegant description of what it was we were doing. He said we were trying to intercept the lines of communication. Looking back on my life, I regret I was so determined to do that. I ended up writing a lot of political trivia, which really made my reputation. I think when people stop me now and say they miss my column, what they’re talking about is the behind-the-scenes trivia—the kind of thing that made me acceptable to people who disagreed with me. But I think I would have been better off to write about tax cuts and abortion and less about inside politics.

Only those issues or others?

I was very negative about the invasion of Iraq. That’s another subject I should have written more about, explained more. I thought the war was unjustified. But my stand led to a Novak-hates-his-country piece in the National Review, which caused me a lot of grief and cut me off at the White House. I should have explained more about why I took the position I did. I probably should have written more about foreign policy in general. If I told you I accomplished some huge feat, it wouldn’t be true. But I’m not ashamed of what I’ve written. I stand by it.

 

 

GOP Salivating in AZ

November 20, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under American Politics, Obama administration, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

As a budget crisis looms in Arizona, Gov. Janet Napolitano’s likely acceptance of the DHS job might just be her way of getting out of dodge. Jim Geraghty reports that this will help the Republican down ticket with incumbent advantage in 2010:

The Democrats have lost their best candidate in Arizona. Napolitano was a canny politician who knew how to outflank the GOP. I think going to Washington and taking up Homeland security will not be a boon to her future political career. Several Republicans were lining up to run for governor in 2010. With Jan Brewer as an incumbent, they may modify their plans.

The top of the Arizona GOP ticket in 2010 (Brewer and McCain) should help down ticket.

This is also a positive development for Sen. John McCain, who won’t have to face the popular Governor for re-election in 2010.

58 And Counting

November 18, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Congress, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Obama administration, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

From Alaska tonight comes word that with all but a handful of ballots counted Mark Begich appears to have defeated Sen. Ted Stevens by less than a percentage point.  Thus ends Stevens’ 40 years in the Senate, the longest period served by a Republican, which saw him usually re-elected by large majorities but concluded with his felony conviction and the threat of expulsion from the chamber (now a moot point, it would seem).

And so the Democrats, counting independent Sens. Bernie Sanders and Joe Lieberman (who was today reprimanded, after a fashion, for campaigning with Sen. John McCain, but kept his committee chairmanship), have 58 votes.  Two remain to achieve a filibuster-proof majority and bring about the rebirth of the Great Society, the New Deal redux, or at least a second wind for the New Frontier.  (And if the Dems come up one short, is anyone up for the return of the New Foundation? For an explanation Google “Jimmy Carter,” “1979,” and “State Of The Union.”)

In Minnesota, the minions of Al Franken, somewhere between St. Cloud and Hibbing, perhaps carefully cradle the box numbered 13, which contains several hundred ballots cast by Mia L. Frankin,  M. E. Alfranken,  etc, as well as the dreaded deleted scenes from Stuart Saves His Family. In Georgia, during the next few weeks until Saxbe Chambliss faces a runoff vote, we’ll see an avalanche of ads and a lot of crossed fingers as Democratic bigwigs from Macon to Athens, and up in Washington, hope that GOP voters are just too exhausted and dispirited to show up at the polls.

And, meanwhile, the question lingers: will Sen. Hillary Clinton go to Foggy Bottom or stay put? Today came some vague reports that the junior senator from New York might decline the chance.  I’m inclined to think she’ll remain where she is.  William Jennings Bryan comes to mind.  It was unlikely that the “Boy Orator of the Platte” would be renominated after he lost his third presidential run in 1908, but when Woodrow Wilson made him Secretary of State in 1913, it was a signal that at the age of 53 he had risen to the status of Statesman and left the cares and travails of electoral politics behind.  I doubt Hillary wants to run a similar risk.

Developing/Eroding a Message

November 17, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

Just as Ronald Reagan didn’t develop the popular conservative message of the 1980’s, it didn’t erode with the nomination of Sen. John McCain. It was a gradual undoing:

Unfortunately, after taking power, Republicans began walking away from their story. It is, after all, very difficult to be the anti-state party if you are the state. Republicans were captured by government, the exigencies of power, and the incentive to maintain it. In the years since 1980, Democrats cast about for a motivating purpose — a story that would carry them back to a long-term governing majority. They tried liberalism, moderation, and triangulation.

Now, they’re back. But the Left did not retake the executive and legislative branches by being more liberal or more moderate, or by clever political jujitsu. Democrats became the majority because they changed the story.

Complete Republican dominance of the executive and legislative branches gave the Left the incentive to pursue new strategies — to develop new infrastructure, new communications channels, and organizing methods. The Left moved messaging, mobilization, and money outside the traditional Democratic establishment, giving their movement new power and new energy.

