The Next Hurrah

Grover Norquist’s Leaky Bathtub: The Republican Decline, Part I

By DHinMI

Those of us who try to discern tectonic movements from what feel like tiny shakes and tremors risk looking silly when we predict major political realignments. Historians, with the luxury of hindsight, often disagree on what happened before and during historical realignments, so it's understandably difficult to identify what's happening and predict the future.  But the signs are getting hard to ignore.  They’re visible in the public opinion polls, the results of the last several elections, going all the way back to 1996, and the demographic changes. They can be seen in the changes in the media and how the media is reporting on the Republicans. They’re visible in the internal dynamics within the two major parties, including the Republican scandals, and the diverging paths of the Republicans’ ideologically-driven predictions on numerous subject and the very differnt “facts on the ground,” most notably on Iraq. They were visible in the country’s shock at the federal failure to respond to Katrina and the “Two Americas” it exposed to the world. Finally, they’re becoming visible as we reckon with the effects of decades of anti-tax, cultural jihad politics, over a decade of Republican control of Congress and five years of complete Republican control of the federal government. The political trends seem to be converging in ways that suggest that Grover Norquist will not achieve his goal of reducing government to a size where he could “drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” And for abetting Norquist’s’ pursuit of his insane and megalomaniacal dream, the Republican party is on verge of losing control of Congress and losing the benefits of the (mistaken) perception that they have had momentum and popular support behind their unending attacks on government and governance. Just as George W. Bush and Karl Rove let Grover Norquist get his hands on government and he dragged it to the bathroom to drown it, America appears to have pulled the plug from the tub.

Styles of Leadership

By Mimikatz

If the Bush Administration were ever to come to the conclusion that lying, evasion and coverup weren't working, an alternative style of leadership was on offer this week in California. 

Fresh from his trouncing at the hands of the California voters last week, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger displayed a refreshing bit of candor and responsibility this week.  In a series of statements, he accepted blame for the special election debacle, in which all of the propositions he backed lost by margins from 5% to 24%;  he acknowledged that the voters wanted problems to be solved in Sacramento and not at the ballot box; he admitted that his demeaning characterizations of opponents had backfired; and he promised to work with legislators and critics, backing his words with fence-mending deeds.  This stands in sharp contrast to president Bush, who continued to paint critics of his failed Iraq war as traitors who are trying to rewrite history.

We'll Know the REAL News Today

By DHinMI   

Congratulations to new governors elect Tim Kaine and John Corzine.  Much will be spun on potentential national implications, with Dems saying these were referendums on Bush and the Republicans, Republicans saying they hinged on local concerns in VA or that Forrester ran a bad campaign in NJ.  And both sides are right. 

But for a "purer" indication of what today's elections mean, we'll probably need to wait until later Wednesday, when we can get a full accounting for what happened in the legislative races.  In 2004 Democrats posted a national net gain of 64 legislative seats, and flipped control of more chambers than the Republicans.  When you compensate for the Texas redistricting, the Congressional outcome was a net zero.  We lost Seats in the Senate, but in places where Dems haven't done well in Presidential years, primarily in the South.  And an incumbent President barely topped 50%.  Hardly a transforming election in terms of the message from the electorate.

But we're probably coming up on a major, landmark election.  It won't be a transforming election like we had in the period of 1932-36.  But it could certainly be an election that breaks the back of the majority party's momentum, like 1966 when the backlash against LBJ cut short the Great Society reforms, or 1938 when FDR's court packing ended the Second New Deal.  But unlike those elections, when Dems lost dozens of Congressional seats but still easily held control (because their majorities were over 100 seats), this would be a backlash against a narrow majority that acted like they had a 100 seat majority when in fact it's majority was only 30 seats. 

An early indicator of whether we're on pace for a landmark election will be the legislative races.  Dems hold both chambers of the NJ legislature, Repubs both chambers of the VA legislature.  There's almost no way the VA House of Delegates will flip; the Republican held a 61-37 majority.  But Kagro X's whack-job delegate lost in previously solidly Republican Loudoun County, and he lost big, so it's possible the Republican majority could be dramatically cut.  And if we see significant losses--like a Dem gain of more than 6-8 seats--it would be safe to say the Republican troubles went beyond a bad campaign or weak candidate at the top of the ticket.  In New Jersey, where Dem troubles with corruption charges stemming back to the McGreevey administration administration were supposed to hurt Corzine, any gains would probably hold significant meaning.

So, celebrate a nice pair of top-of-the-ticket wins in the gubernatorial races, and a very heartening win for gay rights in Maine.  But if you want to know if there was any significant national meaning in Tuesday's results, look for those legislative results.