Put THIS On A Bumper Sticker

November 17, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Bush Administration, Economic issues, Political Philosophy, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

Bill Kristol says the election loss wasn’t McCain-Palin’s fault. It was President Bush’s, if only because he was in office when the economy imploded. Kristol’s blueprint for GOP future, worthy though it may be, doesn’t exactly make your heart beat faster:

I don’t pretend to know just what has to be done. But I suspect that free-marketers need to be less doctrinaire and less simple-mindedly utility-maximizing, and that they should depend less on abstract econometric models. I think they’ll have to take much more seriously the task of thinking through what are the right rules of the road for both the private and public sectors. They’ll have to figure out what institutional barriers and what monetary, fiscal and legal guardrails are needed for the accountability, transparency and responsibility that allow free markets to work.

Centrobama May Eat Neoreagan’s Lunch

November 16, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Barack Obama, Obama administration, Political Philosophy, Republican Party, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Republicans hoping Barack Obama is the new Carter, self-righteous and ideological, should be profoundly discouraged by this evening’s interview by Steve Croft on “60 Minutes.” While Croft did his best to drive a wedge between Obama and President Bush and especially Treasury chief Henry Paulson, Obama didn’t bite. His answers were measured and responsible. He put a little distance between himself and Bush, but not too much. Those who argued he was no good without a TelePrompTer need a new script.

Not a pompous or harshly partisan note did Obama sound, with one exception. As he grapples with the intricate legal and national security challenge of what to do with the Guantanamo detainees if he keeps his promise to close the camp down, he may rue having promised to restore “America’s moral stature.” For protecting our country from enemy attack for over seven years, President Bush will stand taller in history than polls show. Obama will soon learn that being commander-in-chief is hard and sometimes thankless work.

Obama says he’s reading about FDR and Lincoln, saying that the G.E.’s modesty and “team of rivals” approach appeal to him (hence the vaguest of hints that Sen. Clinton will be leaving the Senate). Nonetheless, he said, “we’ve got to come up with solutions that are true to our time.” He made equivalent nods to free-market and government stimulus, big-deficit solutions as well as to Dwight D. Eisenhower’s greatness. (Catch that, David? We knew that you would.) As for Michelle, she undoubtedly charmed millions of viewers with her gracious praise for Laura Bush and her easy, teasing banter with her husband.

It took Dick Morris and disastrous Democratic losses in 1994 to teach Bill Clinton that he could dominate the political scene by standing athwart the great American center. Obama sounds as if he’s there now. If tonight’s interview is any indication, the GOP, to contend, will need a new Nixon (or, if you prefer, Eisenhower), not a new Reagan.

The Failure Caucus

November 15, 2008 by Joshua Trevino | Filed Under Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

The weekend brings us this Washington Post essay from Christine Todd Whitman and Robert Bostock, in which they argue that “the primary reason John McCain lost was the substantial erosion of support from self-identified moderates compared with four years ago.” The reason that “moderate” support eroded, according to them, because the Republican Party is in “self-imposed captivity to social fundamentalists.” That “captivity” drove the disastrous selection of Sarah Palin, alienated the “moderates,” and delivered the Presidency to Barack Obama.

This argument deserves note, not only on its factual merits, but because of the policy aims it advances. The former are less compelling than Whitman and Bostock believe. They correctly note that “values voters” — on whom more shortly — “made up a larger proportion of the electorate this year than in 2004 — 26 percent, up from 23 percent,” and that these votes went overwhelmingly to the Republican ticket. They also correctly note that the Democratic advantage in self-identified moderates expanded from 2004’s 9-point spread to this year’s 21-point spread. Yet their leap from these observations to their conclusion — that the deepening “value voter” and “social fundamentalist” attachment to the GOP causes, or is symptomatic of the cause of, the moderate aversion to the GOP — is wholly unsupported. (As an aside, it’s unclear what data set the authors refer to: but the CNN polls, which I will use here, yield similar results.) Furthermore, at least one element of their conclusion is directly contradicted, rather than merely unsupported, by the facts: available data indicates that a majority of voters who considered Sarah Palin a major factor in their vote voted for the Republican ticket.

This is the long and the short of the Whitman/Bostock argument. It masquerades as a serious analysis of a serious problem, but examination of the facts reveals it instead a reflexive prejudice that would, if acted upon, end the Republican Party and the conservative movement as a viable force in public life. The fact is that the self-reported ideological breakdown of the American voting public, as discerned by the aforementioned CNN polling, is 34% conservative, 44% moderate, and 22% liberal. Ignore that Whitman and Bostock don’t support their argument, and ignore that a major part of that argument is negated by the data: these numbers alone put the lie to their contention. No single segment is commands a majority, and the weakest of them is the liberal. It therefore makes the most sense, from a purely electoral perspective, to lean right — and that won’t happen without the “values voters” and “social fundamentalists” whom Whitman and Bostock denounce. Consider, too, that roughly 22% of conservatives deserted the GOP ticket in this cycle — and that had McCain cut that defection rate to just under 10% (roughly what Obama suffered from liberals), he would have won a national popular majority.

But, Whitman and Bostock might say, those defectors were people like us: Republican “moderates” opposed to “values voters” and “social fundamentalists”! Wrong again. The conservative defectors to Barack Obama were of all stripes — and the “values voters” and “social fundamentalist” demographic segments actually outstripped the rate of defection of conservatives at large. Whereas 22% of conservatives deserted the GOP, 26% of white Protestant born-agains and evangelicals did, and 32% of voters explicitly concerned about “values” did. All told, the numbers more readily demand a Republican shift toward “social fundamentalism” than away from it. Tellingly, Whitman and Bostock neglect the most compelling numbers of all: the decisive victories of popular referenda defending traditional marriage in Florida, Arkansas, Arizona and California. That’s two McCain states and two Obama states — and one of the latter is among the nation’s most liberal. Social conservatism alone is no panacea for the Republican Party’s ills, but it has the virtue of winning, and without it, what remains is mere administrative technocracy.

It is on this last point that we must move from criticizing this essay to understanding its implications. The policy vehicle for Whitman, Bostock, and company is the misnamed Republican Leadership Council, which appears dedicated to stripping the Republicans of any hope of leadership for the foreseeable future. (Notably, the RLC appropriates its name from the DLC, which attempted to wrest its party from its own ideological roots, and now finds itself well outside the incoming Obama power structure.) The RLC claims that it is “[i]nspired by a drive to get back to the fundamentals of the Republican Party … [and] the historic Republican principles of liberty, individual responsibility, and personal freedom”; and it asserts it “is NOT defined by one issue.” Both claims are false. The “one issue” that animates the RLC is an indifference or antipathy toward the protection of the unborn; and “the historic Republican principles” that created the party militated against this indifference and antipathy. Republicanism, properly understood, coalesced in the 1850s as a political movement affirming an expansive definition of humanity in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence; and in its best form, it continues to make that argument today. I’ve written before on how the politics of slavery and abortion display distressing parallels, and in this light, to abdicate now where our party forefathers did not would reduce Republicanism to a mere collection of power holders, banded together for their own perpetuation and no higher cause. Christine Todd Whitman and Robert Bostock do not merely fail on their own terms, though they do: they and the RLC fail on the most basic moral tenet of their own party’s existence.

Finally: why do we care about the RLC? Because one of its founders, Maryland’s Michael Steele, is a contender for the leadership of the RNC. Steele is a good man with many good qualities. And so long as he advances the RLC line, he must be stopped.

Joltin’ Newt

November 14, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

Republicans want a surge commander:

But some Republicans are touting someone with an even bigger media profile — former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. “The Republican National Committee has to ask itself if it wants someone who has successfully led a revolution,” Randy Evans, Mr. Gingrich’s personal attorney, told the Washington Times this week. “If it does, Newt’s the one.”

While it sounds implausible, many Republicans think a return of Mr. Gingrich to the national stage would be the jolt of energy the party needs. They point out that many were also skeptical that Howard Dean could sublimate his ego enough to become a successful party leader — a worry clearly now proven wrong in Mr. Dean’s case.

The GOP’s Captivity To Social Fundamentalists

November 14, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Political Philosophy, Republican Party, Sarah Palin | Leave a Comment 

Leading GOP moderate Christine Todd Whitman, writing in the Washington Post with Bob Bostock:

Palin has many attractive qualities as a candidate. Being prepared to become president at a moment’s notice was not obviously among them this year. Her selection cost the ticket support among those moderate voters who saw it as a cynical sop to social fundamentalists, reinforcing the impression that they control the party, with the party’s consent.

In the wake of the Democrats’ landslide victory, and despite all evidence to the contrary, many in the GOP are arguing that John McCain was defeated because the social fundamentalists wouldn’t support him. They seem to be suffering from a political strain of Stockholm syndrome. They are identifying with the interests of their political captors and ignoring the views of the larger electorate. This has cost the Republican Party the votes of millions of people who don’t find a willingness to acquiesce to hostage-takers a positive trait in potential leaders.