Rising Gas Prices=Rising Anxiety (And What Happened to All That Iraqi Oil?)

By DHinMI

$3.00 gasoline.  Two questions: what are the chances, and what will the effects be.  First, on the chances:

Oil prices raced to record highs above $67 a barrel on Friday as investors fretted over the world's strained capacity to refine and pump crude oil.

U.S. oil rose more than 7 percent this week and has climbed 51 percent since the start of the year. The stage could be set for further gains, with no let-up seen in global demand growth and no signs that $60-plus oil is harming the economy of the world's largest consumer, the United States...

Supply limitations were underscored on Thursday by the International Energy Agency which cut its estimate of non-OPEC supply growth. Non-OPEC producers are failing to deliver as much oil as expected this year, leaving OPEC to fill the gap.

That has not proved a problem so far, with global markets well-supplied on both crude and products.

Stocks held in OECD countries at 54 days of forward demand cover is one of the market's biggest bearish indicators, according to Calyon's Wittner. "But they are being overwhelmed, correctly, by the capacity constraints," he said...

Those high prices have yet to take a toll on the world's largest economy. Latest economic data showed U.S. retail sales jumped 1.8 percent last month, with the biggest gain in auto sales due to buyer incentives.

In real terms, stripping out inflation, oil is below the $80 a barrel on average for the year after the 1979 Iranian revolution.

But at an average of more than $53 for the year to date on U.S. oil is up nearly $23 on the average for 2003.

Economists point out that in terms of the overall economy, we're far more fuel efficient than in the past.  Manufacturers especially can produce their goods with much less fuel than back in the 70's and 80's. 

But our autos, while technically more efficient, aren't necessarily less immune to gasoline prices.  As auto manufactures have made engines more efficient, they've met consumer demands by providing engines with more power for sportier performance or to propel larges vehicles (like SUV's).  So while manufactures are more immune to spikes in energy prices than they were in the past, individual consumers are not.  And that vulnerability is showing up in consumer surveys and public opinion polls.

Voting and Elections Roundup

By DHinMI

2008 Democratic Presidential Primaries and Caucuses

We all have our fixations. For some folks, one particular political fixation is the disproportionate influence afforded Iowa and New Hampshire as the first two states that get to cast primary votes for President. One of my political fixations is the disproportionate influence afforded the states that cast primary and caucus votes just after Iowa and New Hampshire, which in 2004 were mostly states that were heavily Republican, much whiter than the national population, caucus states where only a very small number of people participated, or states that combined those characteristics. Therefore, I was glad to see in this article, titled Dean Predicts Changes for 2008 Primaries, that much of the discussion by this about the commission studying the issue:

A commission member, former ambassador Terry Shumaker, said the panel has not begun deliberating or taken any votes. Most of its discussions have focused on how more states are moving up their contests to be closer to those held by Iowa and New   Hampshire.

Hopefully we’ll get a more rational process that better contributes to choosing a nominee who appeals to the Democratic base and can be competitive across a wide swath of the nation.

Turn in Those Campaign Finance Reports, or Go To Jail

Revenge of the Moderate Voter?

by DemfromCT

Hard to believe in these polarized times, with an agressive conservative push both with SCOTUS and with iraq, but one get the feeling there's a glimmer of "enough' going on out there in that part of the country not covered by the Washington pundits. One sees it in the way the late night comedians handle Bush. One sees it in the polls when Independents are included. One sees it  in Frist's declaration that he doesn't want to be President. And now, just maybe, one sees it in the OH-2 special election narrowly lost by Paul Hackett, an Iraq War vet that speaks his mind about chickenhawks.

As has been catalogued in detail elsewhere, OH-2 is a conservative Repub district that went R by 44 points in 2004. It includes the suburbs of Cincinnati and for political purposes, resembles Kentucky more than it does Cleveland. my fellow posters are far more capable than I of analyzing the situation, but as the Times puts it

Democrats had hoped that a victory by Mr. Hackett would not only be a sharp blow to Mr. Bush's national standing but also set a template for future campaigns by Democratic war veterans.

They had also hoped that the race would show the weakness of the Ohio Republican Party, which dominates state government but has been shaken in recent months by a widening scandal involving Gov. Bob Taft's administration and the state's workers compensation fund.

But Republicans viewed Mr. Hackett's attacks as a call to arms, and they poured money and resources into the district to ensure his defeat. Mr. Bush taped a telephone message to voters, and the National Republican Congressional Committee bought $325,000 in air time for a television spot this past weekend.

That's about right. A victory would have been a monumental steal, an a close defeat is a major upset in and of itself. Bush is a chickenhawk, Hackett called him one in public, and instead of being 'buried' as his opponents threatened, a GOP hack barely made it to the finish line despite national support and a last-minute direct appeal from Bush.