Unless the Republican Party ends its self-imposed captivity to social fundamentalists, it will spend a long time in the political wilderness. On Nov. 4, the American people very clearly rejected the politics of demonization and division. It’s long past time for the GOP to do the same.

The Republican Wilderness: Four Years - or Forty?

November 13, 2008 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Culture, Election 2008, Election 2012, History, Political Philosophy, Republican Party, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

The Grand Old Party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, & Ronald Reagan, has entered the proverbial wilderness. It moves from the box seats to the cheap seats, or better - to mix the metaphor a bit – the backbenches.

How Republicans handle this exile, and just how long the era lasts, will depend largely on what is done with and in the wilderness.

The idea of a wilderness period as a picture of exile is actually much older than American politics, or even anything from our ancestors across the pond. It is a concept dating back to Biblical history and the frustrations and wanderings of the ancient children of Israel. Poised to enter the “Promised Land” of abundance and fulfillment following centuries of bondage and privation, and in the wake of the clearly providential exodus led by Moses, that generation fell tragically short.

They missed their rendezvous with destiny.

Entering the wilderness – a place, but also a process - they lived out a forty-year reminder of what had left been behind, while also grieving the loss of a compelling future. They had allowed short-term frustration to short-circuit long-held principles and dreams.

And the Lord told them in the book of Deuteronomy that the reason for the wilderness was, “to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart.” In other words, the wilderness for them was a divinely ordained “time out” – the kind of thing my dad would do when he sent me to my room to “think about” what I had done (when it was really all my brother’s fault).

The wilderness was a time for purging and preparing. Attitudes, habits, and ambitions had to be dealt with, and priorities revisited and clarified. The duration of the wilderness depended on how well the lessons were learned. In that ancient case, a journey that should have taken no more than a year became a forty-year generational failure.

And something that was lost, forgotten, or just misplaced, desperately needed to be found.

As the Republican Party moves into its own desert of exile for a while, it is time for reflection. It needs to figure out what it really stands for and what it can offer the nation the next time it is called upon to lead. How it manages in the wilderness will determine whether it will come back in four years, or forty - if at all.

That another such time will come is, of course, almost inevitable – not just because of very real concerns about the capacity of recent victors to translate historically flawed policies into real success, but because of the inherent cycles of politics. What happened on November 4th was due nearly as much to the tendency of politics and history to repeat themselves and the public’s tendency to soon tire of anyone on center stage, as it was a mandate for real “yes, we can” change.

Writing in the book, In the Arena: A Memoir of Defeat and Renewal, the late and former president Richard Nixon dedicated a chapter to the phenomenon of the wilderness. He knew a thing or two about the ups and downs and ins and outs of political life. The period between his loss in the governor’s race in 1962 and the winning of the White House in 1968, is a textbook case of how to come back from the kind of defeat that tempts opponents to write someone off permanently.

Nixon mentioned something described by Arnold Toynbee in his, Study of History, described as “the phenomenon of withdrawal…a disengagement and temporary withdrawal of the creative personality from his social milieu and his subsequent return to the same milieu transfigured in a new capacity with new powers.” Throughout history, great leaders demonstrated this. Certainly Nixon did and clearly identified with others who went through deep valleys.

In the 1991 movie, City Slickers, Billy Crystal and his best friends head out west looking for adventure. Crystal’s wife in the film wanted him to, while moving cattle from point A to B, along the way find something. Something he had lost. Something he needed to recover. His smile. The movie ended happily with said smile finding its way back to Billy’s face.

For the Republicans, they do not need to find something as insignificant as a group smile. Rather, they should be looking for something much more vital if they are to have a real shot at coming back from this wilderness.

The key to this is found in another place where the ancient scriptures mention a wilderness. We learn about this from the writings of the prophet Isaiah, when in the 40th chapter of his book we come across the vital phrase, “the voice of one crying in the wilderness.”

No doubt Winston Churchill, another frequent wilderness wanderer, identified with this little phrase during his years as a political has-been in the 1930s. He had no power, no position, and no prospects.

But he found his “voice” – and began to warn his countrymen about Hitler and dangers to come. Later, when he once again found himself in forced exile, having been voted out of office in the Labor sweep just a couple of months after the victory had been won in Europe, he found his “voice” again. This time he did not speak in the House of Commons, but rather in the gymnasium of a small college in the American mid-west. From that unlikely pulpit in the wilderness he cried out about an “iron curtain.”

The Republicans have clearly found the wilderness. Now they need to find their voice.

The GOP needs to figure out what it wants to be if and when it grows back up. Are ideas like limited government, the free market, and at least an interest in understanding the relationship between the morality of personal responsibility and self-discipline and the ills of the larger culture – now officially gone forever?

The word paradigm comes from the Greek language and the word paradeigma. It basically means a perception, or frame of reference – a lens through which to interpret reality. Author Steven Covey in his book, The Eighth Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness (hint: the eighth habit is “finding your voice”), insists that “if you want to make minor incremental changes and improvements, work on practices, behavior or attitude. But if you want to make significant, quantum improvements, work on paradigms.”

The time for tweaking is past. As the nation readies itself to enter a new era of “bold experimentation” under an activist Obama administration, it is time for the party now finding itself in the political wilderness to find what it has lost. By definition, something lost is not something new – it is something once possessed.

Republicans can find their voice during the wilderness period, but to do so will require a willingness to have the wisdom and humility to make a paradigm shift, one that surely involves a quantum journey back to the future. The must find what once worked – and has been lost.

And if anyone thinks that the idea of going to the past to find something that will resonate in the future is not politically feasible, please remember this: America just elected a guy who advocates policies and programs that failed 75 years ago.

Learning From The Mistakes Of Others

November 13, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Obama administration, Republican Party, UK Politics | Leave a Comment 

James Forsyth is the online editor of the (London) Spectator as well a regular blogger on the magazine’s Coffeehouse Blog.

His latest post is: “The Republicans Are Where The Tories Were In 1997“.

Mr. Forsyth draws four lessons that 2008 Republicans can learn from the mistakes the Tories made in and after 1997. For example:

The first Tory mistake the Republicans must learn from is the importance of accepting that the other guy won and is popular. The Tories thought Blair was a charlatan and many Republicans believe the same of Obama, but the country doesn’t: Obama’s post-election approval rating is 68 per cent. In this climate, the Republican National Committee sending out a slew of emails criticising each Obama appointment is pointless. The Republicans would be far better off keeping their powder dry. Then if Obama were to have an Ecclestone moment, the return of their guns to action would have more of an effect.

The Ecclestone scandal (Tony Blair was accused of thanking Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone for his million pound contribution to the Labor Party by exempting the sport from a tobacco ad ban) was the first speed bump in the freeway of media love and popular approval down which the newly-elected Blair government had been tooling to that point.

Mr. Forsyth illustrates each of his other prescriptions:

The second thing the Republicans should take from the Tory experience is the importance of patience.

Third, the Republicans must not be seduced by the turnout myth.

Finally, the Republicans should not send their best talent on a mission that is doomed to failure.

Many will find the definition of “a mission doomed to failure” —any attempt to regain the White House before 2012— a very hard saying indeed:

The position of Hague in 1997 and Bobby Jindal, the 37-year-old governor of Louisiana, today are similar. Jindal is smart, acceptable to all wings of a divided movement and an appealing new face for a party that is trying to compete with a youthful opponent. But putting Jindal up in 2012 would be as much of a waste of talent as the Tories making Hague leader in 1997. Barack Obama has, like Blair, almost certainly won a two-term mandate, if for no other reason than the daunting number of states that the Republicans would have to flip to win back the White House.

Obama’s election has changed many things but America is still a centre-right country; the ideological composition of the electorate in 2008 was identical to what it was in 2004. But there is a danger that the rump Republican party becomes interested in talking only to itself, adamant that it represents ‘real America’ and that the rest of the country can go hang. (Palin has become a proxy in this debate; the attacks on her are so vicious because people know that she represents the most attractive face of this destructive tendency.) If that were to happen, it would see the centre of political gravity move to the left not only in America but also in Britain.

“Get a War Time Consigliere”

November 12, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under American Politics, Republican Party | 1 Comment 

The Tom Hagens of the world just won’t cut it. TNN’s very own Jack Pitney says Republicans need an aggressive and innovative leader in the RNC, more conservative investigative reporters in the mold of Stanley Kurtz, good ideas in the House, tactful use of the Senate filibuster, and much more.

Obama: Keep Joe In The Tent

November 11, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Middle East, Republican Party | 3 Comments 

During the presidential campaign this fall no appearance at a rally or fundraiser by Sen. John McCain was complete without Sen. Joe Lieberman (reportedly the Arizonan’s first choice for running-mate before he was persuaded to keep the selection within GOP ranks) introducing him.  As a result, a number of people in the print media and the blogosphere began to wonder if Lieberman, who won his most recent election as an independent in 2006, would be allowed to keep caucusing with the Democrats after the election.