Iraq remains a mess, and it's not getting better any time soon. All those citizens who held their nose and voted R are going to have plenty to think about between now and 2006 when we get to do it all over again. If Cincinnati has its doubts, the Republicans are going to be in trouble all over Ohio. All politics may be local (the Noe scandal isn't going away any time soon), but Ohio has national implications. And the winds are not blowing  the GOP's way.

 

Schmidt Advisor Connected to Noe: It's Even More Money Than Reported

By DHinMI

Atrios is linking to a report about a Toledo Blade editor connected to Ohio Coingate figure Tom Noe who Ohio Republican Congressional candidate Jeannette Schmidt is reported to have paid $60,000 in consulting fees the week he retired from The Blade.  But that's not all of the money this guy's received from Schmidt.  And there are some questions that should be asked. 

First, what we're talking about, the original report from Editor and Publisher:

The Blade of Toledo, Ohio, is on top of the news- paper world, thanks to its "Coingate" reports (see p. 34). But while the paper is rightly thumping its chest with each new revelation, it's also coming under some scrutiny — not for what it has printed, but for what it may not have. Rumors swirl around a veteran Blade scribe, former political reporter Fritz Wenzel. Nothing at all is proven, but it's worth recalling the dangers — even if it's just in public perception — of jumping from political campaigning to political reporting and back again. 

Wenzel, a longtime GOP campaign worker in Oregon, spent 10 years on the Blade politics beat before returning to the world of political consulting in May, virtually the day after he left the paper. One of the key contacts he made along the way was the man now at the center of the Coingate accusations, Tom Noe, a major Republican fund-raiser who attended the wedding of Wenzel's son, P.J., a state GOP employee. Noe's wife, Bernadette, even praised Wenzel during a GOP Lincoln Day Dinner this spring. "It was obvious that [Wenzel] was a Republican, he never hid the fact," Dennis Lang, interim chair of the Lucas County Republican Central Committee, told me last month. "But his work stayed in neutral ground."
 
Not according to the Lucas County Democratic Party, which devoted a page on its Web site to blasting Wenzel for alleged inaccuracy and bias. Suspicions about partisan leanings were further fueled when Wenzel signed on as media strategist for Jean Schmidt, the GOP nominee for an open Cincinnati-area congressional seat that voters will fill in a special August election (she won a primary on June 14). Disclosure records show Wenzel received $30,000 from Schmidt's campaign on May 16, the day his last column for the paper appeared, and three days after he left the Blade. He got another $30,000 from those coffers a week later, according to records. Part of the money went to media buys.

Editor and Publisher is correct about the $60,000 Schmidt paid Wenzel.  But that's not all the money she's paid Wenzel.

All Praise to the Internets! Online Will Save Us All!

by Kagro X 

Here's a little something that breaks my personal record for most topics filed under. I found via Atrios this amusing story on the always-annoying perennial NJ GOP candidate Bret Schundler. The story made it to Daily Kos, via this Dave Weigel diary a few hours later, and finally ended up on the front page under the headline, "NJ-Gov: Schundler's big F-up."

The F-up in question?

Click the images to enlarge. Then look closely at the crowds behind each candidate. Then put on a helmet and bang your head against the wall in disgust, and sit down for a Pepto Bismol cocktail. You just might be sick. Long story short, Schundler's campaign web site needed a shot with their man Bret in front of an adoring throng. But lacking one, they stole it from Howard Dean, and photoshopped different signs and hats into the crowd.

Oh, the horror!

Santorum, Hypocrisy, Republicans, Democrats and Nazis

By DHinMI

After Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn insinuated that activist judges were the underlying cause of attacks on jurists and their families, I wondered if ADL president Abe Foxman would jump up to decry Cornyn the way he had--unfairly in my mind--castigated WV Democratic Senator Robert Byrd for making an analogy to the parliamentary process by which the Nazis consolidated their political control of Germany in 1933.  I didn't really think Foxman would get involved in the Cornyn affair, but I was pleased to see Foxman criticize Bill Frist for participating in the Family Research Council's Injustice Sunday.  With the latest incidents of invoking Nazis, I suspect Foxman will need to order more official stationery to keep up with the demand for condemnations of inapt or offensive invocations of Hitler, Nazis and the Holocaust:

Rhetorical shots continued to fly yesterday as the Senate completed a second day of debate over Priscilla R. Owen, President Bush's controversial pick for the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The fight between Republicans and Democrats inflamed passions to the point where Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, the third ranking Republican, drew parallels between the "hubris" of Democrats and that of German dictator Adolf Hitler...