But in recent days it has become evident that even if Al Franken prevails in the recount of the Minnesota Senate race, the Democrats are going to need the votes of both Senate independents (the other being Bernie Sanders of Vermont) if they are going to stand a chance of wooing some Republican in the fashion that James Jeffords was in 2001 so that a filibuster-proof majority can be put together.  Yesterday Senate majority leader Harry Reid explained that he and his colleagues saw no problem with Lieberman staying in the caucus and today, President-elect Obama also made some comments indicating that the status quo should be maintained. But at what point, as the Obama administration’s Mideast policy develops, could the Connecticut senator start to have second thoughts?

Why Palin Is A Force To Be Reckoned With

November 11, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Republican Party, Sarah Palin | Leave a Comment 

Where in the world is Matt Lauer? Shivering before dawn in Anchorage, plugging his interview with her.

Gingrich Misconstrued

November 11, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

Adam Nagourney’s whither-the-GOP article in today’s New York Times contains this odd paragraph:

But Mr. Gingrich, a veteran of what turned out to be damaging Republican wars with President Bill Clinton in 1993 and 1994, cautioned against that, saying the party would be wiser to offer a broad idea of what it stood for and how it would lead the country, and pick its battles carefully.

Whatever Newt Gingrich said, I’m pretty sure he didn’t caution Republicans against winning the House back in the next midterm election, as they did under his leadership in November 1994.

Palin’s Power

November 10, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Republican Party, Sarah Palin | Leave a Comment 

“The Economist“:

There is so much fuss over the losing vice-presidential candidate because the Republicans are trying to figure out what they represent.

Bingo. Her critics’ attacks aren’t about her; they’re about them. The attacks are evidence of her power. Does she understand?

Gearing up for 2012

November 10, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under Election 2012, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

The front runners emerge: Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, Alaska Governor and Republican VP Candidate Sarah Palin, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, and former Arkansas Governor and newly minted TV  talk-show host Mike Huckabee.

According to his aides, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich might emerge as a dark horse candidate; Mississippi Governor and former Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour says naming and running candidates this early in the game is no way to rebuild a party.

Forgetting The Nixon And Reagan Landslides

November 8, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Political Philosophy, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

Hoping that President Obama will be Carter to someone’s Reagan, the folks at the Center for Individual Freedom aren’t especially discouraged:

Is conservatism dead?

Like clockwork, overeager liberals believe that the answer is “yes.”  Following Barack Obama’s closer-than-predicted 53% to 46% victory this week (during a year in which political tides should have created a twenty-point margin), liberals are already making that claim.

CBS News historian Douglas Brinkley, apparently lacking any sense of irony or recognition that his example undercut his very point, told Katie Couric that, “the age of Ronald Reagan is coming to an end tonight.  I think you have to go back to 1964 when Lyndon Johnson had such a landslide victory over Barry Goldwater to see how momentous this is.”

Apparently, Richard Nixon’s and Ronald Reagan’s own 49-state landslides, which exceeded Johnson’s 44-state victory, weren’t as “momentous” in Mr. Brinkley’s mind.  And nevermind that Johnson’s victory was so “momentous” that the demonized Republican Richard Nixon was elected four short years later.

What Cost The GOP The Election?

November 7, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Economic issues, Election 2008, Republican Party, Sarah Palin | 1 Comment 

As the Obama era gets underway, fingers are being pointed in all directions as Republicans ponder what happened.  Allow me to direct my digit at Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson.

In the last weeks, as it became clear that some kind of miracle was needed to save Sen. John McCain’s run for the White House, I started to wonder why it was that one was required.  The cause was clearly the economic crisis, and the event that triggered it, as Charles Krauthammer noted this morning, was the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers after Paulson refused to bail out the banking firm in mid-September.  Former Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein, who has observed and commented on decades of economic ups and downs, has repeatedly stated that Paulson’s move was a bizarre and ill-thought move - “a roll of the dice that came out snake eyes.”  Like me, he doesn’t understand how the Treasury Department could bail out Bear Stearns last spring, a move that averted recession for a few months, and then let Lehman (and, it turned out, many other financial institutions) go over the abyss. 

What’s especially in my mind now is what might have been. At the end of October it turned out that new housing sales, following a 13% slump in August, had actually risen 2.7% in September.  If this indeed is an indication the housing market had hit bottom and was undergoing a resurgence at the time Paulson pulled the plug on Lehman, then it stands to reason that had he kept the company out of bankruptcy, then AIG, Merrill and the rest would have remained intact for at least the remainder of the year.  The Christmas increase in retail sales would have kept confidence going this fall, as it did last year when there was talk of a major downturn. 

And what all this would have meant is that McCain might have stayed at the level in the polls where he was in early September and could have built on that.  It’s true that by Inauguration Day, an institution as shaky as Washington Mutual might have been causing jitters, but by then it could have been the concern of a McCain administration and not an Obama one.   But instead the stock market tanked this week in a way not seen since 1987 and President-elect Obama is the one holding the press conference today.  Whatever we see in the next two years, Paulsen bears a gigantic share of the responsibility in bringing it about.

(I should mention that Andrew Sullivan, as might be expected, does not share this view and is positive that the tide began to turn against McCain when Katie Couric interviewed Gov. Sarah Palin almost 10 days before Lehman went under. And he presents some poll charts to buttress the argument. But I would say the county-by-county maps of election results that appeared in Thursday’s Washington Post disproves that.  Those maps show that this year Obama improved over Sen. John Kerry’s 2004 performance in hundreds of counties in the Midwest and Rust Belt gravely affected by the economic crisis, and that McCain improved over President Bush’s 2004 results in nearly the entire states of Arkansas and Oklahoma and across the Appalachians.  What appealed to voters in these Republican-leaning areas?  A lot of it surely had to do with Gov. Palin and her bedrock conservative views.)

Not Dead; Just Resting

November 7, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

Jonathan V. Last says don’t count out the GOP yet:

[T]here is still some hope that the GOP remains a viable governing party. The environment will never again be as hostile for Republicans or as fertile for Democrats.

After all, John McCain was saddled with two unpopular wars, a burst housing bubble, the highest gas prices in history, and an outgoing president with sub-30 percent approval ratings. The media worked tirelessly against him. Obama outspent him 2-to-1.

And yet McCain was actually leading in the polls until Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. collapsed in September, triggering the mother of all financial panics. Even with that anvil around his neck, McCain lost by only six points.

Andrew Sullivan’s Malignity In Victory

November 6, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Hackosphere, News media, Political Philosophy, Republican Party, Richard Nixon | 7 Comments 

Andrew Sullivan continues to savage Sarah Palin. He erred in republishing the transparent lie that she wasn’t Trig’s mother, which proved to be the most effective libel of the 2008 campaign. As recently as election day, he was keeping the lie alive. So he is fully vested in her political demise.

The GOP must nonetheless ask itself if Palin, as we know her today, is its phoenix. Sullivan and other proponents of classical conservatism are right that Republicans must use their wilderness time to decide what they believe, what makes them indispensable, and how they’ll win. Angry and sure of themselves today, they need to find their way to curiosity and even self-criticism. One of the study questions is whether their rootedness in social issues is a help or hindrance.

So if Palin and her advisers really envision her as the new Reagan, I’m not so sure. But the new Nixon…?

Yes on Obama, No To Liberalism

November 5, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under Democratic Party, Election 2008, Orange County, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

Sen. Obama ran the table in Southern California Republican strongholds (which Pres. Bush won overwhelmingly in 2004) San Diego (53-44), Riverside (50-47), and San Bernadino Counties (51-46), while Sen. McCain barely held on to Orange County (50 -47).

As Rush Limbaugh noted this morning, this doesn’t mean conservativism is dead in America, pols were just invariably lacking a consistent and clear message. In California, where language was unambiguous and immutable, conservatives scored a victory in Proposition 8 (even in Los Angeles County), and maintained an effective status quo in state and congressional seats.

California Assemblyman Chuck Devore (R-Irvine) lists what Republicans can look forward to:

1) At the Congressional level, we maintained the status quo – the power of the 2002 gerrymander remains intact – State Sen. Tom McClintock remains ahead in the 4th district by 50.1 to 49.9 with a 451 vote margin saying he’ll go to Washington.

2) The State Senate, at this writing, may get a little bluer by one, with former GOP Assemblyman Tony Strickland down by 108 votes to former Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson, 50.1 to 49.9. Based on the late returns, it is better than 50-50 that Strickland can win this, but I’m sure a brigade of lawyers will be deployed to ensure all the rules are followed. This district is McClintock’s district out by Santa Barbara and it has trended strongly Democrat in the past few years.

3) The State Assembly this morning appears to favor a net Democrat gain of two seats, with the Democrats apparently picking up all three of the seats that they gerrymandered for their party in 2002, but the Republicans picked off that year, however, Republicans added a seat in the Bakersfield area. Two other seats were in play too due to the massive amounts of money the Democrats and the unions had at their disposal – the seat vacated by the term-limited Alan Nakanishi and the seat held by Audra Strickland. Republicans held both seats.

4) In a race having national implications, Prop. 8, which provides constitutional protections to traditional marriage, passed by a little more than four percent with a 415,839 vote margin. Generally speaking, Prop. 8 passed in all but coastal counties with even Los Angeles County supporting it. There is 4.2 percent of the vote outstanding, but it is largely from counties that heavily supported Prop. 8. With Hollywood, the media, Gov. Schwarzenegger and every Democrat politician in the state opposing this measure, with Obama beating McCain by 24.3 percent in the state and opposing Prop. 8, as well as the “No on 8” side outspending the “Yes on 8” side, it is a remarkable victory that should give pundits pause when they seek to write off California as indelibly “blue.” Especially interesting is the huge disconnect between traditional liberal areas that massively opposed 8 and regions where working Californians lived who gave heavy support to Pres.-elect Obama AND big margins to Prop. 8. There is a powerful internal inconsistency there that can harm the Democrats if they do not adjust to it with politicians such as Sen. Barbara Boxer calling Prop. 8, “unfair, unnecessary, and wrong” with the “Yes on 8” campaign being “mean-spirited” while practicing “the politics of fear and division.” The only other big proposition that had major implications which apparently passed is Prop. 11, the redistricting initiative which I supported and most Democrats opposed. It was ahead by 50.6 to 49.4 as of Wednesday morning. Should it pass, California may finally see competitive legislative districts by 2012.

Will Franken Demand A Rewrite?

November 5, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Election 2008, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

With all precincts in, Sen. Coleman beats Al Franken by 571 votes.

No-Scapegoat Watch

November 5, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Republican Party | 2 Comments 

Huh? Walter Shapiro:

No president since John Kennedy or Harry Truman will come into office facing graver crises.

President Kennedy faced no grave crises as he took office. President Truman had to grapple with the Korean war, though President Nixon’s challenge in Vietnam was much more politically and tactically difficult.

As some McCain staffers scapegoat Gov. Palin, Shapiro also makes this observation:

The financial collapse and the looming deep recession may well have meant that McCain could not have won the election even if he chose Adam Smith as his running mate.

Amen.

She’ll Be Back

November 4, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Republican Party, Sarah Palin | Leave a Comment 

Liveblogging The Election V

November 4, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Liveblogging, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

Obama’s victory speech covered all the right bases, especially the candidate’s thanks to McCain for the latter’s phone call conceding the race, which, undoubtedly, was as well-spoken and gracious as the speech in Arizona. The single problematic feature in Obama’s remarks was the paraphrase from Dr. King’s “mountaintop” speech delivered in Memphis the night before his death, which served to remind a lot of us that for the last ten months the senator has had more Secret Service protection than anyone except President Bush. Another notable aspect of the address is that it did not conclude with the strains of “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” by Stevie Wonder. (”Overjoyed” by that artist might have been a suitable substitution but instead there was a lofty-sounding instrumental.)

But, as some commentator or other noted tonight, the nation is now on “the other side of history.” Forty years ago when Grant Park in Chicago was riven by violence rather than united in triumph, a minister from Washington, DC, Channing Phillips, received 67.5 votes at the Democratic convention, the first black American to be nominated for President at a major-party gathering. Twenty years ago, for a week after winning the Michigan primary, Jesse Jackson (much seen on TV tonight, with tears running down his cheeks) was the front-runner for the Democratic nomination - another first. (Tonight Brit Hume referred to this on Fox News; here’s a clip which also includes Juan Williams’s comments on Obama’s win to which John Taylor refers below.)

And tonight, the BBC coverage cut to one of their reporters, standing in a Kenyan village (where it’s Wednesday morning), while several relatives of the president-elect were dancing in celebration. Tomorrow has been declared a national holiday in Kenya.

NBC’s also reporting a gain of 26 seats for the Democrats so far in the House. Not quite a repeat of 1964, but it sure looks like Obama will have a Congress presenting him with few of the roadblocks encountered by Carter or (when he had a non-GOP legislative branch) Clinton.

And thus the evening finishes. A new era is indeed upon us.

Liveblogging The Election IV

November 4, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Liveblogging, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

It’s now a quarter before midnight Eastern. A few minutes before 11, NBC called Virginia for Obama, and at the top of the hour, as the polls closed in the West, he was simultaneously pronounced the victor across the airwaves. By 11:15, McCain was delivering a magnificently graceful and thoughtful concession speech, hitting all the right notes.

The most emotional coverage has been on the African-American-oriented channels, TV One and BET, as commentators reminisce about their own experiences, discuss the struggle of black America through the centuries, and marvel at the moment of fulfillment and triumph tonight.

After Obama delivers his address, a few minutes from now, it will be time for a post about how the composition of the next Congress is shaping up. In Maryland, where I live, the other election news of note is that a majority of the electorate, p